I've always just though of RPGS as create your own character live in a different would for ever. LOL. But perhaps my view was clouded

matneee:

I think that's part of my problem with PC RPCs - to use the sports sim analogy again, much like a football game does al the footballing for you, a PC RPG does all the role-playing for you - it becomes more role-following.

Reading that through again this morning, it's an absolutely appalling analogy and I realise I was clearly talking bollocks.

The point of a real-life football game is to have two teams of players kick a ball about within the rules of football and try to score more goals than eachother using skillfull and tactical play. And that can be successfully portrayed in essence on a PC - you can represent players, rules, skill, tactics and goals.

But the point of a real-life role playing game is to role-play, and to then use the rules and mechanics of the system to decide outcomes that can't be decided through role-playing. And while the secondary aspects (i.e - the mechanics) are there, it's the most important aspect - the actual role-playing - that PCs/Consoles rarely attempt doing to any significant degree. Surely it's a bit silly to call most of them RPGs if there's no role-playing in them as such.

---

You're still falling short though - by your definition, the PC games are still RPGs, they're still systems to decide on an outcome when it cannot be decided by roleplaying, the difference being that your interface with the system - a keyboard, mouse, monitor and speakers - offers far less interaction than with a tabletop PC where your interface is the DM, input from their eyes, ears (and if it's a saucy Vampire : The masquerade game, their tongue, hands and genitals) filtered and interpreted through their brain. So technically it's still an RPG, but there's not really much of a role left to play because all your responses are pre-defined. Currently, the alternative would be to implement an ALICE style bot for each NPC, but then every conversation would go :

Player : Hello

NPC : Hi There!

Player : My name is Nagbort the Destroyer

NPC : Hello Nagbort the Destroyer, how are you today

Player : I am fine. I came to destroy.

NPC : Fine is a thing to be. I sense you came to destroy.

Player : That's why they call me Nagbort the Destroyer

NPC : Hi Nagbort the Destroyer. How are you today?

---

Nah - the important point is not that the mechanics are there in PC versions - it's that the role-playing itself is missing. They're mostly not simulating the role-playing as such - they're instead mostly simulating the resolution mechanics and giving you a few options that ultimately herd you down on-rails pre-planned actions to inevitable conclusions. It's not just conversation trees either - it's the whole 'follow the set path, everything results in an inevitable fight' thing as well. You rarely get the freedom of choice to, say, decide the world can save itself and buggering off to do something entirely different that doesn't involve shoving pointy bits of metal through things or blowing up the aforementioned things with Mighty JuJu from your fingertips.

Basically, with a real Role-Playing Game, you can arguably take the situational resolution mechanics out and it's still a role-playing game (albeit an unstructured one where the players would have to self-moderate their actions). But you can't take the role-playing out and just have the resolution mechanics - because it's no longer by definition a 'role-playing' game. It's a pedantic distinction, I know, but if PC RPGs aren't simulating the role-playing part of role-playing games and are just basically simulating the dice-rolls against a basically fixed story, it's a little curious that we ever call most of them 'role-playing' games in the first place. There just isn't the freedom of choice in action involved to justify it.

---

Have you ever played a networked game of NWN that had a live DM? Does it come any closer to providing a proper RPG experience or do they just act like a dice-roll DJ, reading the mood of the players to tailor the hazards and beasties in need of pointy-metalling/finger-jujuing to the flow of the game?

(I haven't, so I've no idea how the mechanics of it work.)

---

No, I've no idea either for the same reasons.

---

Three letters: GNS


http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/


RPGs are... RPGs. It's not role playing. It's roleplaying game. It's not "just any role playing" and it's not "just any game". Theater is role playing, but RPG isn't, obviously, theater. There are multiple factors that matter when it come's to RPG and GNS describes them nicely. Wherever you put stress - game or role playing - it's still RPG. And as long as you have character in WoW and there are rules of the game and statistics, this is still RPG. Not an RPG focusing on narration, but still RPG. Narration, immersion, story - they don't make RPG more RPGish, they just make it different. And it's all up to ones taste to pick one flavor of RPG or another.

Me and a friend of mine where talking about the definition of RPGs the other day, and he finds the name "Stat-game" more fitting for what we nowadays call an RPG.
As it's all about the statistics of your character.

