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[fenrif]

This:

You create a character. You can choose whatever you like for your character's features, within reasonable limits. For examplem you can choose a race and class, name, gender, appearance, equipment, etc. But the game is not expected to create a custom class just for you because you want to play a Steampunk Detective.

And:

But what if I want to play an engineer on a ship someone else (AI?) commands? The game can't do that, even though it's a legitimate expectation in the environment. Or maybe I want to play a drug dealer. Not a drug runner, which is just someone carrying illegal cargo. I mean going down to the colony and walking around on foot.

Don't seem to mesh well. You seem to be saying that if you are playing a P&P RPG you can be whatever you want within reason but if its a CRPG you should be able to be whatever you can imagine.

It's true that computer games don't offer the almost unlimited freedom of P&P games, but you can still RP in them. Sandbox games are great for this. I played Saints Row 2 with a friend over the xbox's system link, and while I couldn't run for mayor or summon eldritch horrors from beyond the stars, I still had fun RP'ing a semi-aware well-meaning psychopath.

Think of it this way, compared to most P&P RPGs mass effect doesn't offer you as many choices. You cant join the geth, or shove ashley out an airlock, or cut off your own leg just to see if the doctor would save you. But the within the context of what their pre-defined character would do, you have rather a lot of options. It's like turning up to play D&D and the DM has rolled all the PC's characters for them. You're still roleplaying, but you're doing it within the character they've created for you.

[Mfbrew]

Here's a good one related to that whole thing about just wanting to be an engineer on the ship-

In Romance of the three kingdoms X, you weren't constrained to just be a liege like the really old games in the series.

For example, I started a guy who at age 15 just kinda hung out in a city, writing letters to people who would later become the great legends of the three kingdoms era.

Then my guy got bored and started going from town to town doing quests and getting into duels.  Then I travelled around debating with people to become a great arguer.

Eventually I joined a faction as a lowly officer, but quickly rose through the ranks until I became a great general.  I led a coup against my leader and nearly united china.  Then I abdicated and became a bandit king until I ran out of money.  Spent the rest of my days chillin till I died of old age.

Not many games have that level of interactivity.  But turn-based games like that fly way low under the radar.

 

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

It's funny. Saint's Row 2 is one of the few games I've played where the gameplay doesn't have this bizarre disconnect from the story.  The story actually accounts for the fact that this is a game about running around a city causing chaos and destruction.  Your character is clearly a psychopath, just like the game is played.  Of course it's not roleplaying.  There's no character interaction beyond violence, and your choices have no real meaningful consequences.

You know, I think the word you're looking for is railroad.  CRPG plots are always on rails so there's no room for any real roleplaying.  You can roleplay a specific character that's already set out for you but if you ever try to be creative the GM just won't respond.

So I guess you could say that yes, CRPGs are really roleplaying games, just with a horrible GM.  One who runs an intricate plot with all sorts of twists and turns, but has no respect for the players, and only really wants to have them there to act out his little play and roll dice for his massive amount of shoddily tacked on combat.

[fenrif]

Your character is clearly a psychopath, just like the game is played.  Of course it's not roleplaying.  There's no character interaction beyond violence, and your choices have no real meaningful consequences.

That depends entirely on what role you're trying to play, though the story missions don't support it you can definatly roleplay in the sandbox part of the game. You just have to roleplay within the confines of the gameworld. Just like in D&D you can't roleplay a US senator, or space station repairman. Saints Row 2 is a psychopath game, aslong as you wanna play a psychopath you can roleplay just fine.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Your character is clearly a psychopath, just like the game is played.  Of course it's not roleplaying.  There's no character interaction beyond violence, and your choices have no real meaningful consequences.

That depends entirely on what role you're trying to play, though the story missions don't support it you can definatly roleplay in the sandbox part of the game. You just have to roleplay within the confines of the gameworld. Just like in D&D you can't roleplay a US senator, or space station repairman. Saints Row 2 is a psychopath game, aslong as you wanna play a psychopath you can roleplay just fine.

That's about the only thing you can roleplay in any sandbox game.  A retarded psychopath.  Which of course is a total disconnect from the character in the actual plot of the game.

[Pathos]

That's about the only thing you can roleplay in any sandbox game.  A retarded psychopath.  Which of course is a total disconnect from the character in the actual plot of the game.

