RPGs Were Never About Roleplaying
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- Опубликовано: 21 сен 2024
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Role Playing Games, as they are sometimes called, are some of the longest-lived and most popular genres of videogame out there - to the point that they're older than videogames themselves. However, in spite of their consistent presence in our culture, it's increasingly feeling like no-one knows what RPGs are actually about... and it isn't, as one would naturally assume... role playing.
So, the sacred duty to navigate the realm find the eight sacred crystals, determine the fate of reality and slay a few dragons along the way falls once again, to The Architect, who on top of saving the world also needs try and find out where the RPG came from, and where it's going - with the answer coming from a rather... unconventional source.
You Saw:
Microsoft Flight Simulator - 2020
Sid Meirs Civilization 6 - 2016
Final Fantasy 10 - 2001
Legend of Grimrock 2 - 2014
Divinity Original Sin 2 - 2017
Super Mario Bros 3 - 1988
Tetris - 1984
DOOM - 2016
Persona 5 Royal - 2019
Monster Hunter: World - 2018
Fallout New Vegas - 2010
World of Warcraft - 2004
Final Fantasy 6 - 1994
Final Fantasy 15 - 2016
Final Fantasy 16 - 2023
Final Fantasy 7 Remake - 2020
Final Fantasy 7 - 1997
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 - 2009
Horizon: Zero Dawn - 2017
Assasin's Creed Valhalla - 2020
Disco Elysium - 2019
System Shock Remake - 2013
Wasteland 3 - 2020
Jupiter Hell - 2019
Ctrl Alt Ego - 2022
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - 2018
Undertale - 2015
Stardew Valley - 2016
Caves of Qud - Early Access
Garage: Bad Dream Adventure - 1999
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands - 2022
Dave the diver - 2023
F-Zero GX - 2003
XCOM 2 - 2016
Honkai: Star Rail - 2023
Baldur's Gate 1 - 1998
Nier Automata - 2017
Super Mario RPG - 1996
Bioshock - 2007
Doom - 1993
Pokemon Emerald - 2004
Dragon Quest 8 - 2004
Prey - 2017
Battle Chef Brigade - 2017
Vampire Survivors - 2022
Pathfider War of the Righteous - 2021
Dragon Quest 11 - 2017
What Remains of Edith Finch - 2017
Fallout 4 - 2015
The Dungeon - 1975
Moria - 1975
DnD - 1975
Hand of Fate 2 - 2017
Wizardry 2 - 1982
Ultima 1 - 1979
Rogue - 1980
Diablo - 1997
Diablo 2 - 2000
Diablo 3 - 2012
Diablo 4 - 2023
Borderlands 3 - 2019
Hades - 2020
Slay The Spire - 2019
Dead Cells - 2018
Dungeons of Dredmor - 2011
Dark Souls - 2012
Darkest Dungeon - 2016
Elden Ring - 2022
Darkest Dungeon 2 - 2017
Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion- 2006
Solasta: Crown of the Magister - 2020
System Shock 2 - 1999
Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - 2011
Ultima Underworld - 1992
Elder Scrolls 1: Arena - 1994
Runescape - 2001
Dishonored - 2012
Hitman 3 - 2021
Deus Ex - 2000
Xenoblade 2 - 2016
Mother 3 - 2006
Yakuza: Like a Dragon - 2020
Xenoblade 3 - 2022
Final Fantasy 14 - 2010
The Hex - 2018
Trails of Cold Steel 3 - 2017
Wizardry 3 - 1983
Final Fantasy 1 - 1987
Chrono Trigger - 2015
Octopath Traveller - 2018
Valkyria Chronicles 4 - 2018
Rune Factory 4 - 2012
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door - 2004
Super Paper Mario - 2007
Suzerain - 2020
Colossal Cave Adventure - 1976
Mystery House - 1980
Roadwarden - 2022
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - 2004
Pathologic 2 - 2019
Neverwinter Knights 2 - 2006
Fallout - 1997
Planescape Torment - 1999
Fallout 3 - 2008
Yes, Your Grace - 2020
The Withcer 3 - 2015
Dragon Age: Origins - 2009
Mass Effect - 2007
Sunless Skies - 2019
80 Days - 2014
Overboard! - 2021
Pentament - 2022
Moon: RPG Remix Adventure - 1997
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - 2016
Dicey Dungeons - 2019
Borderlands 2 - 2012
Stranger Things - 2016
Dragon Age: Inquisition - 2014
Mass Effect 2 - 2010
Anthem - 2019
Mass Effect Andromeda - 2017
Pokemon Ultra Moon - 2017
Pokemon Legends: Arceus - 2022
Pokemon Scarlet - 2022
Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos - Not Out Yet
Crusader Kings 3 - 2020
The Sims 4 - 2014
Neverwinter - 2013
Destiny 2 - 2017
Fire Emblem 3 Houses - 2019
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 - 2007
X-COM: UFO Defense - 1994
Indivisible - 2019
Terraria - 2011
Esoteric Ebb - Early Access
Tabletop Simulator - 2015
Chess - 6th Century CE
New Pokemon Snap - 2021
Dark Souls 3 - 2016
Street Fighter 6 - 2023
Hail, Traveller! Before you embark upon your epic quest to slay the eight magical princesses, you ought to check out my humble wares - please, purchase some provisions, such as a sword worse than the starting one and three lesser healing potions! ooooh!: www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
X more like no, like a wrong answer you know like a cross you put over something to cross it out but the cross is an X like the name of twitter - this would be funnier in a visual format: twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Hey Adam, you are very knowledgeable about gaming and game design, would you like to debate with me over the definition of an RPG? Over the years I've found a set of criteria for what makes a video game an RPG that seems to hold up under scrutiny.
Hey just so you know theres a dropped paragraph in the captions at 14:35
Can you put the game title in the corner when you show game-play clips please?
@@SheonEver Yup, I disagree with the term "RPG" or "RPG elements" being thrown around mindlessly whenever something has XP progression or a party of characters.
If you retro-translate this type of games (turn based tactical combat, XP and stats and to hit probabilities) to the tabletop (from where the RPG genre comes from) you don't get an RPG. You get a skirmish miniatures game like Mordheim or Battletech or a dungeon crawl board game like Descent or Gloomhaven. The aforementioned traits (turns, XPs etc) aren't characteristic of RPG's any more than they are of these genres.
