Jon Wood: Dissecting the Acronym: RPG
In his column this week, MMORPG managing editor Jon Wood takes apart the acronym "RPG". As he states, the way one interprets the meaning of those three letters determines what is expected from an MMO-RPG. See if you agree with Jon's thoughts about what RPG means.
Editorial By Jon Wood on July 22, 2010
As someone whose job it is to follow both the development and player sides of the MMORPG industry, I get paid to think about a lot of strange things, some of which might seem irrelevant or not worth too much thought. This topic, I’ll admit, may be one of those but while (finally) playing Dragon Age: Origins, I had a thought. What you expect an MMORPG to be probably has a whole heck of a lot to do with how you interpret the last three letters of the acronym. While the fact that it stands for Role Playing Game isn’t in question, the exact meaning of that term obviously is.
First, there’s the loosest possible definition, stating that any game wherein you take control of a character and adventure for the purpose of gathering loot and/or experience points actually constitutes a form of RPG. This is often how games that don’t seem to outwardly meet the RPG criteria often squeak into an MMORPG classification. We’re not going to spend too much time here because anyone that follows this definition clearly isn’t particularly discriminating about the genre (though they may be in their own personal tastes).
Next, there are those who believe that a video game RPG should mimic, as closely as possible, the original pen and paper RPGs from which they evolved. This tends to be the crowd that believes that the only true MMORPGs are sandbox MMORPGs where players are able to make their own fortunes and affect the world around them with their actions.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with this view. It’s actually what I believe was first envisioned when online fantasy worlds began to become a reality. Unfortunately, while the pen and paper system works very well for small groups of players, the whole thing begins to fall apart when you start to bring the numbers up into the thousands or tens of thousands. That’s where it becomes a) difficult to create enough content within the world to satisfy that many people on an individual or small group level and b) even more difficult to allow each quest completed or action taken affect the game world as a whole.
It was tried, but in the end the genre seemed to evolve more toward catering to people who fall into the third category of RPG interpretation: The video game RPG.
When the idea of an RPG was first introduced to the graphical gaming space, it came in the form of single player adventures. In these adventures, the game designers were able to provide a simulated world experience wherein the play was guided through quest after quest, adventure after adventure in a pre-determined story with their character as the protagonist. In this way, the developers are able to easily control the environment and story.
For better or for worse, it is this model that has emerged as the predominant structure for today’s modern MMO, either because of the convenience of developing in terms of quest design, the popularity of a computer RPG modeled game like World of Warcraft, or because more players look to the computer roots of the MMORPG than the table top roots.
So, what does RPG mean to you?
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To my mind it is about adopting a character and fleshing out his/her abilities and attrbutes in order to mold that character toward some type of role while you make your way through some semblance of a story.
In a best case scenario the role that you adopt can affect the world you are on or vice versa.
I guess I fall under the second classification, because I don't believe that MMO should change RPG, it should just scale it up.
However, RPG in and of itself, is comprised of more than just classic table top pnp games anymore. So I don't see why it is so difficult for game companies to make an MMORPG that contains the best of all three that were described (in particular the latter two).
Look at Polysemy and Metonymy
The term Role-Play has common origins, but means different things. In computer games it refers to a verifiable set of game rules (which do not include what players do with them).
RPG: Traditional
A type of game where each player assumes the role of a fictional character, as if the character was part of a novel. The player tries to make decisions that matches the knowledge and interests of this fictional character. The fictional world is controlled by the game master. This character is embodied by a set of values which determine the competencies of this fictional character (how good she is at something). bla bla …
RPG: Computer Games
A type of game where each player takes control of a "game character" whose competencies are determined by values. When the in-game character meets a challenge of some form, these competencies are used for die-rolls to determine whether or not the character succeeds. bla bla …
Issue
Since the introduction of chat and multiplayer, you CAN apply the extended traditional role-play rules to computer games (e.g. "acting in the role" etc), but they are irrelevant to the definition of computer RPGs.
This isn't true. For one, the dungeon crawl (raid dungeon, kill the monsters, steal the treasure) a kind of hack and slash "gameplay" predates computer RPGs. Then DikuMUD entered the scene and refined it for CRPGs. Then EverQuest built on that, then World of Warcraft entered the scene etc.
Traditional pen and paper has very little to do with sandboxes (unless you use a very loose definition). In fact, many game masters wrote key points of their adventures and would make sure players pass them, sometimes having multiple at their disposal. This is not that far away from "directed content", albeit human game masters are more flexible and can introduce random encounters and re-arrange things.
Procedurally created content (as often in sandbox titles) was the basic design of Rogue (and rogue-like) RPGs, which are … dungeon crawl hack and slash.
RPG to me is exactly what you get at a PnP game. Exploring a world, advancing your character, battling evil creatures and following an involving story, all alongside a group of friends. However, when it comes to computer games I'm a bit more open minded. I started off with MU's and that was vastly different to the PnP style, as everything had to be typed out, emotions, actions, statements. It was much more involved than I think you can get around a table having a laugh with your friends. After that was EverQuest and, though the roleplay was gone, I was quite happy to imagine a character battling through a world and slowly levelling up alongside a group of friends.
Where it's all gone wrong is the modern MMO's where the story is told to you rather than made for yourself. Roleplay is about creating a character and interacting with the world around you - modern MMO's give you a distinct lack of freedom, they funnel you from one quest to the next, one area to the next, and you never really feel like you're in control. Once the freedom of roleplay has gone then I think it ceases to be a roleplay game. It becomes a game that's telling you a story.
That's how I view a lot of these single player RPGs. They're RPG's in the loosest sense that you have a character to advance. But really they're just games that are telling you a story as you play along.
RPG combine a few things for me:
An ideal adaptation of an RPG for computers (either single player offline or MMO) would combine these aspects. Although I'd welcome a lesser focus on gear acquisition and combat. The truth is that I'm slowly getting tired of these two predominant aspects in current games. Either I'm getting old or I'm just looking more for some kind of adventure (interactive novel) with roleplaying elements (Planescape Torment comes to my mind).
I played many of the rpg board games before anything like them was available on a computer. They were fun with a small group as the article mentioned.
Pen and paper rulesets were never designed for use in a computer world. Take DDO, really the first MMO to use a board game ruleset . Turbine had to make major modifications to the D&D ruleset to make it acceptable to the player base.
If the owner of an board game IP is going to be strict on the interpretation of their ruleset, the developers should run before trying to make a MMO out of it.
RPG, to me, means choices, a lot of choices. It all starts at the character creation with basic choices like gender and race and building your way up to some sort of skills specializaiton or classes. After that there is a certain amount of exploring and chosing where to go. Unfortunately, traditional RPGs are losing out on character creation choices (Bioware), but the MMORPGs still allow for a rich character creation process.
RPG has become widely used term cothering a plethora of things not necessarily related to another. To reiterate: Basicly "RPG" stands for "role-playing game". Role-playing, which you may have done some of at school, at work, or on the analyst's couch, just means pretending to be someone else. Game-wise, it can pretty obviously be a very broad term, covering such fare as wargames, where the player pretends to be a commanding officer, business sims, where you pretend to be a CEO, etc. But those aren’t usually considered to be "RPGs" by the gaming community.