A thread about RPG's and no one has mentioned Baldur's Gate?

EDIT: Oh wait, I just missed it.

---

[Serdan dot EU][Emotiv]

Games have become experiments in behaviorism.  Token here and there, sprinkle in so,e experience points.  Then after a while you can soend them for 10% more damage.  That is a robot pllaying game.  I have spent more than a year cataloging ways I would make a game, with dfferent kinds of control and motivation.  Imagine a game that you actually cared if you died, or in which you could do numerous other things.   I would never say all that i have come up with because I want to develope this stuff some day.  But I can't program, and don't have any moeny to develope it. Same old story.  It could be done.  RPG for real, it just needs three things.

A game designer doesn't always have to be a programmer though, and if you've got a team, everyone making a small investment to get you started can be enough untill other financing is found in a distributor or private investor.
In my experience, all the excuses I could once come up with why you can't make games turn out to be incorrect.
If you really want to make a game, you can.

i can honestly say, the only rpgs i really did love to play were

1. fable

2. final fantasy 9(other ones were a bit too slow in my taste)

3. baldurs gate, dark alliance one, number two kinda sucked...

all the other ones ive played were just knock offs or boring all together(opinion, sorry if i accidentally offended you)

oblivion was boring and it seemed like they tried to make a mix of halo and any other rpg, dark messiah was completely boring, i got bored of bioshock, and two worlds was completely disgusting to look at...

---

let me live, ill give you a cookie
;D

Tbh I am not the biggest of Rpg players, although I did thoroughly enjoy Fable and looking forward to No.2.

As rpg's go I would like to see the concept of time and how the playable character evolves through the course of a game flipped on its head. In context, the concept of time has been used in two ways, progressive game time from the likes of Shenmue, Fable through to the Gta's; then the ability to mess about with time in short bursts ala Timeshift, Blinx and P.o.p Sands of Time. In relation to this the playable character evolves and the choices the player makes effect them from there on in.

I would like to see it where the playable character is middle aged and has already made their choices. Then have the ability to step backwards and forwards between say 2000 and 1980 in real time at any point during play, therefore facing the critical decisions that have shaped the character and then have the ability to change it with real time effect on the present environment.

Visually I have always been a fan of the environment morphing used in the Soul Reaver games. I think that would be excellent for the aesthetic changes, for example a 2000 environment to a 1980's one. The character's visual appearence and attitude would go from mature and experienced, to young and niave. Other elements like accessing information would also change in context; present time a Pda or Internet, past time telephone directory, library etc, effectively stripping the player of modern day convenience's.

I guess what I aiming at, is to give the player with believable Catch 22 decisions, and the effects of, via limited hindsight into the decisions they have made into the past. As the game progressed the player has to piece it together based upon their choices and as the story unravels.

One example: The main playable character is a Police officer, intro sequence etc. You then start in the present time i.e 2000. An event happens and your slung into the past..  where one night your chasing down a Serial killer.. who has elluded you for years and has critical information pertaining to another event. Whilst this is ensuing in another part of town, your son/daughter is involved in a hit run/ shop burglary and fatally injured. Having the ability of hindsight i.e the character present time, which do you chose, Duty or family. If you choose duty you get the Serial killer and your information but at the loss of your child. If you choose family, you can save your child, but with the serial killer knowing who you are etc, you placing your family members at risk later in the game, where you may not have the opportunity save them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

 

Forsight does make for interesting rpg choises. But that does not require time travel.
The same can be achieved with visions, or simply by giving information to the player via the gui. (the latter isn't very rpg-ish)
But I do feel that these sort of choices form a more interesting backbone to role playing than "which gear gives me the highest stats".

Foresight and visions could be used, but would that be in context with an in-game world that is based upon reality rather than fantasy. Also when you refer to visions or foresight are you referring to in-game cutscenes or playable sequences?  

What I am aiming at is playing one character from two perspectives at two different points in their life. Additionally how the decisions in the past have fashioned the character at the start of the game, instead of the traditional forwards only character evolution and go from there.