YOU ARE NOBLE HEROE. GO KILL FIFTY FANTASY RACIAL MONIROTIES.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

This:

You create a character. You can choose whatever you like for your character's features, within reasonable limits. For examplem you can choose a race and class, name, gender, appearance, equipment, etc. But the game is not expected to create a custom class just for you because you want to play a Steampunk Detective.

And:

But what if I want to play an engineer on a ship someone else (AI?) commands? The game can't do that, even though it's a legitimate expectation in the environment. Or maybe I want to play a drug dealer. Not a drug runner, which is just someone carrying illegal cargo. I mean going down to the colony and walking around on foot.

Don't seem to mesh well. You seem to be saying that if you are playing a P&P RPG you can be whatever you want within reason but if its a CRPG you should be able to be whatever you can imagine.

It's true that computer games don't offer the almost unlimited freedom of P&P games, but you can still RP in them. Sandbox games are great for this. I played Saints Row 2 with a friend over the xbox's system link, and while I couldn't run for mayor or summon eldritch horrors from beyond the stars, I still had fun RP'ing a semi-aware well-meaning psychopath.

Think of it this way, compared to most P&P RPGs mass effect doesn't offer you as many choices. You cant join the geth, or shove ashley out an airlock, or cut off your own leg just to see if the doctor would save you. But the within the context of what their pre-defined character would do, you have rather a lot of options. It's like turning up to play D&D and the DM has rolled all the PC's characters for them. You're still roleplaying, but you're doing it within the character they've created for you.

Okay, so my Steampunk Detective example was a little off. A better example is saying that in D&D you want to roleplay someone who runs an inn or trade guild or something. It's within the game's setting, it's a legitimate choice. But a computer game that tries to emulate D&D would probably leave that option unavailable, in the same way the space shooter / trader / explorer would leave out the option to play an engineer. Both are worthwhile and fun (if you like it) and make sense.

Of course you would not expect to be able to play a Jovian Particle Accelerator Engineer in D&D, nor would you expect to be able to play a Magic-User in a space sim.

I wholeheartedly object to saying that a game that gives you a role, and tells you to play it, is an RPG. This is why a D&D referee should never pregenerate characters. In a convention game, it's necessary, because of the circumstances of the convention (consistent scoring and difficulty, getting started playing right away) which are not present in a normal game (no scoring, choose your own difficulty through character choices, you can afford to spend a few minutes doing chargen). If you call FF7 an RPG, because it lets you play the role of Cloud Strife, then there is no reason not to call Bomberman an RPG because you are playing the role of a guy who has bombs. Or Pac-Man because you are playing the role of a ravenous ectophobic cheese pizza.

For this reason I call something like Saint's Row or Morrowind or Fallout 3 as something other than a Story Completion Game, but they're not Role Playing Games. Not quite. Maybe call them Sandbox Action-Adventure Games?

Here's an example of the possible player choices that I'd expect to see in an actual RPG:

Situation: A band of Goblins have seized a barn and driven the farmer and his family off their land. What do you do?

1: Offer to get rid of the Goblins for pay from the farmer so he can reclaim his land.
1A: Expect pay as a portion of his land rather than money.
1B: Expect pay in the form of the service of his son as a hireling.
1C: Expect pay in the form of his daughter.
1C1: As a wife.
1C1A: But actually don't marry her.
1C2: As a concubine.
1C3: As a party camp follower.
1C4: As a slave.

2: Leave. Pass by without doing anything.
2A: But spread word of the problem
2B: And spread word that the problem has already been solved
2C: and spread word that the farmer and family was turned into Goblins by someone who took his form and now lives in town
2D: After investigating and spying, but doing nothing

3: Drive out the Goblins regardless of the farmer.
3A: Because you're a nice guy.
3B: Because you're going to seize the farm for yourself.
3C: Because you're racist and hate the Goblins.
3D: Because you want information from the Goblins.

4: Drive out the Goblins by
4A: Burning down the barn
4B: Blasting the barn with non-fire spells
4C: Smoke them out
4C1: With green wood and leaves
4C2: With smoke spells
4C3: With illusion spells
4D: Sneaky assault
4D1: With assistance from illusion magic
4E: Frontal assault
4E1: With assistance from illusion magic
4F: Flooding them out
4F1: By diverting a stream
4F2: By collapsing the water tower
4F3: Water magic
4F4: Weather magic
4G: Trick the Goblins
4G1: By making them think the place is haunted
4G1A: Using nonmagical methods
4G1B: Using illusion magic
4H: Convince the Goblins to leave
4H1: By force
4H2: Through fast talking
4H3: Magical charm spells
4H4: Paying them
4H5: Doing them a service
4I: Rampaging herd of animals
4I1: Who were charmed magically
4I2: Who were summoned magically
4I3: Who were brought together by a wilderness-type character