On the other hand you can easily play RPGs with no combat, no stats, no dice, no rules at all (I've played a lot of narrative RPGs like that). The sine qua non trait is characterisation - in other games you get a warrior with stats and XP, but only in an RPG can you have this warrior be a wise-cracking optimist or a brooding cynic with a heart of gold, depending on, you guessed it, your roleplay choices.
So, in my opinion, using the term RPG for games that
a)lack the defining trait of the RPG genre
b)only share some secondary traits much better represented by other genres
is erroneous and misleading.
@@fuzzyblurrydotcom Should be fixed!
I thought RPGs were about "romancing" that cute elf over there.
Never felt dumber in my life, clearly this is the right answer
I love those romancing pretty girls/guys/goober games.
@@Ashamedofmypastwho said anything about girls?
@geng6443 I know I have no interest in girls. That cute elf guy over there though? 😍
Some reccomedations please
The problem with the word "roleplaying" is that in a game context, it's picked up several context-sensitive meanings. There's acting out narrative roles, assuming mechanical roles like a wizard or warrior, directing the role of a preset character like in Final Fantasy 4, and the eroded modern term "RPG mechanics" that just signifies numerical progression.
From a certain point of view, roleplaying did originally mean playing a role, but now the word has been misused so much that it could mean countless combinations of things. It implies that a player entering a constructed play space has a heightened level of choice, and that's it.
you can observe similar things in horror games
Yeah, there was some conflation between playing a role in combat (as in contributing something specific to make a team overcome obstacles) to playing a fixed role in a story, oftentimes just shorthand for a playing a specific world-saving hero. "Roll"playing vs "Role"playing as the saying goes.
It is interesting to me that a lot of games boiled the former down to "choose fixed entities to fill your party" and the latter to having your fixed character with your choice among given dialog options and weapon/skill tree path rather than keeping the free form party of custom characters. For example, see the Gold Box games (Pool of Radiance, etc) , Phantasie series, or the Temple of Elemental Evil (letting you fully customize up to 5-6 player characters) vs Neverwinter Nights or Dragon Age Origins (where you get to customize your starting character and work with whatever the NPCs you pick up happen to specialize in... unless you mod the game).
Honestly, the more recent AC games have also attempted to take other RPG genre staples like dialogue options and have significantly increased the number of viable approaches to most missions.
To give an example of the latter. Both my sister and me played ac Odyssey. I ended up mostly going for a high speed approach of rushing in and beating the shit out of everything. My sister almost always focused on stealth and archery.
And the game let both of us get away with those play styles.
And with regard to the playing a predetermined character, well the classic jrpgs did that and they are still part of the genre.
"a player entering a constructed playspace where they have some level of choice" describes pretty much every video game ever
Well, when you get your info from total randomers with balls to call themselves "architects".
The whole history of PC gaming is built since the 70's on the exact games that coined 'RPG', because you FILL a role in those games. That only SPREAD to "non"-RPG games because YOU gaymermen don't know how language works. You jsut made up that BS about "freedom of choice in the narrative" and ignored that you constantly focus on role-playing, that's what escapism means. Movies are not NON escapist just because you have to resign yourself to the plot and secretly resent the medium for it.
Hopeless and delusional escapism is an AFFLICTION that theater groups would normally transition away from with exercise, but now people who ROLE PLAY their action violence fiction, can't seem to possess the self awareness to even to match Robert downey Jr.s character in Tropic Thunder.
EVERY game you don't refuse to play, has NOW EVERYTHING to do with the RP, and the Game is fading out like THX sound effects on Oscar worthy films. Not even being considered, just occasionally acknowledged IF it furthers the cinematic purpose of your dinky interactive film played on a game console, AND ONLY IF.
It is important to note that the evolution of TTRPGs in Japan is vastly different than it was in the West, and it reflects in the relationship with JRPGs. Advanced D&D wasn't that popular and was hard to play, but people who played them published books called Replays, so a lot of people's exposure and enjoyment of D&D was actually reading transcripted gameplay sessions edited a bit for cohesion. The most popular Replay being Record of Lodoss War. Pretty early on the TTRPG Sword World would come out in Japan as well, and end up being the default idea of role playing game. (You can still see a lot of tropes created there in fantasy anime and games today) So when you consider that most people were reading Replays rather than playing games, playing an RPG where you experience a more or less preset story as an already established character makes sense, or having a story focus first in general. (Today in Japan TTRPGs are referred to as Table Talk rather than Table Top because most people refer to focusing on narrative and character exploration over complex battles.)
Extremely different also in that the culture of actual play is heavily one shot based.
Much more pro-mission/railroading.
Often have a lot of customization but focused within fulfilling a class/role/archetype. "wizards can do this, here are 27 options for doing this" (i have seen classes for games that would make a lot of american roleplayers freak.)
And their initial introduction reaction to BD&D didn't involve the idea "you can do things not covered by the rules", so their rpgs tend to have rules for things american rpgs would have if they are central to the experience.
It's a fascinating divergence given "just the initial set of rules", through two cultures.
And people who think the evolution of Japanese console rpgs doesn't mirror their TTRPGs are kind of silly.
I've heard that at least four isekai LN authors play D&D together. Only one I remember is Mamare Touno of Log Horizon fame. The D&D Homebrew Wiki even has a 5e spell called Anchor Howl which in Log Horizon is a class skill for Guardians that boosts defense and taunts nearby enemies.
@@mattwo7 yeah, while it's somewhat true that D&D wasn't super popular in Japan, they actually had more than a few exclusive D&D titles early on. I think the biggest reason it never had the ability to gain dominance in Japan was the same core reason D&D never gained dominance in Germany, TSR sucked at localising so DSA and Shadowrun got to build up a more distinct community in Germany while Wizardry (which is a CRPG FFS) gained far more recognition in Japan than NA despite originating there.
@@mattwo7 I don't know if he plays with them but the guy behind Overlord plays TTRPGs, and I think the guy behind Goblin Slayer does as well...heck it's got it's own TTRPG spin off book. Considering the rules for how magic works in Goblin Slayer he's got to be at least very familiar with the concepts given that spell casters can only use so many spells a day and need to rest before they can use more and the fact that the Gods of the world decide things with dice rolls and stuff...like legit in the Light Novel there are entire interludes between chapters sometimes talking about the Gods and how they set up the adventures and roll the dice for what's going on..and how Goblin Slayer will sometimes throw a wrench in said game just by being there. The back of the novels have the tag line "He does not let anyone roll the dice" just above the summery of the volume on the back.