The time travel aspect would be to believably portray the character as a younger and older based upon how time passes and effects everything in real world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I look at it from a gameplay perspective.
If you play your older self and your actions are running, jumping and hitting things. Then if you play your younger self does that change? and if not, what, beyond being able to make choices with forsight, is the point? And if forsight is the only point then there would be simpler ways to achieve that that does not require a development team to make worlds in two timezones. In other words, you pick the method that creates the most gameplay value for the least amount of production costs.

The main character in-terms physical ability wouldn't really be that different in both time zones, because to beliavably potray the same character as human.. it has to be reflective upon the real thing i.e a person at 20 and the same person at 40.

In context, Myself for example.. I'm 34 and ex-armed forces, apart from the natural physical changes and being a lot fitter at 20 than I am now, my outlook on life, the way I approached problems, the manner in which I reacted to people and how they reacted to me were all different then.

Gameplay wise I think its better to give an example of what I am getting at;  I don't know if you've ever Life on Mars?  If not basically John Simms character is a copper from present day thats slung back into 1970. Anyway in one episode him and the other officers are looking at a body.. John Simms Character being from the present request a full Dna work up, bloods, Toxicology etc... needless to say the 1970 Officers and the Coroner look at him as if he's demented.. they haven't got a clue what he's on about because its not available yet. Then there's other points like when he asks where he can log onto the net.. no net available.. use's his mobile phone.. bad signal and numbers not available, as well as things like social attitudes etc.

To place all that into game play the older present day charcter wouldn't be as fit, but would have a lot more resources at his disposal and would talk to in-game characters in a different manner, where as it works in reverse for the younger version. In view of that, you'd have to take completely different approaches to achieving your goals in one time than the other. In context, specific characters and places wouldn't be accessible in the present time environment, so you would have to use what limited information you had in the present to assist you in piecing things together, maybe to track down a specific character, prevent an accident, remove evidence etc in the past. That can also bring the moral grey area into play, and fade the lines between right and wrong, in an attempt to go beyond the usual choice of or bad character.    

As for the in-game environments it wouldn't require two completely different maps, because the environment has to be familar to the player, giving the impression they are in the same place just ten or twenty years ago. Like a normal human would if they were remembering the area where they lived in ten years ago, or got the family photo albums out...  God I remember that.. I wouldn't be seen dead in those clothes these days etc. 

 

Side note: Soul Reaver did this when you went from real Raziel to Spectral Raziel, things within the environment changed, although not in the same context. The overall environment still remained recognisable so the player knew they were in the same place.    

 

 

 

 

Keep in mind though that even though you might see the same street in both timezones, architecture etc. would be so different that level designers basically have to build the same place twice. But more on topic, I understand what you're trying to do in terms of players needing a different aproach to things in the different timezones, but I still argue that the same effect can be achieved by other means, such as letting the player play two different characters with different physical and mental capabilities, aswell as different jobs and their corresponding perks. (a street cop doesn't have access to a forensic's lab but an investigator might) You really seem to want time travel in there, so it would be to think of all the things you could do with it to try and get the most out of it.

Here's an example I sort of stole from the movie Deja Vu: Imagine you're not entirely in control of this time travel phenomenon and it just happens to you in certain places, could be anywhere...
Now, as a cop, you're running after a thief of some sort and during the chase you get warped to the past. Now things that where in your way in the time you just left are all elsewhere or even gone. New obstacles are there, and if the thief didn't travel with you, you'll have to try and estimate where in 3D space he might have ran to, run to there and hope you'll get zapped back to the future before you get there. This means that during the chase you have to keep track of two 4 dimentional spaces, rather than just one. To make things a bit easier for the player the thief might have some sort of tracking device on him that allows you to pinpoint his 3d position from the other timezone. It would get really interesting if the other timezone was 1 minute in the past, so that where in the present you're behind the thief, in the past you're actually in front of him as your 3D position stays the same. So then you'll have to remember where the thief was a minute ago to make use of it. Also, try to jump to a different time in the middle of an intersection and you could get run over by a car in the past while in the present the intersection was safe to cross. You could even have random objects from the past and future appear at random in your current timezone. In the past you're on a dirt road? wait untill a train from the future suddenly jumps into your timezone and makes your chase that much more difficult.

My point with all this is that there's a whole bunch that can be done with time travel. Try and make the most of it.

Thank for the advice.  