5: Enlist the help of the local militia
5A1: And have them do all the work, and accept the danger
5A2: And split the work and danger
5A3: Do most of the work and keep them as a backup
5B1: By force
5B2: Through fast talking
5B3: Magical charm spells
5B4: Paying them
5B5: Doing them a service

6: Enlist the help of the local hedge wizard
6A: By force
6B: Through fast talking
6C: Magical charm spells
6D: Paying him a lot
6E: Doing him a service

7: Enlist the help of the gang of youths who think they know better than they do, and don't understand the risks
7A: By force
7B: Through fast talking
7C: Magical charm spells
7D: Paying them

And this is just what I came up with off the top of my head. It's an uncommon game that can let you do all that - but D&D will absolutely handle all of these with ZERO PROBLEM. That's why a tabletop RPG is so clearly different from a computer game.

Not to say we'll never see this happen. Computer tech is running ahead like crazy.

[Mfbrew]

Darklands was a quarter of the way there before the big companies started steamrolling the innovation and uniqueness out of video games.

Almost any given problem in that game could be approached through steel, trickery, saintly intervention, alchemy, or negotiations.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Oh cool.

And I'm not just being pedantic here. Maybe what I call an RPG is a Platonic ideal. But if we start calling what we have now RPGs, then maybe we won't strive for what an RPG could eventually be.

And maybe it sounds too strict for some of you guys. I'm certainly someone who can say "yeah that's clean enough" because you know it's not going to be 100% clean.

But 95%? 90%?

I'd call an MMO version of Morrowind perhaps 20% of the way to the idealized RPG. Ultima Online, about 25%. A very completely custom scripted Ultima Online, maybe 40%. HellMOO would be 50%ish.

Now a polygonal RPG rather than an ASCII RPG, would be a lot harder, for the various reasons Toady has mentioned in interviews. So perhaps we should look to ASCII games.

[nenjin]

There's a distinct disconnect between PnP RPGs and CRPGs.

Namely, the GM.

How many of you have played a 1-person session with a DM in a PnP game?

I'll wager not many.

The number and scope of choices some of you wish you had in CRPGs is more like asking for a personal DM, who is willing to follow whatever path you want to take.

That's not realistic for computer gaming, at all. It's not even really realistic for Pen and Paper RPG groups. Here's why.

In 4 player game of D&D, you decide you want to be an innkeeper. Your party members are a fighter, a wizard and a thief. You decided it would be cool to roll up a commoner.

The rest of your party decides it wants to adventure in the city. You want to run your Inn.

It works for a while. The DM divides their attention between giving your party members stuff to do, and filling your inn with different clients and vignettes.

After an hour though, your party decides they want to go into the countryto fight the Troll King. Your DM has to make a decision:

Continue dividing their attention between the party and the lone innkeeper who just wants to be an innkeeper...

Or...

Force the innkeeper player to leave their inn for one reason or another.

That's why you can't have unlimited options, even when they fall within reasonable expectations of the setting in Pen and Paper. You need a DM willing to regularly go out on a creative limb to support your idea, and you either a) need a group that is willing to sit around and watch you pursue your path or b) you need to be playing alone with a DM that is completely willing to let you determine what you're going to do.

Now apply that to CRPGs. For every dev that takes the time to create a merchant, innkeeper, fisherman, pot-maker path of game play...there will be a player who is miffed that their sorceress can't turn tricks in between studying magic, or a leper who moves in courtly circles, or a prisoner that has to escape their terrible past...or something.

I think a lot of people consider RPGs as their personal domain where what they want is supposed to go. After decades of role playing, DMing and RPG video games...I've come to believe that most RPG experiences are compromises between what you want and the setting you find yourself in. Dragon Age: Origins? I didn't want ANY of the backgrounds they proposed. But I had to choose one to even start the game, as a reference point for the whole freaking story. So I compromised as a thief who is also of royal blood. It felt pretty stupid to me, but that's the nature of RPGs. Just like when you tell a DM you want to play some outlandish race/class combination and they say "I don't think that's going to work very well with the party......" CRPGs do that work ahead of time. Of course there's the time constraints/labor factor....but by and large if they felt that playing an innkeeper (or whatever) would be a compelling role to play in their world, if they had a real hard-on for non-typical roles in a fantasy setting....they'd be there.