True, certain conventions were born with paper Dungeons & Dragons some 40 years ago, and the CRPGs in general continue to be defined by those conventions instead of by the dictionary definition of "role-playing". Under the D&D-ish definition, an RPG is a game where you play a "Character" with "skills" defined by his or her "class". You perform game tasks, usually consisting of combat, to gain "experience", and once you gain enough experience you "level up", gaining in "skill" and toughness. Along the way you gather "loot" from fallen foes and hidden places which you will either equip your character with or sell at an in-game store for money that you use to buy other equipment or skills.
This combat/loot/leveling cycle has been at the heart of most MMORPGs.
I admittedly love to roleplay in the classic sense as in games such as Mafia for example. Therefore, I feel some disaffection with the current crop of MMORPGs, which I see determined to remove any aspect of such. Don't get me wrong, WoW & Co can be good fun, but I suppose they got old for me. Still, even the oldest ideas are new to someone, so they will probably prosper for years to come.
First offf, nice article Mr. Wood! Though I won't miss stepping on D4s, I would still love to see a game with RP servers that cost a few more bucks per month (this helping keep a lot of non-RPers away) and supplemented with active GMs who host and supprt regular events. Back in the day seemed like GM events happened weekly in EQ1. Nowadays they seem completely gone from all the popular MMO titles. Also as time goes by those who grew up with P&P and still have time to play MMOs are dwindling. Also video games are now very much part of popular cutlure and most folks out there problablyknow little of P&P RPGs outside of D&D (Insert Teenagers from outerspace reference here). I think games like Ryzom might be small enough and has enough player generated content to touch back to these P&P roots a lot better than the bigger titles out there. Though I still think the big companies could step up and add more RP into their worlds.
Oh and to be nitpicky RPG is an initialism not an acronym. Acronyms always spell out something and are pronounced as a word, such as NATO, while with initialisms we pronounce each letter individually, like FBI or RPG.
The thing that always makes me scratch my head when this subject is broached is how many people think that back in the day we were all sitting around a table "play acting" when we were playing RPG games, and that that is what is also encompassed in the term.
I mean I guess there were some people that did do that.. somewhere...but I never ran into them in all my years of playing them. We just played the game. These were new types of games where yes a game master wove a story (usually scripted anyway, but they had choices to make), but we just played along and rolled the dice. "Role playing" to us wasn't "acting a part". It was that we were filling a role within the construct of the game. We were part of a group and filled a role in that group. Be it a Barbarian, or a Cleric, or a wizard, etc etc etc. Our actions weren't determined by some story we wer acting out. They were determined by the choices offered to us by the GM and then dice rolls.
It wasn't until somewhere back in the late 90's that I first saw this trend develop where some people believed that they should be "acting", and then somehow from that grew this belief that companies should cater to this new play style because, darn it, that is what RPG games were all about afterall.
It really is funny how things go sometimes, and also funny how history often gets changed if just enough people keep saying something long enough. It's like how many people that now say the release state SWG was a great game ........
Well, first off RPG isn't an Acronym, it is an Initialism.
:: takes off ring of grammar nazi plus 6 ::
Sorry.
That said, I find your question very hard to answer due to the fact that my definition of what constitutes an RPG changes with the venue in which it is presented.
Table top PnP games, old school text based single adventures, multiplayer MUDS, graphical based computer role playing games and last but not least Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games are all far different animals which I do not feel should be lumped into one category.
When it comes to MMORPGs -
To me, the ROLE of mmoRPG does not reference bringing one's avatar to life (through chat, storytelling, etc...) using an acting performance.
Instead, the ROLE references the specific contributions one's toon makes that support group achievements in game.
That's right - to me, ROLE references class (archetype, job, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it).
That's it.
That's all.
It means the second definition that you list to me. But, as you said, the problem is when you have thousands of people come into the game. I disagree that providing content is the problem here, though, I believe it is more that when you have those thousands and thousands of people come in you start having more and more people who have never played a pencil and paper game around a table with 4-5 close friends. Those folks in the majority don't know what RPing is from that standpoint and as they far outnumber those who have rolled dice (and are far more vocal) you don't see companies support roleplay elements in the traditional D&D (TSR era) sense.
That and the mindset back then was to create a world/environment to live in that goes on and on and evolves. Today it's create a game with an "end" that can be beaten. That influx I mentioned above wants to get to an "end game" and raid for the "top gear" so they can stand on their piece of the "top of the hill" and claim superiority over all who have not gotten there. The dice rolling crowd for the majority wants to just live another day in the world and see what adventures can be had. THey don't want to get to an "end" in the sense of of the aforementioned but that doesn't mean they don't have goals.
In response to post #11
So why do you propose the manufacturers decided on terming D&D expletively a roleplaying game? Why the emphasis on that? If roleplaying games like Dungeons&Dragons were supposed to be played similar to other dice games like backgammon or craps, where did the roleplaying context come in? I play the role of a capitalist in Monopoly, but neither Parker Brothers or Hasbro have ever bothered to call it "the capitalist roleplaying game".
Isn't it rather that the "acting out a role" part came first, and then later the mechanical rule framework? Out of necessity? Since without a preagreed algorithm on how to resolve combat you may have to extensively discuss with Gorn the Barbarian, played by Steve, on why he failed to win against the ancient dragon Bloodbane, which is likely to significantly break gameflow and immersion. I offer as supportive argument that the available roles in PnP games were fashioned primarly after the protagonists of contemporary fantasy literature and I claim that this was done because the players wanted to act like them.
Wouldn't it be a logical step that after a ruleset is established that players would start acting economically within those rules to maximize their chance of "winning" (i.e. beating Bloodbane, the ancient dragon). At first maybe just to progress the story/campaign, but it soon becomes an end in itself. It is an attractive system since it provides a tangible numerical benchmark against which you can measure yourself and also others. Waggling a little spreadsheet around and announcing you're such an awesome warrior comes much more naturally to most than acting as one. Also you don't need any imagination or social skills to master it, a very basic understanding of arithmetics is sufficient.
Would it perchance even be possible that in time some players start to disregard the whole roleplaying in favor of playing said rules for maximum effect? Probably because these people lack even the basic wit to do so. (See? Condescending works both ways.)
Yes, it is indeed funny how things go sometimes. May I quote further? "And also how history often gets changed if just enough people keep saying something long enough". - I love sentences like that, they are not smug and precocious at all, when backed by nothing but personal opinion. I must remember to use that one myself on occasion.
I will not claim all this to be the ultimate truth, but this reasoning congruates more with my experiences and also my line of argument doesn't need to rely on 'some people somewhere' having the strange notion of bringing role acting into a game genre that apparently never ever had the slightest bias towards it by design.
To me a Rpg is.
Role= the character the birth life and death of a the individual within the game world.
Playing= created upon the classic actor. As in a Player in a theater. One who becomes their Role.
Game= Something done for entertainment.
So a RPG to me is a person becoming something they are not within a game world in order to have entertainment. How a person does this is upon their own shoulders.