As you stated above (a street cop doesn't have access to forensics but an investigator might). I was looking at that in context to the one character.. at 20 yrs old the character would be new to the Police Force and inexperienced, where as the older version would be higher in rank therefore have access to forensics etc. So when the player looks at both the younger and older character there is a sense of natural job progression present.

The other thing is how the older character changes over the course of the game, depending upon the decisions you've made in the past, allowing the player to fashion the character in a different way to the normal character levelling up. In context, you choose to deal with an event in one, which could result in you loosing your job, so in the present you'd then have to rely upon your friends on the force or go about obtaining info via other sources.

I was also thinking about things not appearing as the player is lead to believe. Example' in the past your tailing someone which leads you into a hotel, in the process of the arrest, you spot your soon to be wife who's having an affair with her boss. So the whole happily married with two kids, model police officer impression at the start isn't quite what it appears to be.

As for the issue of time travel, I think its an interesting concept which hasn't been fully exploited within games yet but offers a great deal of creativity. I was thinking along similar lines to you about random things happening etc...  because the main character has the ability to jump backwards and forwards between two set points, but that doesn't mean he's in control of everything else.           

you've gotta point there maybe the rpg name itself should never have been made a genre it's quite a varied term you could count any game with a story to tell even racing games like "nfs most wanted" as an rpg.

---

........we got an apb on a white star destroyer i repeat white star destroyer.

Thing is, any game you play puts you in the role of a character. Is Tomb Raider an rpg? No way. Yet you play with one character, you somewhat bond with that character, and you just assume that identity. Would GTA: San Andreas be considered an RPG? You customise your character entirely, there's a leveling system, yet it's not considered an rpg.

RPG is a very wide description of games, and I kind of have to say that there is no such thing as an "rpg" on itself, because you are roleplaying with any main character in a game to begin with; you play a role in a game. Basically even Super Mario means you are role-playing, while games such as Final Fantasy are not RPG's entirely, but focus more around strategy (in fact all RPG labeled games can and should be considered strategy games instead).

As for the genre falling into darkness, I think that goes for a lot of genres. It's because producers and developers want to produce as many games in a short as time as possible for a single console. Take a look at the old NES

Games became more smooth, bigger, graphical and more indepth as time progresses. The time between the NES and the SNES was 8 years. 8 years did Nintendo and other developers have to bring the NES to 100% (or close to that). Take a look at Kirby's Adventure. That NES game didn't look that much worse compared to Super Mario World (which was made for the SNES and should have looked much, much better in comparisson). But with the snes came the PSX (which was 1-2 years later). Not much time to bring the SNES to its full capacity is it? 5 years after the PSX came the PS2. 5 years, and we could see a difference in game quality. because of the time. But now here's when things got shitty

PS2 - 1999
X-box - 2001
Gamecube - 2001
X-box - 2005
Nintendo Wii - 2006
PS3 - 2007


3 fabricants, 3 consoles. But instead of focusing on the games and technology available, the developers started rushing with the "Ohnoes the competition is working on a nextgen console!" and spend more time on that and ignore the potential of their current system. I mean compare Metal Gear Solid 2 to Metal gear Solid 3 for the PS2. Look at the incredible increase in graphics and content. And this was between 2001-2004. In only a few years the Ps2 made an incredible progress. More games with more and better content/graphics COULD have been brought out, but alas... plans for the PS3 were in the making and developers started working with that, ignoring potential.

And that is the story that will continue unless one of the main competitors would fall out (doubtfully). And the longer this continues, the amount of games, such as RPG's will come out. Sure, on occasion you have the one golden fleece of games that brings in a new kind of genre or insight etc (Tenchu, GTA, SSBM etc).

Anyways.. my point is that the pressure of the competition forces developers to bring out games faster and faster, ignoring things such as graphics or content just for the sake of having yet another game in the gaming racks.

---

So then I dropped my pants right, and- oh...

Who cares, fable 2 ended up dissapointing however if FB3 comes out i'll probably end up wasting my money once again, since PM knows how to build up hype. We're always hoping that the next one he makes is going to be revolutionary, it's all about Diablo 3 now

Back to the 'ol pen and paper rpg's.  I actually hated the role playing/acting aspect of them and only wanted to play the strategy and mechanics.  Me and my friends would forego literal conversations (which I found painfully awkward and boring in many rpg groups) and get down to the game.  I didn't come to act, I came to quest and fight monsters and find treasure.  Makes me want to invent a non-role playing pen and paper strategy/quest game

"Thing is, any game you play puts you in the role of a character. Is Tomb Raider an rpg? No way. Yet you play with one character, you somewhat bond with that character, and you just assume that identity."