Just like your GM says they want a "grimdark world where no one is happy and everyone knows how to fight" and rejects your pacifist elf striving for world peace.....many other games know what they want to have players do and develop the options accordingly.

Yes, I'm sure some have had that GM that indulged them in anything they wanted to do....but most of my enduring RPG experiences have been because:

A) The GM had a strong vision of their world
B) The GM tempered their vision with some flexibility toward players
C) The GM was not afraid to let people pursue side paths
D) The GM was not afraid to tell players "they're too far out there."

Bottomline though, in the world of CRPGs, options = time invested in creating options. That's NOT true of table top RPGs, and until someone creates RPG Maker 2000X that can crank out content without human input....it's ALWAYS going to be that way. Human GMs can create content on the fly, because they don't need the infrastructure like graphics, sounds, systems or any of that stuff CRPGs do. I don't think it's fair to criticize CRPG devs for working in a medium that doesn't lend itself to spontaneous options.

[fenrif]

Nenjin beat me to most of this, but i typed it all out so im posting it anyway.

Okay, so my Steampunk Detective example was a little off. A better example is saying that in D&D you want to roleplay someone who runs an inn or trade guild or something. It's within the game's setting, it's a legitimate choice. But a computer game that tries to emulate D&D would probably leave that option unavailable, in the same way the space shooter / trader / explorer would leave out the option to play an engineer. Both are worthwhile and fun (if you like it) and make sense.

Of course you would not expect to be able to play a Jovian Particle Accelerator Engineer in D&D, nor would you expect to be able to play a Magic-User in a space sim.

I wholeheartedly object to saying that a game that gives you a role, and tells you to play it, is an RPG. This is why a D&D referee should never pregenerate characters. In a convention game, it's necessary, because of the circumstances of the convention (consistent scoring and difficulty, getting started playing right away) which are not present in a normal game (no scoring, choose your own difficulty through character choices, you can afford to spend a few minutes doing chargen). If you call FF7 an RPG, because it lets you play the role of Cloud Strife, then there is no reason not to call Bomberman an RPG because you are playing the role of a guy who has bombs. Or Pac-Man because you are playing the role of a ravenous ectophobic cheese pizza.

For this reason I call something like Saint's Row or Morrowind or Fallout 3 as something other than a Story Completion Game, but they're not Role Playing Games. Not quite. Maybe call them Sandbox Action-Adventure Games?



And this is just what I came up with off the top of my head. It's an uncommon game that can let you do all that - but D&D will absolutely handle all of these with ZERO PROBLEM. That's why a tabletop RPG is so clearly different from a computer game.

Not to say we'll never see this happen. Computer tech is running ahead like crazy.

The reason a P&P RPG works the way it does is because it's a collaborative story-telling experience. You all agree on what you want to achieve (dungeon crawl and get loot, epic story, run an inn, etc) and work towards that together. If you turn up to a dungeon crawl game, and you want to get into some really deep character-development roleplay everyone is going to have a bad time, and you wont get to do what you want to do. If you want to run an inn, but everyone else wants to pillage and murder the town your inn would be located, you can't do that. That doesn't make it not an RPG anymore.

RPGs aren't about having unlimted choices to do whatever you can possible imagine whenver you want. They're about playing a role. But more importantly they're about playing a role within the confines of the game. Usually that's whatever the DM wants to run, but you also need to get the other players onboard too. If everyone wants to do somethign different, nothing will get done and the game will die on the first session.

Computer games are a lot like that. Except instead of agreeing upon the setting, location, etc beforehand with the other people, you're choosing it when you pick the game up in the shop. If you want to roleplay an inn owner, buy an inn owner game. Wanna roleplay a racecar driver, buy a racing game. You can roleplay within the confines of the game.

Pregenerating characters doesn't amke D&D any less an RPG, you can still roleplay your character, you just don't get to create it yourself. Usually this means you have to flex your RP muscles a little more. If the DM decides you're playing an NE elf theif, you just create a backstory for him, and base your actions on that. It is still an RPG.

Note: I'm not saying this makes any game an RPG. Saints row 2 isn't an RPG game... but you can roleplay while you play it. That's my point, you can roleplay in almost any game. It that's necissary is for you to be able to make choices within the confines of the character the game presents to you. In FF7 you can't really roleplay, because you never have any choice on what the characters do outside of combat. But Saints Row 2 allows you to play a mysoginistic drunkard, or a wanna-be gang leader, or a street racer, or a car thief, etc. Again: this doesn't make it an RPG because the mechanics of the game aren't set up to support that.