RPG is simple. You go into lala land and be the thing you will never be in RL(Only retards warp there views on reality to say otherwise).
Then again your supposed to take RPG, same with video games, with a grain of salt. Not supposed to be real. For enjoyment and fun just like with video games. Go crazy, get a beer, have a laugh or two, and just enjoy yourself.
Select a role within a game construct and play it by fleshing out your character with personalized touches. Essentially, as the character grows, so does the role you play, and character may equal role for this purpose.
A role-playing game at its core requires that a group of roles are filled by players, and if roles are required, there must be a purpose for these roles. In other words, a true sandbox game ... (hm, never thought about this in this way) cannot be an RPG. A lot of sandbox characteristics may exist, but for a role to have any relevance to a game, there must be a story or plot around which those roles must work to grow and overcome obstacles.
At best, a true sandbox game with no story and no quests, nothing to achieve or complete or overcome, can best be described (in this context) as a CPG: a character-playing game. Roles require purpose; characters do not.
By the way, Jon, thanks for a great topic for discussion, and a chance to consider perspectives about something few people can mutually define.
Baldur's Gate defined RPG for me. If I was born a decade earlier, then the pen and paper DnD would've been my definition of RPG.
Guess it just depends on your age.
Actually, RPG isn't ancronym. It's an initialism. The difference is that an acronym, like 'laser' or 'scuba' or 'radar', is a pronouncable word. An initialism, such as 'FBI' or 'HTML' or 'ATM' or 'DVD', is not a pronounceable word and instead we pronounce the individual letters.
MOO, MUD, MUCK, and MUSH are all acronyms. MMO, RPG, MMORPG, FPS, RTS, and other combinations there of are initialisms.
Well, i suppose i fall in the "forge your own destiny" kind of RPG gamers. To me, RPG means i have quite a broad choice of things to do and ways to accomplish something and i "tailor" my avatar (or whatever) based on choices I make. Ideally, IMHO, a RPG game is quite sandboxy, allows me to follow different paths and handle at some degree even silly or suicidal or otherwise unexpected things (I.E. in Fallout you could even wander around aimlessly leaving ghost towns behind you killing every living thing you see, Morrowind also allowed that provided you do that silently and don't alarm the guards).
Sandbox games are in principle much better than theme park type RPGs BUT thus far sandbox games have completely lost the rich story immersion of the world. Obviously developers cannot create unique content in the form of quests. This is why the Sandbox RPG-MMO will only be realised once players are able to assume the traditional NPC roles within the game. How is this possible without being bored you may ask? Well, players need to have multiple characters and all of these characters need to be persistent in-game at all times. These characters need to be connected via an RPG story system where by you leave instructions based on how to interact with other characters. Each of these character need to be a warrior, blacksmith, farmer etc and fulfill that NPC role within the game world. Events such as sieges, war, shortage of materials or whatever other features you have are communicated via this system. In other words even if my mate is offline his blacksmith is still online and I can buy, sell, repair etc and get the latest news from a neigbouring kingdom from this character. The text needs to be presented in the developer designed phrasings. Rewards in game are derived by acting within whatever role you are. This will give the impression you are actually living in a real world (like you do in single-player RPGs) and not the sterile, everyone-is-clad-armour, monstrosities we have currently.
You know, this use of the word ROLE had never occured to me. I don't like it (I dig the more character centered use), but in light of todays MMO's it makes alot of sense.
To Me RPG means role playing game. Way back in the day we played board games. I did play D&D, and also a little lessor game known as Meele. You had a person designated the dungon master/rule keeper. He also played.
You picked a class and fleshed out that classes abilities. Usually it was the same small group of us.
Then along came the PC, MMO entered the field massive multiplayer online added with the RPG role playing game.
It was and is the still the same concept. You pick a class and learn its abilities, actions you take in game decide your role as you futher move along. Also as you level up and gain new abilities, you make modifycations to your character.
So while RPG is still what it is, the word MMO has been butchered. Now MMO's are usually still the same 5-9 players who play together however not on paper any more but in a virtual environment. Instead of disecting the words RPG, how about us disecting the words "MMO" as that seams to be the real issue nowdays.
The terrifying problems these is even that most think mmorpg roots started with WoW ahhh:(
I dont wanne think about what results this nightmare can have in future:(
All pc gamers should at least be educated before aloud to play even a mmorpg that sandbox is mother of all mmo's not those damn themepark's hehe.
This.
I've been playing pnp rpg for nearly 25 years now and evolved into a mainly sandboxy GM, but I'm in the minority. Beside the term is very loose: I basically build whole campaigns around the PCs but I construct an overall narrative arc as sessions go which can lead to some "forced" nodes. Of course, those "mandatory nodes" don't appear as such to the players since they feel they are consequences of their own actions (while they are half-that and half my own twisted imagination).
In fact, computer games appear more suited to handle sandbox than pnp rpgs since computers have far more raw mathematical power than a human GM and that can surely come handy to handle consequences dominoe style (it's all so easy to miss something as a GM, believe me).
Sadly (and AFAIK), no breakthrough has been made regarding procedural generation in a collaborative & open-world environment. What we get is mission auto-generation a-la CoX / CO / STO which, to be honest, has been done far better for close to 2 decades now (see SLIGE for Doom as a prime example).
I dunno, I would have expected someone to come up with an entirely dynamic world seeing as most quests are about killing X wolves but heh!
Also, on a sidenote, most pnp rpgs are free-for-all pvp. Thing is they also have perma-death. I wonder what a ffa-pvp mmorpg would feel like with such a drastic death penalty.
Next, there are those who believe that a video game RPG should mimic, as closely as possible, the original pen and paper RPGs from which they evolved. This tends to be the crowd that believes that the only true MMORPGs are sandbox MMORPGs where players are able to make their own fortunes and affect the world around them with their actions.
This is what a MMORPG means for me. I play Eve Online for this very reason as its the only MMO out there with this type of game play.
I've been RPing since the old DnD "blue book" basic set.... owned chainmail but didn't actualy get a chance to play it. Guess that dates me a bit. I definately fall very solidly into the 2nd category of RPG players.... on the other hand I do understand the technical challenges of simulating that experience in a large scale online game. Essentialy what I and alot of other players of my ilk do is pretty much "play our own games" within the setting of the MMORPG...... The MMORPG's actual rule-sets, quests, loot, levels, mob's etc (i.e. the things that many other gamers agonize over) ... actualy just become a kind of backdrop or "props" for our play and are pretty much "beside the point".... We just use them to help us play out our only storylines that we make up...and mostly rely on the same things we relied on in PnP games to make them work....our imagination.
What I'd honestly like to see more of is more games\services\toolsets geared toward players making and hosting thier own content and games for small groups of other players....basicaly along the lines of NWN or TSR's failed Virtual Tabletop project.
It'd be cool to have a game try to provide the old PnP with a MMORPG...but I know that can be quite challenging. I'd be quite happy to just have a service provide a really good tool set...and maybe matching service... for would be virtual GM's to create and host thier own PnP style virtual games....and play with friends that are geographicaly disperesed.... That way my friends and I can still have a bit of that old tabletop expereince even if we're spread all over the country.