As for the differences in Japan and abroad when it comes to TTRPGs there's also the fact that thanks to how early DnD was translated for them Kobolds in Japan are more often than not canine beastmen rather than the lizard like monsters we see in the West...and Orcs are still often depicted as pig like or straight up pig men, oinking and snorting in media showing them.
This reminded me, reading through dragonlance books, it often feels like a dnd session. Characters in the party are often given screen time in turns, like on the same page
If I had a nickel for every time a video essay about videogames I watched used the galapagos finch as an analogy to explore different genres of games, I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
What was the other video about?
@@prfctstrm SovietWomble's DayZ video essay
Nice Phineas and Ferb Reference!
@@2010AZ Oh that's right! I was wondering If I had already seen this video already with how familiar the start was lol.
@@2010AZ Thanks
It’s worth noting that D&D is not the only tabletop RPG out there, there are lots of other games and lineages of games out there that do things in different ways but don’t have the name recognition or marketing budget of Wizards of the Coast on their side, and having a more specific vision than D&D’s attempt to do everything at once (or more accurately, their marketing that they do everything at once) can really help the things they do focus on work well
D&D doesnt do every at once though, mostly cause mesuring social assets in the game is...Tricky
Hence why I like Changeling the Lost
@@thebohemian814 That’s true, it’s more accurate to say that it markets itself as being the game to do everything in
@@zutaca2825which is a straight upl lie .social encounters only gave 2 pages in the dmg. The exploration mechanics are pretty much non existent because class abilities
@@yuvalgabay1023 Technically incorrect. 5e, at least, just leaves that up to the DM heh. It's only that flexible if the DM is that flexible ...
@@3nertia ya but a game thats says its has 3 pillars and give 0 support to 2 of theme is a game thats lie
A small correction. Computer rpgs are called as such as a way to differentiate them from Tabletop rpgs. Not console rpgs.
As the first crpgs were attemps at translating tabletop rpgs into video games.
Absolutely correct. I didn't take Adam phrasing as saying it was otherwise, just as an explanation that those games came to computers first because they hardware and low level software foundations were more flexible than early consoles. But maybe I misunderstood him.
@@LiraeNoir which isn't true as most consoles were using the same 80's processors as personal computers and were perfectly capable of making such games. The fact most console manufacturers and game editors were japanese coming from arcade was probably the reason why almost all RPG titles on consoles were JRPGs or tactical.
@@PainterVierax First cRPGs were created on mainframes and played using dumb terminals on the campuses of the 1970s US. Little of them survived as they were mostly student projects, sometimes kept in secret from the staff, but e.g. pedit5 is still playable today on PLATO emulators. Cartridge-based consoles were a few years away, let alone console RPGs.
@PainterVierax While it is true a Consul did have the a lot of the same power inside, the issue was outside. Due to a lack of Keyboard and Mouse it was nearly impossible to put they type of Freedom of Control that was needed. A Controller that had limited Button and Directional Pad was pretty much impossible to replicate on a Consul what a Mouse and Keyboard could easily do. It took forever before they could find a way to make this work, and still you have limitations to this day on how well it can be done.
@@nobalkain624 Most PCs during the 80's had no mouse at all. And gamepads have limited buttons but UI adjustments like virtual keyboards were quickly a thing. Though, this is not the main point that avoided freedom of actions, programming limitations on 8 and 16 bit CPUs with very limited RAM is the real blocking factor to include a large number of variables.
I remember when I was a kid someone told me that CRPG stood for "cyrillic RPG" because some isometric point and click rpg had development history from eastern europe and I just accepted it as fact. And later on getting introduced to the concept of Eurogames just further reinforced that misunderstanding lol. To this day I have no idea what prompted it.
That's some next level trolling 😂
That was a good troll! Premium grade, bred under top quality bridges! 😂
I was sure that CRPG stands for Chinese RPG, as opposed to JRPGs being from Japan. It made total sense to me because most games i saw tagged with CRPG were in fact from China (Troubleshooter Abandoned Children and a few more i forgot).
@@Lilith_Harbinger I was told that CRPG mean Computer Roleplaying Game, like traditional isometric games like Fallout 1&2 and Wasteland
From Pat and Woolie (from SBFP), I also thought CRPG stood for Computer RPGs.
The theory of Gary Gygax creating a perfect game in 6 days and then rested to recover spell-slots is obviously false, as I have yet to see someone not asking for a rest after the first encounter every day
If they shoot off all their spells in one encounter it's their fault, not Gary's.
I don't ask, I click
Nah, I tend to play mages, and I try to stretch things out to an adventuring day.
Use potions and scrolls to buffer emergency use.
Besides, it's not usually me who calls for a rest, it's the fighter who got clobbered, or the cleric who ran out of healing
It is one way 5e is better than previous versions. The combo of "short rest" and "Cantrips never running out" made resting more critical and more skippable. Anyone who blows their best moves on a trash fight and simply assumes they can rest in that dangerous place as time moves on deserves a TPK.
Options are (as always) superior than a lack of them.
23:24 I remember that fight, I thought to myself "what would really mess up a group of elite Oil Elementals? I know, fire!"
Which is how I then had to deal with a group of elite Fire Elementals.
Should have used soap.
Not only was my party cooked, my GPU was too!
@@futuza just soap would be ineffective. There needs to be something polar as well to make the soap actually work
I think three forces present in the dnd "genome" pull "RPG" games in different directions and it's using different ratios of these that causes the genre splits: Character progression (and by extension customization), character-defining story decisions (aka roleplaying,) and open-ended problem solving. Diablo and MMOs have a huge emphasis on progression. Failbetter games are typically progression/roleplaying hybrids, telltale games (from what I've heard) tend to be mostly about roleplaying. The witcher and divinity original sin games are roleplaying/problem solving hybrids. Tears of the kingdom is primarily creative problem solving. Fromsoft games lean towards progression/problem solving hybrids. Tons of games bolt on progression systems, dialogue trees, or physics interactions and we call all of those "rpg mechanics," but I think in reality they are feeding three separate hungers. Does anyone else agree/disagree here?
I think this is a very good way of thinking about it, during the drafting process I split things down more or less these lines but decided to go with the unofficial subgenre delineation instead, but you're basically spot on imo!
Character defining decisions or even problem solving have nothing to do with RPGs, all the original RPGs don't meet this criteria whatsoever.