Mass effect 2 though, I would say is an RPG, because the game is designed to let you make decisions within the character you're given. You can't do anything you can imagine, but you can still roleplay within the defined characteristics they game sells you on. When you buy it you're not buying a space engineer RPG, anymore than when you buy D&D you're buying an insurance salesman RPG. The difference being that D&D allows you to create your own game with the tools supplied. You could stat up insurance customers, desk office hours, etc and run that game if you really wanted.

Even in a P&P RPG you can't do anything you want. It's not about unlimited choices. Its about your character. Sure you could react to any situation with an arbitrary roll of a d1000 and do whatever comes up, but then you're not roleplaying. There wont ever be a true representation of a P&P RPG on a computer untill we develop true artificial intelligence, but that doesn't mean you can't roleplay in any game ever.

[nenjin]

For computer game devs, it mostly comes down to time, I think. These guys are usually gamers. They have the ability to think about possibilities while they work. I think the typical CRPG plot discussion goes a little something like this....

Dev A: Ok, so the player is going to encounter King Maldolfus. Here's [the battle]. Now, after they kill him...

Dev B: Wait, they don't HAVE to kill him do they?

Dev A: Well I suppose not. But if they don't kill him, then there's no reason for the daemonic force trapped inside him to be unleashed. And since this all happens in the first chapter....

Dev C: Well, what if the player offers his services to Maldolfus, and he starts training them in the ways of the dark arts. And then one day....

Dev A: Woah, woah woah. The voice actor for King Maldolfus has already done his lines. The team is already in production mode on Chapter 3. We can't just go back and add all that crap?

Dev B: What if we just did it through text dialog. That wouldn't be hard, the guys could render up the scenes....

Dev A: Guys, what's the fucking point? If they kill Maldolfus, the daemonic forces are unleashed. If 'plan b' happens, the daemonic forces are still unleashed. That's not worth the time it's going to take.

Dev B: Well, what if--.

*Dev A cracks Dev B across the face with crowbar*

Dev A: Any OTHER ideas that aren't going to increase our work load by 100%? I didn't think so. So after the player kills Maldolfus....

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Nenjin, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm not saying we should expect a computer RPG. I'm saying it's too difficult to make one.

And the whole point of a computer RPG would be to have a virtual 1-on-1 game with you and the DM. That's the benefit. You're right about the splitting the party thing in a tabletop game. But if the whole party decided to spend a year in town developing their connections? The computer game would be entirely unable to handle that.

Now I agree too that computer games are able to sufficiently describe a narrower game than an RPG. For example, a fighting action-adventure game where you play a hero out to save the world. They do really well on that! Or a game where you gather armies together and develop a base, using your forces to smash some enemy, then moving on to a new area with a small force to begin again. Most RTS games do a decent job of that.

But when you add in everything, really kitchen-sink it, it becomes too much of a burden for a computer game designer to make.

[nenjin]

Bioware is doing a good job of showing that you CAN plan a game with a lot of options, that can produce diverse outcomes. In ME's case, it's still highly focused through the story they're telling.

All the things we love about P&P GMs just take too much time and money to create in a video game. The voices and mannerisms that DMs cook up on the fly require animations, voice actors and writers. Translating the visual descriptions into something more tangible, alone, is a huge undertaking. Even procedural content creation systems lack that genuine spark of human creativity. A game can present you a procedurally generated bake shop, complete with procedurally generated baker and crisis....and it doesn't ring true compared to when a good DM creates a character and everything else on the fly, and gradually fleshes it out as it goes along.

I believe it IS possible to dev a game that recreates what we expect out of a TT. But it would take 10 years, millions of dollars and one hell of a generous publisher to create. And at the end of the line, many players would still feel constrained by a world where everything ISN'T possible. The world is, after all, square.

It doesn't help too that our expectations are much higher now than they were. I remember when NES RPGs seemed like these HUGE worlds filled to the brim with content and secrets. I came to realize that most of that was perception on my part, and having an active imagination as a kid. Now, I see RPGs as interlocking systems and dialog trees, code and bits. It's much harder for me to imagine depth than it used to be...so I require my games to go much further toward accomplishing that.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I agree. Although I think it would take a dev team more time and more money than that ;P