On a side-note, people shouldn't equate "sand-box" with NO content/ direction/ storylines. A good "sand-box" game should have a TON of Dev driven storylines, plots, events, etc.... and it should certainly provide plenty of direction for those that WANT IT. In my book that's the real difference between "sandbox" and "theme-park" games. Sandbox games can provide direction but they don't COERCE the player to follow that direction. They allow the player to go "off the rails" so to speak.... and they try to incorporate greater latitude and interactivity in how player driven behavior effects content and the game world.
Whereas with Theme-Park games...they REALLY try to push the player along a preset path in order to play the game...and don't allow nearly as much latitude.
Note, as a follow up to my previous post.... I think there are two main reasons why the Theme-Park style games are much more prevalent in todays market then the other types:
1) Just from a purely technical stand-point they are VASTLY easier to create and and run and insure that the end user has a somewhat quality expereince. Simply put computer applications REQUIRE that the Developer be able to predict the user behavior to a high degree in order to build in the functionalty support that behavior well and deliver a certain expected level of performance. It's VASTLY easier to develop something that works along the lines of...
Choose which door to open (CASE):
Door #1 - Goto Orc Raiding Party Encounter
Door#2 - Goto Treasure Room Encounter
Door#3 - Goto Pit Trap Encounter
Then it is to write something like....
Your standing in a room with 3 doors, what do you do? (INPUT):
And have the application account for a near INFINITE number of things the player could think of to do. Note it's not impossible to create an application that feels more like the latter then the former...but it requires ALOT more effort and sophistication.... and also the odds of having the application do something screwy because the Dev hasn't accounted for what might happen when a certain unanticipated combination of actions are taken by the user are vastly higher.
2) The second issue I think has to do a bit with societal change, especialy in terms of how kids experience leisure time and play. For some reason we've essentialy moved from a very unstructured environment.... to a fear of the unstructured...and a very rigidly organized environment. That's unfortunate, as I think our fears have caused us to loose something VERY important in our society.... and we are REALLY short-changing our kids...even though we think what we're doing is for thier benefit.
Basicaly, If you are of my generation.... You will remember that as a kid there was no such thing as a "Play Date". After school or on the weekends we were pretty much turned loose by our parents with minimal if any (usualy None) supervision.... and instructions that pretty much boiled down to... "Don't leave the neighborhood and be home by supper".
Then we were left to our own devices to join up with the other neighborhood kids (or not) and figure out how to entertain ourselves for the day. We had to use our imagination and ingenuity to figure out what to do with our time AND how to group up and interact with our peers.... making up our own games..... pretending sticks were rifles, etc.....and yes often getting into trouble. Although there was certainly a good amount of risk involved in this process.... there was also alot of benefits..... It taught us how to deal with social situations, how to improvise to get things done, how to use our imaginations and how to develop our own structures and solutions....and of course idependance and self-reliance...and confidence.
With todays kids you rarely see anything of the sort. Everything revolves around highly organized activites and "Play Dates". They are almost never left unsurpervized and usualy everything is organized for them...including who they will be playing with, what they will be playing and how, what rules they will follow, what tools/items they will use, how these will be provided, etc. While this certainly eliminates alot of risk....it also handicaps them in learning the skills for self-reliance and how to handle unorganized/unstructured situations and to use thier imaginations and ingenuity to solve problems on thier own. This also starts to carry through to thier adult years....and you see more and more adults having difficulty dealing with situations that are unstructured and feeling uncomfortable in those situations..... simply because they've had little exposure to such things in thier formative years.
Inevitably this will carry through to entertainment choices as well. People who never had much exposure to unstructured play/activities as children are NOT going to be very comfortable with unstructured or loosely structured entertainment venues. I think we already see that reflected in the market place. Frankly.....that (IMO) is a big factor in why Theme-Park style games ......and also solo-play are very popular as far as games right now. As they provide a highly structured framework for the player to interact with....and don't require the player to establish his own interactions/connections in order to accomplish tasks within the game.
I can't say I'm happy about the situation....but I do understand it.
Echo this. But I'd also add that an RPG must involve an evolution of both the character and environment.
RPG isn't an acronym Jon.
@GrumpyMel2:
Just <3 your last post.
I always thought RPG videogames should rather be called "choose your own adventure" videogames but you reminded me why the genre hasn't evolved a bit in the last decade: the whole world actually turned into "if you want to have a beer, go to paragraph 10, if you'd rather rent a DVD, go to paragraph 314" with a credit card as your very own character sheet and dollars as hitpoints.
You perfectly deconstructed the how of the situation. As to the why, well, I guess we know greed and control when we see them (yet). But that's definitely another debate entirely, sorry for derailing the thread.
I started just before 2nd ed AD&D came out (ie. mid '80s) and although we did do our fair share of XP grinding, loot whoring and dungeon crawling, we were quick to pick on the roleplaying part once we realized that there was more to be had than just chopping our way through the next encounter. We never sat there and talked exactly like our characters like we were acting out some stage play, but we were very aware of how their personalites and backgrounds would shape their interactions and what they would realistically say or do in certain situations. This often got in the way of kicking in the dungeon door and grabbing the loot, but we ultimate found it much more rewarding since things now had more purpose other than collecting XP. In fact, we sometimes had sessions where we didn't have a single fight. Character development was not just about getting that new spell or magic item, it was also about having cool events shape the personality and life of the character.
One thing I've never encountered though, is someone thinking that playing a ROLE means playing a CLASS to fill a functional role within the party. That one still baffles me.
I started right around the same time you did, and although we wouldn't be speaking with incredibly awful pseudo-fantasy accents, we would have a game now and then that would involve absolutely zero combat whatsover. Many of our games progressed into some quite detailed politics, so much of the game revolved around verbal maneuvering more than anything else.
That being said, most games were still combat intensive and we would quite simply never head out of town without a scout, healer and dedicated artillery (ranged attack). Never. Quite simply, those are roles that always needed to be filled and if a PC couldn't do it, we'd hire an NPC. If you've played any DnD and ever felt the need to bring along a Cleric (or Druid in a pinch), then you have encountered the concept of functional roles in a party.
And it's hardly a new concept. Human beings have been working in functional roles since before the dawn of civilization.
First of all, as someone that started with Dungeons and Dragons (remember the boxes, where the only classes were Magic Users, Clerics, Warriors, Thieves, Dwarfs, and Elfs) then graduated to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons including one GenCon visit, "sandbox" was never a part of the formula. Actually wow and most mmos today do a pretty good job of replicating that experience. Usually you went to a tavern or some other structure in a small town after hearing or experiencing something odd in the area, and you spent a couple days going through that adventure and saving that area/town/whatever. It was very structured except in how you actually got through that adventure. Thats where the dungeon master either proved him/herself to be great or weak.
Now, to be perfectly fair here, a sandbox game was something that we would all dream about, of course. But unless it was Gary Gygax or someone that was DM (someoen that was paid to do nothing but create modules/adventures/campaigns) it was way out of the reach of most of us as we all had school lol.