The criteria I've found that holds up is:
-strategic turn-based combat based on statistics and rolls
-character progression
-an individual or party focus
Most people simply refer to non-RPGs, like Action-RPGs, as RPGs, when, for that example, it's an action game by every definition with *some* added RPG elements, which may or may not have a narrative storytelling focus.
@@SheonEver respectfully, the original rpg was dnd, and one of the strengths of dnd allows you to solve problems with creative thinking and stuff that isn't explicitly taken into account by your character's stat-sheet. Role Playing, by definition, involves inhabiting a character in a story and considering what decisions they would make. The idea of stratagy being a part of the mix is interesting though. Dnd was certainly born out of strategic wargaming. Whether it is considered an integral ingredient will likely vary from person to person like all of these. I'm not so much trying to define "this is what a true RPG is" and more "This is what all sorts of people consider RPG related in some way."
@@quincykunz3481 That's all fine and well. I am, however, only talking about RPGs as a genre of video games, which were conceived when video games were not centered around story or characterization. My only concern is having a concise definition that holds up under scrutiny, meaning that all RPGs meet that criteria, and games that are not RPGs do not. Other genres like fighting, first person shooter, platformer, puzzle, etc. do not vary person to person very much over what one should expect the core gameplay to be in one of those games -- it's not abstract.
It doesn't feel like a complete taxonomy to me, but I agree that those are salient features of the design space!
The issue with "character" progression though is... why should it only apply to characters? If I play a side-scrolling shooter game in which I can upgrade my ship after each level using points that I earned, why is that not an RPG? My ship isn't a "character" because it's not even sentient, but it's still a thing that I can build up mechanically as I play the game. Why shouldn't that count? Is this shooter actually an RPG Shooter?
You shouting out Moony when I've spent my evenings over the course of the past two weeks binging literally all of the Moon Channel videos. They're literally *all* good.
Same! Especially the one about trans representation in Japanese/community-focused cultures in general's video games
@@cheddarcheezit2647 Trans representation in games is so important to me, but personally, the one about always killing G-d in video games aligned even more with my life goals.
What define an RPG is any game where you get an item and you keep it for later in case you need it and you see the credit rolling still having the item in your inventory.
Minecraft is an RPG
I mean, there's a different possible (and more literal) interpretation of role playing term, which is that you're playing the role of a given character in a story. Now that kinda boils the genre down to nothing as every game with a main character is an RPG by that standard.
And how RPG is usually applied is it's just some degree of character costumization.
I will say, most games that call themselves RPGs don't really give you that feel of roleplaying a character, but a lot of them do.
So Call of Duty was an rpg all along
The only reason they're called "role-playing games" was to distinguish D&D from the war-games it descended from in which the player controls an army; in D&D you control a single character. But of course a lot of video games work that way, so it's no longer a helpful name. Sadly we can't change it.
@@PlatinumAltaria There is a little more to it and it can be changed not easily but it can, is a little bit of a big subject just for a comment but there are a few points to how and why that could change
The thing is, video game genres are supposed to inform the player of what kind of gameplay they can expect from the game, and however you qualify that, it has to be able to stand up to scrutiny for what other games are and aren't that genre. Saying a game is about 'playing a role' doesn't inform people of literally anything, and all manner of games would meet that criteria, so it's simply not useful from a categorical standpoint.
@@SheonEver but no interpretation of RPG will ever inform the player of the type of gameplay a game has, as this video demonstrates. There are too many different types of RPG. And guess what, there are RPGs that are shooters. Just look at mass effect. So how do you draw the line? Or are you just saying that RPG as a term itself is completely useless?
RPG means rocket propelled grenade. Discussion over.
The only true answer
RPGs always have been simulators of a cleptomaniac murderhobos, no?
The point is in RPG you CAN be that or, say, a paladin. In most action games you can ONLY be a murderhobo - emphasis on murder in general :D
@@armelior4610 there's always plenty of murdering, the only question is what moral reason or lack thereof is the purpose of the murdering, and who/what you're murdering
"The main appeal is character - making you care about these little guys on your screen" said to a backdrop of a scene from Xenoblade 3 that literally gave me chills seeing on my screen again - point illustrated perfectly.
Nah, for me the main appeal as RPGs as a whole was always progression, things like leveling, equipment/loot and skill and ability attainment typically through skill trees, the appeal of RPGs has always been about building either a character or a party of characters either through a class system or a customizable classless system by picking attributes, equipment/loot, and skills/abilities, story is great but what makes an RPG a RPG is progression
I went for the story and the world.
"Sableye identified RPG" absolutely killed me 😂
Dwarf fortress' adventure mode captures the analog role playing feeling the best in my mind. It's a world created in parts by the player and the player can jump in to this world to experience playing a role in it. What is it like, to be a character in this world? It's an experience, that turns into a story instead of a story, that is experienced.
Kruggsmash does the LPs of DF justice.
I'm so happy you mentioned Failbetter games! I'm currently playing Fallen London while watching this :D
Super text heavy, but some of the most interesting lore and setting I've ever come across.
"Role Playing Game" made total sense when it was pen and paper, on the tabletop, with friends and a GM. You were actively role playing then, you had no choice.
But with the transition to videogames RPG, a lot of the role playing stuff was lost (except when early MMORPGs forced you to group to achieve anything).
Now the role playing piece is making a huge comeback with games like Baldur's Gate 3, because of the advances in technology and the amazing expertise of some teams of developers.
Yeah! Baldur's Gate 3 dethroned all so-called RPG in the peak of RPG mountain, leaving them in iceberg
@@alyasVictorio Can you please tell me how did Baldur gate 3 dethrone all those so-called RPGs ?
@@sanjaychhetri5399 Most role-playing games (rpg) didn't properly apply the actual term of "role-playing" because it's too linear no matter how different your choice is (I mean these choices are suppose to took to different scenarios/routes like both Mass Effect and Baldur's Gate 3 had)
Even in TTRPGs, I wonder if you are playing a Role,
when you are just playing yourself, with your own intelligence, morals and probably goals
And not forgetting Ultima Underworld - which inspired Carmack to create his own engine(s) and FROM Soft to create King's Field and much later - Souls saga.
Ultima itself was legendary RPG saga that sadly become forgotten. At least Sven from Larian is taking some inspiration from Ultima 7 Black Gate....
I remember Ultima Underworld, and it was in the clips at 11:37
It was made by Looking Glass Tech, genius programmers way ahead of their time.
It had objects with real physics, you could throw bottles in an arc.