I was going to say the same.

"But the point of a real-life role playing game is to role-play, and to then use the rules and mechanics of the system to decide outcomes that can't be decided through role-playing."

Part of the point of video games is to play roles in fictional worlds that we couldn't do and wouldn't live through if we tried.  There's a little "role playing" (not acting) in every game to some degree.

But if you think about the old 8-bit games and what defined an RPG then... it almost boiled down to RPG's let you save your game cause they're so LONG.  And arcade/action games take you 2-6 hours straight gameplay, you die, you start over.

The only action games that were RPG's that you could save and continue were generally password save games where you get a key you have to put in that respresents your current state in the game.  Golvellius, Wonder Boy III the dragons trap.

Then along come Wolfenstein and Doom.  Those certainly contributed to technology blurring the RPG genre with action - although there was very little story and role playing feel to them.

Now we have great action RPG's like Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance which is essentially a hack'n'slash with an amazing story line (well for the 1st 2/3's of the game anyway) and has no flexibility of a traditional console RPG - completely static storyline and completely linear in every way except your stat building options.  Admitted I enjoy that game a great deal and it does have some unfortgettable depth for it's time.

"There's not many games where you can play both as a murdering *** and a complete pacifist if you so desireWink "

Star Control 2 for Dos, and Darksun: Shattered Lands (TSR/D&D game for Dos)

There was a fan made remake of star control 2 in opengl/c++ but the voice acting is like nails on a chalkboard. (no offense to the makers of it)  The end objective of the game and how you achieved it didn't change - that was linear... but how you got there?  Where you explored?  Who you allied with?  Who you pissed off?  That's almost entirely up to you.  Making allies would simply give you more help and extend the doomsday clock giving you more time to finish the game if you needed it.  If you were enough to proceed without any allies you could attack all the guys you wanted  - you still have to save the galaxy at the end of the day, but you get there your own way.  Great game.

Darksun: Shattered Lands was similar and was a great game for it's time.  Kind of the precursor to NWK in some ways.  You start as a Gladiator slave.  Quickly you have options to make allegances with other gladiators or you can go it alone.  None of those 3 choices prevents you from continuing in the game - though one might be harder than the other.  When you're escaping the slave pens there's an optional extra level in the sewers.  You can come back to it later if you like.  There are portions of the game you have to do - but the map is open and it's up to you what you do first.  So long as your characters can handle the fights.  At the end of the game what allies you've made or not make little difference.  A few decisions are set in terms of destiny, and a few things in the timeline are set, but everything inbetween is open.

---

Phil,
Computer based training - cbt

Net-Ninja:

First I would like to clarify what the acronym means. RPG stands for Role Playing Game. This means that you are playing with an identity, your are another person. Todays RPG have lost much of what ould be called a personal identity. In world of warcraft the only thing unique is you name. So I ask, what makes this an RPG?

The true elements that make up an RPG has been lost in the games we make today, the bond between you and your character has faded away. Somewhere along the line Leveling, item hunting, and skill trees has become all that RPGs stand for. The genre of RPG seems to have fallen into darkness.

Alas, the tide is now turning. The RPGs now being created is becoming more and more fluid and personal, maybe in a few years the true meaning of an RPG will be regained.

WoW is an MMORPG. RPG and MMO are different. I do beleive that they have lost their rotos a little though, its at the stage where you can call Halo an RPG because you take the role of Master Cheif in an in depth story lien to blast aliens away in first person. Honustly I beleive Fable 1 was the last of its kind, I think now they are trying to bring Fable into the MMO market wich i think is a big mistake because to most of us Fable fans are Fable fans not MMO fans we want to deal with our character and not other peoples, and we want to deal with our story and not other peoples, when you bring peopel into a game then they get involved with your story or your theirs wich completly takes away from the role playing aspect and makes it just a story with players.

What about making a fable online game. Like you can do the same things you can do in fable but it is a mmorpg.