Actually, as I write this and think about it I must wholly and completely disagree with your assertion that the "third category" actually exists, actually, all of your categories seem to be a sophmoric attempt at pigeon holing players of rpgs. Maybe you never played D&D or AD&D, Champions, etc? Ravenloft series, Vault of the Drow, The Dragonlance Series, Halls of High Keep, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, etc are all very "guided" adventures. These are some of the classics of D&D gaming, and VERY much resemble the RPGS of today and yesterday.
For better or worse? This is what the pen and paper RPG experience was.... maybe you never played one before? Sure the DUNGEON MASTER could create their own modules and campaigns.... I created several for my group. But the Dungeon Master today is the computer. Not the freaking players, most players are incapable of coming up with a halfway decent character name let alone create a world for people to play through. Sure there were sourcebooks for the Underdark, Greyhawke, Faerun, etc but those were tools for the dungeon master and are a far cry from a module or adventure. I think thats where you are getting confuzzled in your attempts at categorizing people. There are the DMs that all they did was play with the "sandbox" but not something that the average schlub player could do anything with.
Methinks you just needed to spit out some words to get a paycheck this month... too bad, it seems, that you either didn't think about it, haven't experienced it, or are just trying to come up with a way to rile up the community here lol.
I get that functional concept but it DOES strike me as kind of an odd way of defining a "Role-Playing Game" as well. I mean by that definition wouldn't Baseball qualify as a Role-Playing Game as well? Since you need a Pitcher, Catcher, 1st Baseman, Shortstop, etc to play?
I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Generaly a good GM largely let the players do anything that was LOGICALY possible within the context of the game world and shifted the seeting to work around and react to what the players were doing. The published modules were good for doing "One Offs", especialy if you didn't want to invest much effort into prep, or you could write your own. Not so much for running a Campaign.
Trying to recreate your own "B2 Keep on the Borderlands" style modules was really pretty much a wasted effort unless you REALLY knew the players path would take them through it (like say at the very start of a campaign)....and even then I've seen guys type up reams of paper only to toss it out in the first 5 minutes of play.
Most GM's that I played with (and I did things this way too).... didn't have set modules written up... what they did was have notes (sometimes very extensive and detailed) about the major things that were going on in the Campaign Setting and Who the major powers/players were..... and then you pretty much ran things "off the cuff", using your imagination and knowledge of the Campaign setting... and reacting to what the players decided to do....and figuring how that would effect what was going on in the Campaign Setting.....and basicaly making it up as you went. You'd take notes of how the characters actions effected things..... and often times you could get a pretty decent feel for where the next play session(s) would take you. This DID require a pretty good imagination from the GM and also a very good understanding of how the Dynamics of your campaign world worked..... but if you had those "winnging it" usualy worked remarkably well. Note that you certain COULD and people DID create certain situations that the Players would expereince NO MATTER WHAT....and use some Deus Ex Machina to make it happen. That's perfectly fine.... IF YOU USE IT VERY SPARINGLY..... guys that used that too much quickly had thier players loose all interest in playing.
It's funny that so many people absolutely insist on having to fill out certain roles before something can even be done. I don't remember Gandalf saying that going to Mordor without a cleric would be sheer folly and that they would have to wait for one (of course, Boromir might disagree I suppose).
Why is it that playing suddenly becomes impossible without a healer or a scout even artillery? We honestly never gave it that much consideration to it back then. If someone wanted to play a healer, great. If not, oh well... let's play and figure out a solution somehow down the road instead of forcing someone to play a healer against his will. That should not have been possible from what you (and many others - not trying to single you out here) claim. Yet we did it and we had fun doing so (and we also had parties without fighters or thieves or wizards). Maybe we were just lucky... or good... or simply not bothered by the problems that this style of play can result in.
Sure, not having a healer puts a limit to how many combats you can go through after one another without a break and thus how much XP or loot you can gather in one go. But we weren't playing for optimal leveling or constant killing mayhem. We were playing to have fun and having someone mortally wounded deep in a dungeon without a healer at hand puts a whole new spin on things. This lack of role specialization was even more feasible in point based classless systems like Hero System or GURPS where it was easy to create characters who could dabble in many fields.
You're right though, functional roles and specialization is a concept as old as humanity itself. I certainly can't argue against that one (not that I want to, hehe).
Sure you could wing it but those were quite haphazard affairs. But, again, its the Dungeon Master that did the winging. Sure there was the "world" which was usually about half the size of a WOW zone filled with small dungeons and lairs, some towns and the like but there was always a purpose, a guiding hand. Coming across a dead messenger, a burned out farm, rumors of wars, etc and of course the players could choose whether or not to follow one of those things but there were restrictions. In AD&D if you had a player playing a paladin or crusader it was always easy to lead people because if there is evil about and the paladin ignores it, bye bye special abilities and the like. Then the DM could pull out a module created for hte paladins' path back, or they became a fallen paladin. Same with clerical types depending on the deity that they followed.
The only DMs that winged it in my experience were those that were rather new to it or too lazy to develop full on adventures. I mean how in the hell are people going to jump into a dungeon without the dm having a map? Preparation was always key to a well run adventure, campaigns included. Spending months working on the thing always meant for a far more engaging experience for the players I played with rather than sitting there and going "ok ummmmmm you see, pause to get the monster manual out and roll the dice a few times, 2 kobold guards." The DMs I played with, and the kind of DM I was had full random encounter tables already worked out for the specific areas, had every town mapped and every npc already generated, had every event in the game world pre-thought out. Not with the outcomes mind you, but the start of events and branches from that event. If you knew your players, knew their classes you could tailor make everything for them which is what made the pen and paper experience more engaging than the mmos we play.
With what you have said, well World of Warcraft is a sandbox experience. There is nothing in the game that demands you do this quest or go to this area, players have every choice available to them except about whether to try and talk a boss mob down or to kill him in a less orthodox and more graceful way than just zerg rush. Which is more a limitation of programming and technology.
As to the using of the pre-built campaigns and modules, they were, like the rulebooks, starting points. Hell my copy of the Queen of the Demonweb pits does not lead the DM by the hand in a way to lead the players by the hand, but had 3/4ths or so of the work done for you: random ecounter and loot tables, key area maps and the like. They were not in any way a choose your own adventure book but, provided the dm with background on the area, and suggestions to provide the players with motivation. Everything else was up to the DM, the players, and the roll of the dice. This is the way every competent DM I have ever played with and the way I ran my campaigns.
Here is a quote from my original copy of Ravenloft: House on Gryphon Hill:
"DM Preparation: This game requires some preparation before you can play it. First, you should read and become as familiar as possible with not only the rules of this adventure but its feeling and texture as well. Skim through the adventure once to gain a sense of its pace and structure, then read through it thoroughly, paying special attention to the boxed descriptions. This should not only give you an understanding for how the adventure is to be run in detail, but also some sense of how to create Gothic horror descriptions."1
Maybe the modules have changed.... I am nearly 40 years old and this module is from 1986 but it is or was, as with every module I ever used or merged into one of my own campaigns, the way everything worked.