This is one of the best videos what i have ever seen on the platform. This research, this constructive info about the games. Brings tears to my eye…
Honestly, I think we should just use a different term for those stat-grinding games. They feel different enough from the more character customisation/choice focussed games to warrant being considered a different genre.
Honestly the whole point of Role Playing Games were to allow the player to play a role, and back when we were starting to explore this whole game concept in the 80's, we (as in game developers for both tabletop and computer games) just didn't have the experience or the hardware to do much with it. Numbers stood in for relative levels of attributes, dice rolls or random number generators stood in for the inherent chaos of reality, and there was a _lot_ of filling in the blanks that we were doing with our imaginations.
We have enough computing power in our consoles or PCs to not just assign an agility to a player, we can actually give a player a boost to their inputs to adjust the difference between the player and the character. We can better hide the randomness behind movement and our AI instead of having a number meet a threshold to hit or miss. We don't _need_ to do all the number crunching or turn based abstractions to represent these things.
That's not to say that these number crunching games can't be Role Playing Games, that we do/don't need intensely deep choice in play paths, we don't need extensive character customization that may or may not have bearing on the rest of the game, or that they _have_ to have these things to be RPGs. I'll stand by my belief that the best modern role playing game that I've played is Doom 2016, because it allowed the player to perfectly Play the Role of Doomguy. No branching paths, no deep character customizations, but a finely crafted game that allowed me to Play a Role better then the Divinity games, the Pathfinder games, or any of the other RPGs out there.
That being said, I love my turn based games (I'm sad that the franchises that are known for them are going to action). I love my number crunching stats flowing into various actions and abilities that have an effect on the universe in the game. I love my meaningful choices that have consequences throughout my playtime. I love spending nearly an hour building a character in character creation. But we don't _need_ these things to play a role in a Role Playing Game.
@@leadpaintchips9461 im really interested in what you said. I also love doom 2016 and rpgs in general but never really thought about the genre like that. But if rpgs were born by uniting rolepaying whith strategic combat etc shouldnt the best rpg be judged by how it units these elements? What you think? And also im curious about your work and whats your favorite "not modern" rpg.
@@diydylana3151 not true. Sure TTRPGs mainly came from mechanics-driven wargames but on the other hand live-action RPGs came from century-old murder parties and historical reconstitution performances which emphase on acting and narration.
@@diydylana3151 they were not all based on D&D, but on different early TTRPGs, sometimes influenced by the same roots as live-action and not always as mechanics-driven. Adam himself said in the video that the first D&D edition was a mix of both world. In practice though, most GMs reward roleplay, not grinding/optimization and TT roleplayers generally don't appreciate hack n' slash scenarios after the few discovery sessions.
The nature of programming and the computing limitations didn't allow the depth of improvisation provided by TTRPGs, that's the practical reason CRPGs started with combat-oriented scenarios like dungeon crawlers. When PCs became quite powerful and storage became quite large, some perpetuated that lineage were others took the opportunity to include the missing roleplay part.
@@leadpaintchips9461 Those are some great points and inspirational for someone wanting to build a game! I suppose we don't need hard numbers or stats to represent everything!
I've always thought "adventure game" is more accurate as a collective name for these types of games, but even that doesn't fit everything. Naming issues really just arises when trying to lump a lot of diverse things together
before watching, yeah i was suprised when i first learned what rpg stands for. All that time i had played games, i did not think what i was doing was roleplaying.
Adam discovers the sandbox v railroad and rules heavy vs rules light discussions of TTRPGs
Don't forget the narrative rpg vs combat rpg discussions in those spaces as well.
I think you hit the nail on the head as to why I love RPGs so much, and I never even realized it until now. I've played all kinds, from Disco Elysium to Fallout 76, and I love them all because of the ability to create a fully customized character that interacts with the world in a unique way. Also, as an avid D&D player, its cool to see that every RPG game on the market can trace their roots back to it in some form or another. Excellent video.
I felt so much joy when I discovered Life is Strange (and later Night in the Woods, Edith Finch, Embracelet, Norco, and Disco Elysium) --RPGs that were actually about story and roleplaying, not combat and grinding XP. Don't get me wrong, the former can be fun and there are great RPGs with great stories out there (cough, FFVII, cough), but it's ironic how we've come to associate RPGs with combat, while many of the games actually built around story and role-playing, like Life is Strange... don't even get called RPGs.
Yeah it's a real shame that a certain subsection of what the RPG represents has kind of pushed out other, equally good, games. That's a large part of what inspired me to make this video!
I would say Life is Strange and Night in the Woods are adventure games, which is a different but equally ancient genre.
@@ArchitectofGames doesn't help that the abbreviation RPG doesn't say that much. A role to play can be in combat or in a story or both.
not really. RPG's are still about role playing. What the "general public" thinks does not concern me, as most idiots are part of that group.
Any CRPG (classical role playing game) is about playing a role. Be it pillars of eternity, divinity, baldurs gate...
Then there are JRPGs (Japan RPG) which are a problem in my eyes but as long as weebs like em... well what are you going to do than grinding xp to just progress? Boring genre to me, but to each their own.
Then there are ARPGs (Action RPG) they are Diablo and it's many clones and Path of Exile. They typically focus less on role playing and more on character building and item grinding. But they stem from what used to emulate DnD, a typical dungeon crawler RPG.
Then there are RPGs like Skyrim, Witcher etc... in which again, you are playing a role. And is there fighting? Yes there is. But thats not a bad thing. Every story has coinflict and violence is a great way to portrait conflict and stakes in a story. Also it is fun, engaging and great to look at.
What you are talking about are more like interactive movies. The story is (more or less) set in stone and you just tagg along from cutscene to cutscene solving meaningless riddles and puzzles to get to the enxt story bead. Which is fine, some are really great. But they are not any more role playing games than any other role playing genre.
Life is strange 🤮 night in the woods 🤮
It depends on the players. Most people play it like a videogame but others decide to play as a character and they try to make decisions based on the personality of the character. For example is not the same to play as a selfish rogue that distrusts people than as a monk that treats everyone with compassion and his objective is to make a better world. But let's be honest most people just play the game and do not roleplay or just roleplay as themselves in the fantasy world and take the decisions they would take if they were there.
Thing is, most RPGs are not built for that, not even the most popular TTRPG is.
There's a point where you're better off just making up a story and writing it down.
Even Rimworld is better at the RP aspect than most RPGs out there.
Hell, i've seen better and more consistent RP in SS13/14 than in any other RPG
True, also, love the TWEWY pfp.
I'm not even sure if it's true most people don't roleplay. At least I don't imagine they do, I haven't seen statistics on that.
@@rompevuevitos222 aint rimworld an RPG tho? no idea what SS stands for if it aint some Hitler thing lol
I recently started playing Elex which is weird in that it's difficult to actually properly roleplay even though the game seemingly encourages that, because of it's pretty strict systems. As an example it is sorely lacking in basic NPC chat interactions helping with directions both literally and narratively, when it's obvious how much sense they would make. It's a bit sad, really - I can still enjoy the game for what it is but I can't help but think how even small improvements could have elevated it greatly
I feel it is important to point out that D&D wasn't just Chainmail. They just used chainmail to resolve combat. They also we stealing ideas from other sources to resolve the different pillars of gameplay. This proves that the tradition of just taking stuff from other sources has been with the hobby since the beginning and DMs/GMs should never feel bad for going, "Wow I like this and want to put it in my game!"
Early on halflings were called hobbits too, until the Tolkein estate found out and made them change the name.
Yo! Good work on shouting out the trails series by Nihon Falcom! It isnt just my favorite JRPG, or even RPG in general, but my favorite game series in general. It's a very under appreciated series, so i love seeing it get some love!
It's a big investment, but it can be very rewarding (and frustrating at times. Cf the Curse).
Very few games have made things like walking around and talking to NPCs so rewarding, however (Sky 1 is mostly that, and it absolutely hooked me).
You'd think after 10 games, I'd get sick of them. But no, I'm playing Reverie and still having a blast!
I really want to get into the series but it really does look daunting, considering they're long games with more than a handful of entries. At a glance the whole long term worldbuilding, reoccurring characters and each game being connected to each other really appeals to me. What would you or any other fans would say are the other main appeals of the series?
@Nachy This is just my opinion, but the orbment system, especially in the crossbell games, is just a better implementation of FF7's Materia system in terms of building out your characters.
@@Nachy Outside of the obvious appeal (the gale really rewards looking around everywhere and backtracking), it also has a really solid battle system that for lots of cool strategies.
They are enormous time sinks, especially if you want to get as much as possible in a single playthrough. I find talking with the NPCs extremely rewarding since they're mostly all named individuals with their own (basic) personalities, but it easily doubles the playtime.
I had identified years ago that RPG (Role-Playing Game) is a misnomer. But I couldn't quite dial in on what they ought to be called. I think Adam has done a great job of identifying the core of these games: Character Progression. So if we wanted a more accurate name, CPG (Character Progression Game) would be much more fitting.
The core elements of an RPG are:
-strategic turn-based combat based on statistics and rolls
-character progression
-an individual or party focus
I didn't watch the whole video, but the reason they're called RPGs is because they use a combat system reminiscent of pen & paper roleplaying games.
@@SheonEverIt does not need to be based on rolls or the presence of a combat system for a table top RPG.
@@paulodelima5705 That's true. It's really D&D, specifically, that inspired the genre.
@@SheonEver The problem is RPG is used so broadly, only character progression is consistent across all usage of the term. That is the point this video came to and I agree with it.
There are various games that labeled as RPGs that don't have turn-based combat. And individual or party focus applies to everything not considered a strategy/puzzle game.
@@brentchance1589 That is true, and it creates the issue that people inexplicably think that mass effect and pokemon red are the same genre, while mass effect and call of duty are different genres (even though pretty much all shooters have some form of progression now -- guess they've all changed genres and are now RPGs?). Of course, other games where you also progress, like dating sims, don't get called RPGs, because most people can't meaningfully define RPG due to it's constant misuse. It's irksome how it, alone, has become such a vague and abstract genre where everyone gives a different definition of what it means.
To me "RPG game" always meant "character building adventure game".
That's probably the most accurate definition of rpg games I have ever heard!
So the R in RPG has nothing to do with it?
@@Jonassvensson-uv9zd Well if you want to get really pedantic about it, you are playing a role in literally every game. Even genres like RTS have you playing the role of a commander. Of course that's not what anyone means when they say RPG.
@@GG-bw5qd Exactly, so what does the R really mean? Some time ago I played paper RPGs which was less rules driven than D&D. I actually think D&D is a bad example in the video because how combat and rules focused it is. The point was having the freedom of building a character with a background and personality of your choice, and then acting with it.
To me it's about being able to affect the story of a game with your choices and play out different roles or play styles. The key thing being giving players agency over character choices. Things like Dragon Age, or Mass Effect, or Fallout New Vegas do this really well. The other aspects of a game like character classes, levels, tactical strategy, combat, stat progression, unlocking abilities, etc. can help support this idea of giving the player choices and play styles, but are completely separate concepts. These are different from giving the player the ability to make choices and have it effect the outcomes. Regardless, the "RPG" label at this point has become a meaningless buzzword so we need new terminology to differentiate what we're talking about when we describe a game. Perhaps a better term to describe what I'm talking about is "choose your own adventure" or "branching story choice game".
To me it's about being able to affect the story of a game with your choices and play out different roles or play styles. The key thing being giving players agency over character choices. Things like Dragon Age, or Mass Effect, or Fallout New Vegas do this really well. The other aspects of a game like character classes, levels, tactical strategy, combat, stat progression, unlocking abilities, etc. can help support this idea of giving the player choices and play styles, but are completely separate concepts. These are different from giving the player the ability to make choices and have it effect the outcomes. Regardless, the "RPG" label at this point has become a meaningless buzzword so we need new terminology to differentiate what we're talking about when we describe a game. Perhaps a better term to describe what I'm talking about is "choose your own adventure" or "branching story choice game".
I usually like a mix of multiple genres though, so it makes the matter all the more confusing, because I really like skill based combat systems. Also giving a variety of tactical choices and skill trees to provide replayablitity with different combat styles is nice. But I wouldn't say those extra things make them an RPG, those are different game genre, that help improve what I think of as a "choose your adventure RPG".
Interesting video.
Originally D&D wasn't about narrative or even playing a character in the acting out a character sense. Role simply meant fighter, wizard or thief, it was the "role" that was played in the game in the same way a soldier's role might be medic, sniper or grunt. Character, personality and narrative did come along later, but it wasn't the starting point.
Its also worth remembering that tabletop RPGs (as opposed to video game RPGs) have evolved over the last fifty years and the variety of TTRPGs is even greater than that of video game RPGs. Modern RPGs don't just trace ancestry back through video games to D&D, they also trace back through newer TTRPGs, and back to D&D through them.