My point is that there are adventure gamers and rpg'ers. Dragon Age origins is standard fair rpg game, but Dragon Age 2 is sounding far more like an adventure game. The original article does not seem to really grasp the essence of what was pen and paper rpgs, the only part of the article that holds any merit, imo, is this: "Unfortunately, while the pen and paper system works very well for small groups of players, the whole thing begins to fall apart when you start to bring the numbers up into the thousands or tens of thousands. That’s where it becomes a) difficult to create enough content within the world to satisfy that many people on an individual or small group level and b) even more difficult to allow each quest completed or action taken affect the game world as a whole."2
1Ravenloft II: House on Gryphon Hill. Laura and Tracy Hickman. © 1986 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved. pg 2
2 Dissecting the Acronym: RPG. Jon Woods. 2010 mmorpg.com
-edited to properly cite the sources :)
I tried the approach of hard labor and preparation. It made for some very mediocre sessions where the players would typically do something I hadn't foreseen and suddenly I found myself scrambling for a way to railroad the players back on track. I'm sure it works for some, but it didn't work all that well for me.
I discovered that my talent was on-the-spot imagination and the ability to memorize obscure things, juggle numbers and work with the rules in all sorts of ways, whereas my ability to organize and predict sorta sucked because I would tend to focus on the wrong stuff that would never come up in actual play.
When running it the lazy way as you call it, I didn't roll encounters all the time. I didn't look up monsters all the time. I'd just say to myself "okay, 2 kobold guards here makes sense and can pose a challenge to a 1st lvl party of 3. 4 HP each. AC 7. 1d6 damage. THAC0 20". Since I kept all the rolls and numbers to myself, they never really realized if I had made a mistake and used a wrong number as long as it was fairly close to the actual number. It was an intuitive knowledge I developed over time. I also found that having a dungeon map ready was not a must. The players would usually discuss things and what not, during which I could just draw out some more rooms behind the screen. The advantage to this was that the dungeon could be as large or small as needed. If time or desire to play was running out, I could just draw in the final room with the big bad guy guarding whatever treasure or quest objective they were looking for. It worked for me and my group, but I can certainly understand why it wouldn't work for everybody.
Same here and I'd be so bold as to say this is the way to go.
Never was much into AD&D. I went right away for pulp/silly stuff like James Bond (remember this one?). Then I jumped into Shadowrun, Deadlands, a little bit of White Wolf (it was clearly impossible to skip a White Wolf game back in the days). Thing is, I always had a pulp & "descriptive" approach where the room was filled half by me and half by the players saying "but there must be a chair somewhere I can throw at the villain" if you get the idea. To me, rules were always as good as they allowed me to entertain the party, if they became an hinderance, then I'd promptly forget about them.
Now try & program something like that ;P
Gandalf didn't say that, but I think I recall a demand from the hobbits for a flight path to Mordor.
To me, a Role Playing Game is, in essence, a strategy game. The role is your character and his defined attributes. His or her ability is defined by them. The player's role (no pun intended) is to decide the best course of action in any given scenerio based on the character's ability. It's not about how well a player can circle strafe or set up macros. Those "skills" are irrelevant. True player skill in a RPG is how strategically he can use the character's strengths while mitigating the weaknesses to achieve a goal. This is how it was in the PnP days, and this is how CRPGs could be.
Based on this, I don't see very many MMORPGs that could really fit the description as purely as I like. I consider the vast majority action adventure games with RPG elements.
You know what? There are countless people around who don't know or don't show that they understand what RPG really stands for. In my day, an RPG was an evil, if it had the words Dungeon and Dragon attached to it. Games like Monopoly were more acceptable. Yes, I consider those role playing games... I'm acting the part of a rag to riches story in real time. It's very similar to playing Dingeons (Jail) and Dragons (other players) without a DungeonMaster (Community Chest & Chance Cards). Ohhh lets prestend though that we are talking about pure D&D RPG...
D&D RPG is sweet. There are many MMORPGs that capture the same elements as the PnP variety of D&D, such as WoW. Instead of your weekly group of five, computer RPG can host 5 to 50 and more. The computer game materializes those pictures we used to draw in our minds. Instead of dreaming of an undergound passage with kobolds, games like DDO bring it to life with ease.
I admit, the computer gaming industry has gone far and beyond the original intent of true RPG. Players no longer have a reason to play chaotic characters, some don't even know or care that they are. PvP wasn't an original intent of D&D RPG. It is the bastard-child of FPS, massaged into a D&D setting.
D&D isn't the mother of all RPG. Perhaps hopscotch or go fish lead the way. Children are more inclined to believe in magic than adults. But, adults want to be surprised too...so, instead of getting smarter, we get dumber in waiting for some computer game to fill in the gaps that we once mastered. I am one of millions of people who keep searching for an RPG that I can visit in my spare time where others like myself can sit in a tavern, unwind from the real world, and perhaps after a very drinks, head out and slay a few dragons.
RPG is still RPG, it's us who has changed.
This acronym has been dissected so much over the years that I'm starting to wonder who the shmuck keeps shrewing it back together...
Honestly, it's been used so much that the time to accept it's multiple meanings is long overdue.
Face it people, when someone uses the term "role playing game" he can mean just about every interpretation of it you ever heard and then some you haven't. If you want to understand that someone, you just have to know his definition.
However, if understanding people you are conversing with isn't high on your priority list, then I beg my pardon - feel free to get back to whatever you were doing...
Hehe, when was there ever a reason to play a chaotic character other than for the "I want to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it"?
Every time someone handed over a character sheet to me that said "Chaotic Neutral" I cringed, because I knew that 9 out of 10 times, it meant that the player was just looking for an excuse to not be limited by roleplaying the beliefs and personality of his character. Turning over the sheet to reveal the character background and personality usually resulted in a bunch of blank lines or something equally pointless like "Parents dead. Likes to kill when there's something in it for him. Wears black. Wants to become rich, famous and powerful".
For some strange reason, such characters had a high mortality rate in my games *cough* *grin*. Not that I killed them on purpose. I just didn't fudge the dice in their favor when a monster or trap got lucky and rolled really really well. I guess there's such a thing a natural selection in RPGs as well
Much respect to those who did manage to play CN or even CE characters in a convincing and entertaining way without ruining the fun for everybody else or killing the plot in the process. CG never posed much of a problem in my games on the other hand.
As for your statement about us having changed. Hmm... good point... there's some food for thought there, at least for me.
RPG, to me is "what if I (either as myself, or as a completely other person, depending on my mood during the play session ^^) was living in the proposed universe"
I'd like more open, more lifeful (not sure that is english, hehe) and less predictable stories/missions, just like IRL. I'm just tired of going to the dungeon, killing everything, save the princess (who has the +56 vorpal sword, wth is a princess doing with such a weapon ?)
What about, in that same mission, having different ends ?
- one day, the boss (supposed to be smarter than minions) escapes with the princess n I got to track them through the forest (suddenly, the tracking skill becomes more useful and the combat becomes a tiny bit less the focus ^_^)
- the other time I get there, I get ambushed and prisonner if I get "killed"
possibilities get endless and the game becomes re-playable and more exciting bcs I'm never sure of what will happen
Bring life to the game :
- u will rarely encounter sentient being or animal fighting to death. Death, in my opinion, should occur in very rare occasions, maybe because of crits ? By the way, NPCs should either flee and/or call for reinforcement when they get a certain % of their total HP.