To throw even more confusion in the works, TTRPGs have been influenced by, and descend from, video game RPGs for thirty years or more now. The family tree of any RPG, TT or VG, is deeply twisted and incestuous!
So what is a roleplaying game? Well better minds than me have shown its impossible to define what a game is, what playing is is as hard to define and roles mean different things so I'm buggered if I know.
That's a common truism, but not exactly true. Because the golden rule of rpg, including D&D, was: once the rulebook moved from seller to GM's hand, it was now the GM's game. There were many, MANY tidbits of personality and narrative even before D&D was developed since Dave Arneson had some around his heavily modded Chainmail games.
But, even if you disagree and think those testimonies are revisionist and D&D was solely about tactical roles, remember that a few years after D&D other rpg were published. And those absolutely have those elements, hell in some very early games like the 1978 Runequest, those are central to the game. And Runequest had no role, since it had no classes, no alignment, no levels.
@@LiraeNoir AFAIK be more accurate to say that Arneson and the rest were _surprised_ to find people playing almost entirely for the sake of narrative and intentionally making "bad" decisions. It's just not how they envisioned the game they made, even if they knew people would play differently when they got their hands on it. So yeah, almost immediately RPGs were as much about improv storytelling as anything else, but it seems like that's primarily because of other people's contributions (RuneQuest being a great example. Not even just an early example, my favorite RPG by a longshot is Mythras.)
I came here to find help categorising my ever growing steam list.
I leave even more confused and hopeless than before.
Not that your other videos are bad. On the contrary, they're all great. But I think this is your best video so far. Really nice study of the origins of RPG's, in a really interesting presentation. Congrats
Oh hell yeah, nice to see Moony getting a shoutout. Seriously, the "why we kill gods in jrpgs" is a masterpiece.
+1 on the shoutout to Moon Channel, they have some great videos that really tie in with this one.
As a kid an RPG is any game with you get experience points.
As an adult I think I was pretty close.
I understand completely. I've lost track of the number of times I got lost in astarions eyes. Makes playing the game pretty difficult at time.
I think after 23 years or so of playing Tabletop RPGs, the closest you can get to that experience is Immersive sims and so they should be the genre we actually call roleplaying games. But uh... I love all the RPG genres so I don't really mind.
Interesting take. I would strongly disagree personally, immersive sim are extremely focused and limited. In Dishonored you can't just stop a current mission to have a beer at a pub, talk to people, maybe listen to some rumors. You're very much on rails. Now, those are rugby shaped rails where you can take a lot of small detours that join back at the same point. But it's very focused, very linear.
Personally (also after decades of tabletop rpg) I would say I get more of a rpg vibe and experience from Crusader Kings 3 for a example without a rpg label, with the characters feeding off gameplay ruleset and the gameplay feeding back off character in a virtuous loop, openness, deep player agency, and world reactivity.
@@LiraeNoir In my experience, if you're in a mission in a tabletop RPG, you are generally going to get weird looks if you decide to stop the mission and go have a beer at a pub. Like to a point where someone might say something.
I would agree with you on the crusader kings, but I think it's more like a tabletop roleplaying game than many other games for the same reasons that immersive sims are.
Text MUDs are also a good place, since the text interface removes a lot of the built-in assumptions that graphics necessarily create and returns you to a state similar to how a tabletop player narrates description and action. Indeed, one of the ways I've actually played tabletop RPGs with friends across the world is by logging into a personal MUD server and just emoting actions together there. Whisper OOC stuff and say dialogue out loud.
@@LiraeNoir Out of curiosity, have you played (or heard of) Shadows of Doubt? It's an open world imsim that seems to be much more freeform than traditional imsims are. (I also think Streets of Rouge 2 (not to be confused with Streets of Rage) might be of interest)
Completely agree.
Role Playing vs Roleplaying, ie Specialization vs Acting, or Mechanics vs Story.
Moon Channel is the first channel you've plugged in your after the video segment that I was already aware of. In fact I've been subscribed to Moon Channel for a few months now, and I agree that his video on why one so often slays god in jRPGs is a must watch.
The bird facts in this video are high level, i'm a fan already.
Time to go back to D&D 2nd Edition! The last time a D&D release wasn't pretty broadly hated because most people couldn't pass the math test required to get started, and the people who could loved it.
Havent watched yet, just putting my own attempt to define it before watching.
There was an extra credits video I liked a long time ago that described JRPGs and WRPGs which is where I get most/all of my definition from.
RPGs are games that focus on telling a story and/or exploring a setting, and has this as a core aspect of the game.
In this, WRPGs focus on self expression. By allowing the player choices to express the character as they like.
Which often results in more focus on the setting than story to allow room for the main character to fulfill whatever role the player chooses without impacting the story.
While JRPGs often have fixed characters, which allows for a deeper focus on the story. Where the player is observing a story rather than creating one.
In JRPGs you are the character
In WRPGs the character is you
All the games that were called RPGs when the genre came into existence had no more focus on storytelling than any other game of the time. I can't believe this concept is still circulating just due to the name.
Holy moly dude. You put so much effort into the background entertainment of the video, it's kind of incredible.
“It’s a game where you roleplay” ahh yes, The Sims, the best RPG
If only it were so simple. Love how you picked it apart! As someone else pointed out about disparate and distinct systems it’s such a diverse umbrella term between progression (levelling up), influence on story (being given choices), *lack of influence on a story* (embodying a role given to you), specific type of combat. And things can be disqualified as an RPG for reasons beyond that such as its setting. It’s a mess
Sims is indeed an RPG. So is project Zomboid, or maybe even minecraft. And yes, final fantasy is indeed not an rpg.
Every time I saw footage from Xenoblade 3 in the background, especially when "CHARACTER" was shown in bold text, I smiled a little bit.
Hi Adam! I've loved your channel for years now, and am humbled by your kind words. By some incredible coincidence, I have a video releasing this weekend on the topic of MMORPGs that also features a "weird little model." The video's going through final pass editing, but I might have to go back now and add a paragraph about the evolution of Galapagos finches if for no other reason than to add a nickel to @2010AZ's hypothetical collection.
I have a lot of respect and admiration for your work, and I adore the video. Thank you again, for the shout-out!
The pleasure is all mine, you do great work - and good luck with the vid!