- the princess I talked of previously should jump on my neck bcs I just saved her from a certain death. Why didn't the village celebrate her return ? The celebration could be source of more adventures. Why don't the baddies come back for revenge ? We call simple missions "quests", but let me remind you that a quest is supposed to be a main adventure. Gathering 10 black bear pelts doesn't feel like a quest, well not the way they are directed in today mmos
- have missions happen when I don't seek them.
In conclusion, a rpg is, to me, life, a random factor and [more] choices [than now].
Haven't (yet) bothered to read any posts of this thread but one thing I want to say right away:
For me quests have nothing to do with RPGs, but are the evil spawn of MMORPGs. I'd rather have adventures than quests.
I beleive that MMORPGS for me is about many things. Creating your persona, your backstory to your character, giving yourself a reputation, conversing with strangers and random invdividuals within the gaming environment to build friends and allies and also a community.
You combine all of that with the gameplay and the combat within a game and you have a foundation for an MMORPG to emmerse yourself in. Not just to play because it passes the time. But something that means more. Something that sucks you into the world, something that makes you wonder where the time went after thinking you only been on 30mins and you have actually be sitting there 4-5 hours...
Only 2 games in my life have really done that. EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot.
EverQuest was my first ever MMORPG and i loved the fact that the world was massive and there were so many people. But in all that, if you wanted to level up and gain experience you had to spend time with these strangers, make friends, allies as you would be leveling with groups for hours and hours at a time. Not a 20min instance run and then leave. It took time, patience and in the end, you made friends, allies, communities and overall you interacted personnally with other gamers.
Again with Dark Age of Camelot. You needed to group up in the old days to achieve levels and experience. So the same bonding of friends and allies happened overtime again. However, because the game had thee best fantasy PvP system ever created ( In my opinion ) for its time and even to this day ( well expansions ruined it, but you know what i mean )
When you acheived max level and eventually got out into the real world of Dark Age of Camelot, you started to learn more and more about enemies and individuals on the opposing realms. Who was good and who was bad at kiling your realm m8's. After a while there is a sense of reputation, infamy and even at time a small amount of fear when a certain guild or group of allies were out on the battlefield taking keeps and relics.
This did end up being very elitist game. However the feeling of knowing a tough enemy is out there on battlefield made you think twice about where you went and who you went with on the battlefield because of their reputation they had created for themselves by just playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.
Me and my brothers and friends that played Everquest and DAoC talk of stories of RvR or Battles or just funny things that occured. Having good memories to look back on from a good MMORPG in its day is what makes an MMORPG for me.
This. The fact that game technology couldn't make this happen in an MMO environment is not justification for changing the definition. If MMOs can't do it, they need a) a different name, and b) to keep developing the tech until you can actually play the game by assuming the role of a fictional character in a story setting, making decisions that match the knowledge and interests of the character, and exercising the competencies of the character as you play out the story.
Instead of min-maxing ur uberDPS class to grind teh phat lewt faster.
Role Playing Game. Pretty simple. Like a hamburger is a hamburger; sure, its round like a applepie, but it is still a burger. If you forget to add the salat, the ketchup, the tomato and the spices its still a hamburger. A bad one. Thats what happend to 80% of so called CRPGs & even more MMORPGs. They may be good games, but a good game with a borrowed RPG element does not make it a good RPG or an RPG at all.
A place for a bit of chatting and playing.
A game is supposed for relaxation, not for a second life. You hop on, you hop off. That's it. A 3d world is so overestimated.
For me the RPG in MMORPG, is the video game RPG mainly. But usually I dont really care about this. Or the word sandbox for example.
Nowadays with MMO's I look at the offerend features and what gamemechanics are tied to them. I use this both to determine for myself if its a game for me and as comparison with other MMO's to check if the game is worth the expenses.
I can easily say that a MMO is too pricey with its payment model, if it offers less features/content then other MMO's that ask the same money. Lately there have been examples of this, where some new MMO's tried to ask more for less. This then has nothing to do with my personal taste in MMO's. If its too obvious though, it can turn me off that MMO, no matter if I would like it. I just dont like to be treated as some ignorant customer.
As for the question if a MMO is really a MMORPG, I usually dont care. I try to keep an open mind with new MMO's, so that I dont turn into one of those old school players who think that every new MMO is subpar, because it doesnt have the exact same mechanics as the MMO they started with.
This is well said.
I like the quote from a film called Total Recall, that sums it up (sorta anyway!)
Recall Salesman: "What is the one thing that is always the same when you take a vacation?" [sales patter voice]
Doug Quaid: "I don't know, you've got me... ." [disinterested, mind is made up voice]
Recall Salesman: "YOU!" [genuinely triumphant exclamation & palpable excitement!]
A different identity in a different world is ideally what an RPG is all about. An MMO needs to have very strong gameplay above all else. If this is the case, then RPG can diversify all the interactions between players with players, npc's and the actual ingame world of MMO's.
Well, I'm certainly not going to try to dispute your anecdotal experience....it is what it is... I'll just say that it's entirely different then what ours was. Generaly the guys using the published modules were the ones that didn't have much experience DMing or were not particularly good at it. Basicaly sitting there and trying to memorize the module or memorize the monster manual...or look stuff up while you were playing... would lead the GM to focus on the wrong stuff (IMO).
Why would the GM even bother writing up Random Encounter tables?... your the GM, you KNOW what kind of creatures wander through the Swamp of Darsis after dark. You don't need to roll a die and cross reference something on a chart you wrote up. PICK Something that you know is likely to be there.... heck if you really need at add a bit of randomness into it... roll a die to determine the severity of the encounter and then use your head/imagination to come up with something appropriate.... So a severe roll might be a Wraith....while a mundane roll might be a small swamp viper. As the GM, you already understand (in your head) WHY Wraiths might be encountered there (was once the border-lands for 2 warring ancient kingdoms long fallen to ruin).... you can even improv off that for the characters to track he Wraith back to it's barrow if that comes up....no need to write up a detailed map and encounter sheet....just have in you head a rough idea of what such a barrow might look like. Maybe sketch out a 2 minute map as the players make thier plans to enter.
It really doesn't matter what the monster manual or the module said the kobold guards should have for HP's or THACO... as long as the GM had a good feel for the system and how tough they should be....he can pretty much determine the numbers in his head...maybe take a couple of seconds to jot something down on a scratch sheet of paper when the combat is begining...in order to keep track of damage, etc.
As far as Mapping....you really don't need to draw out a detailed map....unless the players are taking the time to actualy pace room dimensions out...they'd only have a very rough idea...of dimensions anyway. Plus only a small number of scenerio's might occur in something approximating a classic dungeon anyways. Basicaly it was generaly sufficient to have in your head what they area looked like and how it pieced together.... If you needed to you could draw out a very rough sketch for yourself as a guide ahead of time.
Notes, of course, about what was going on in the campaign area and who the key powers were (as well as what the players did) were important....and sometimes these could get quite detailed and extensive.... but this really was very different then writing out a module like B2: Keep on the Borderlands or something.
It works remarkably well IF you have a GM that:
A) Has a solid understanding of the system they are running (Note that most of the time we weren't even running D&D systems...it was usualy somnething else....sometimes even homebrews).
B) Has a solid understanding of the Campaign World/Area and what is going on there (Helps if the GM is using one of thier own Design rather then a published one...but either can work)
C) Has a good imagination
D) Is comfortable with improvisation.
The real differences between something like WOW and a PnP campaign are:
1) WOW is largely static... the World doesn't change very much over time. The same NPC that was in area 1 for the players to defeat when they started the game is STILL in area 1 waiting to be defeated...and will be till the servers shut down.
2) The World is not VERY interactive. NOTHING the characters do has any effect on the world and honestly what happens in the World really doesn't have all that much effect on the characters either.
3) The options the character has for interacting with the world are EXTREMELY limited.... (i.e. Even though the door is made of flimsy wood and your character has a 2-handed axe on your back...you can't CHOP your way through the door...you must PICK THE LOCK...because the Dev hasn't coded the mechanism for CHOPPING down a door into the game yet).
Taken all-together this really makes something like WOW much more of a graphical 3D "Choose Your Own Adventure" book rather then a PnP style RPG game. I understand the reasons for it...particularly the technical reasons... but that is pretty much what it boils down to (IMO).
Roleplaying means "To act out." In fact those who major in Theater Arts know that close to half of those credits are about improving abilities to roleplay character and the other half deals with history, along with topics like set, prop and scene creation along with screenwriting.
I was a kid when I started doing tabletop roleplaying. I don't argue about whether a game has 10 people or 1 million people. That is not the point. The point is if the pure essence of the definition is still captured in a game. That is what my argument has always been:
Roleplaying deals with becoming part of the world and assuming a different character. Computer Games give you a full world you get to live in, but your characters always "Stand Out" in that world and are never "normal." The interraction with the world is Abyssmal at most. You get to kill monsters, buy equipment...and sometimes gather materials and craft....but that is the limit of the world. Weather effects tend to be just graphics and you can't take a non-martial role in the world you are in.
I would love to play a game where I wake up, its the middle of the night. I walk outside my character house in pajamas, being called by someone....Find a nice herb and pick it up and craft by a lake, while the sun comes up and then have another player character come to me and say his shop is opening up soon...bringing me some bread, while he is wearing just basic clothes. A patrol walking by us saying that its dangerous at night, that bandits are lurking around....complain about the guy carrying a weapon with him. Then walking across the field, while the sun is coming up....and when the bandit shows up and knocks me out, I can look at the environment and grab a stick or a farm tool from the ground and use it as a weapon...Hit the bandit freely like in an action or adventure game...No stats, none of that crap...just swing a weapon like in a fighting game, action game, adventure game..if it hits, it hits, if it misses it misses. If I am chased to climb trees....climb places or to run and swim in water.
So, now what if I spoke about Tabletop roleplaying games and First Person? I don't mean First Person as in First Person SHooter...I mean First Person as just that. What the author of this post forgot to mention is that in TableTop Roleplaying and any roleplaying in the real world is told in First Person. A lot of MMORPGs have no real first person story and you have a third person view of the character. Your story consists of talking to NPCs where you are bombarded with a wall of text.
You get one of four Quest Types:
Hunting Quests: Kill a certain amount of monsters in a field or Kill a certain Boss
Traveling Quests: Reach a certain point and contact an NPC or press a trigger or switch.
Delivery Quests: Find or Receive a target Item and deliver it to an NPC.
Capture Quests: Capture a target or point and report it.
Outside of these quests...you don't really get a character (self) story. Your character has no real story to the world he or she is part of. You get 1000s of quests out there, all which fall among these four or a combination of the four, rewritten in 1000s of differen ways to hide the fact you are really repeating the same thing 1000s of times over. You get a glimpse of the world's story...but your character in that world nearly has no story...which is why that is a failure of roleplaying.
"The world from your eyes demands you are part of that world and not ignored and treated as an entity to simply see a world without a place in it"
RPGs should be renamed to "Turn Based Adventure Games" TAGs...which is what I tend to call them. All of these RPG and MMORPGs follow the exact mentality of an Adventure Game...Where one goes around fighting in real time, and by action..meaning if I press an attack button, I attack...I dont wait for a Dexterity stat to attack for me. The idea is to create a super character to live and usually in adventure games one increases in life over a period of time as one explores the world. RPGs/MMORPGs put an attribute based system that turns the adventure into a Turn-Based frenzy where entire parties organize 10 ft apart from a large enemy and engage in "organized" button clicking where if one person breaks the pattern, the entire party dies.
One game I love is Final Fantasy XII. A singleplayer Playstation II game. Why do I like it? The replay value is so high that you can actually beat the entire game without ever cheating at all the start levels of the characters. Guides exist to this..they are called 122333 guides (The start levels of the six characters.)
The reason I mentioned FFXII is because the game offers multiple ways of playing through the story and beating ALL ENEMIES IN THE GAME, where as most MMORPGs offer only one clear route to play the game per character. One reason I like Guild Wars is because of how fantastic it is that one can change skills and have a completely fresh character...but it still lacks ENVIRONMENT INTERRACTION like 90% of the games out there. BTW, FFXII had a weather system programmed for certain maps and depending where you went, Magic was amplified. Casting an Ice spell in an Ice Region hit for 20% more damage. A lot of environmental effects existed so you could be getting your ass kicked, run to a fire zone and have fire magic amplified. The game scored a perfect score in Famitsu Magazine along with some European and American rating groups.
Anyone reading this post, I thank you...My present to you is an exercise for you and only you :) My thanks to you. Simply close your eyes, think of a character and imagine...Simply have a dream for five minutes in first person. Imagine what world this character lives in, comes from and what he or she does in it. Now see if you can get that level of depth in an MMORPG and RPG. That alone can give each individual an answer. :)
As I have stated in other posts, we need to look a this question in terms of 1) Programmers expect a paycheck to work on these titles, and 2) Players expect to be entertained by these titles.
With that in mind, my take is that when I come to a game to play a "role," that role is of course to be the hero of the realm. If I just want to observe a story where some OTHER good guy wins, I'll just pop in the third Lord of the Rings DvD and be an observer to Aragorn's coronation.
Because I understand that everyone else has a different computer (could be better or worse than mine), different distractions (work, kids, lousy internet connection - the list is endless), and varying degrees of passion for a game, such things as PvP kills or "who's ahead" in the online world have little meaning to me. I'm not there to compete, I'm there to be entertained and play the "role" of the hero.
What matters to me is, am I being entertained in the best way possible for the venue? Because computer games are interactive, I then expect to be the hero of the scene, not some mere observer or helper. That is the "role" I am seeking. Other players exist merely as people to communicate and socialize with, not as competitors or foes. I don't care what some loser in upstate NY with no job thinks of me or my character - I care what the NPCs of the realm think and how my exploits for their well-being are rewarded.