Saying that the original D&D can't be fun just flies in the face of how popular it became, it's legacy in general and the surging movement of the OSR using those older systems as templates that, at least in my opinion, generate far more enjoyment than the current versions of D&D.
I think some people get too hung up on the literal meaning of "role playing" and forget that RPG video games began as games that borrowed from settings like Dungeons and Dragons but were not necessarily attempting to duplicate the openness and freedom of D&D as a whole. Final Fantasy, the original, has character classes, character stats, a party system, magic spells, a turn-based numerical combat system. Even character races drawn from classic fantasy settings like D&D, with Elves and Dwarves. But it's more like one specific scenario and story from D&D, rather than aiming to create a system within which you could freely roleplay. This is because video games and tabletop gaming have vastly different strengths and capabilities.
What most people dont realize, is that CRPGs are older then the modern conception of TTRPGs. Oubliette came out in 1977. It predates ADND, and any notion of rpg being anything beyond a multiplayer cooperative wargame. And compuiter RPGs up until the latter half of the 90s followed entirely in that mold. Hack, and Moria, and Wizardry and Ultima, all of these focused exclusively on combat. The first time I know of, of someone attempting to tell a story with a role playing game is Starflight, and oddly enough, the Battletech tie-in game, Crescent Hawk's Inception.
I’ve been developing a similar thesis for a few years now but I was always worried I might be barking up the wrong tree or that people might think I was crazy, so it’s always nice to see someone else having similar thoughts about these things.
What criteria have you come up for a game to constitute an RPG? :)
Even if you barked up the wrong tree, you'd be learning something and creating something. There is value in that. Don't let yourself make up excuses for why you shouldn't do something you're interested and passionate about.
@@SheonEver Honestly, that’s still a hard question to answer. I think it has less to do with the mechanics or overall design philosophy and more to do with the core experience a developer is trying to instill in the player, and that’s going to differ from person to person. At the end of the day, what I consider an RPG is mostly going to come down to which games give me similar feelings to other games I’ve played that were designated RPGs. Genre classifications are most useful as marketing terms anyway. A developer isn’t usually thinking “if I want to make an RPG, it has to have these elements.” They usually have a particular story they want to tell or experience they want to create, and they use the mechanics that best embody that experience. It’s the community that usually decides what terminology to use to refer to a game after it’s released.
@@Doshirrosden I have to respectfully disagree, I think people make it more abstract and interpretational than it is. Everyone understands which elements make a fighting game, or a shooter, or a platformer, or a racing game, or a puzzle game, and I don't think RPGs are any exception. The criteria that I've found fits real RPGs the best are:
-strategic turn-based combat based on statistics and rolls rather than twitch skills
-ongoing character progression
-an individual or party focus
That's the thing though, fighting in a fighting game, shooting in a shooting game, racing in a racing game, running and jumping in a platformer really is the experience you're going to have in those games. Any game that has a narrative focus over and above that is simply using the medium of that genre of game to also tell a story. Something that only tells a story, namely a visual novel, really doesn't qualify as a game at all, if it has no gaming element over and above choose your own adventure style decision making. RPGs may have a story as well, and it's a great medium to tell stories, but really you're going to spend most of your time engaged in RPG combat, leveling up and getting new equipment, in between story segments.
@@SheonEver I don’t disagree with your definition, but I think it applies to a specific kind of RPG. Those other genres have subgenres because a Doom fan isn’t necessarily going to be a Call of Duty fan, and a Mario Kart fan isn’t necessarily going to be a Forza fan. In the same way that different D&D groups have different house rules or creative priorities, different designers have tried to make games that capture what appealed to them about RPGs while putting their own spin on things.
Tha fact that you list every single game shown in your video, is why you are one of my favourite channels
I asked my parents to explain to me what roleplaying means, and I wish I could unhear the answer.
Darwin didn't do the research on the Galapagos Finches, that guy just named his book after Darwin. Darwin barely mentions them in his own book, but he focuses more on turtles, armadillos, and other birds.
You've taken on a pretty complicated topic here and I'm not sure you've ABSOLUTELY nailed it here. But bloody hell, you've done a better job than I could ever manage
RPG is just friends we made along the way, like for real
I have issues playing RPGs, I just stop playing those games before the end in 90% of cases (more than any other game genre).
Yet, most of my favorite games are RPGs or have heavy RPG elements.
So thank you for this video, I always knew something was off with the RPG label and now I understand what.
As one who has been playing Pen and Paper RPG's since 1982, at the age of 11, I can safely say that your initial answer is absolutely correct. If a Gamemaster is telling this awesome story and the 'players' are just sitting on their Duffs listening in stunned awe, it doesn't matter how good the story is. That is NOT an RPG. A Gamemaster's single Job is to create a compelling world that the players then tell their OWN STORIES, THROUGH.
That's it. That's All. You don't need dice, you don't need stats, you don't need a codified rules system and you certainly don't need an electronic device to do it.
But here's the problem- No Videogame 'RPG' in existence has ever been able to come anywhere near that. Why? Because to attempt that in a limited software program would require spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the thousands of (hopefully talented) writers needed to write a story with millions of permutations.
Many may think that's a joke, but it's actually not that far-fetched to do something on a scale in that ballpark. The money is there, it could THEORETICALLY be done. But it never will be. Because making a photorealistic world the size of Great Britain for a player to walk around in on a 1-to-1 scale, is Child's Play compared to doing that. Since Corporations are cowardly, lowest-common denominator groups, none of them will ever take that risk.
EA did objectively admit what an RPG was, back in 2012. In 'Mass Effect 3', you could turn the roleplaying function off. Aside from the utter insanity of what that implies (Imagine a Driving game where you could turn off driving. Or a Soccer game where you could turn off playing soccer.), what it DID showed clearly that they understood very, very well what an RPG 'really' is-
It completely removed even the illusion of any player choice.
Reminder that the J in JRPG was not bolted on by the Japanese creators but by American critics in an attemt to disparage them as somehow "lesser". They were just called RPGs in Japan.
It obviously went about as well as the attmept by the british government to disparage people from buying stuff "Made in Germany" by putting that label on them.
And that has nothing to do with how the term is used today, even if that was true. Which it probably isn't (and trying to find the actual origin of the term is like finding a needle in a haystack anyway, people have traced it to the 80s and 90s, which makes it _substantially_ harder). Yoshida was just whinging about Final Fantasy not being treated the same as Dark Souls in the west in spite of it being the most popular JRPG. It's plain as day with his ableist bullshit about "gamer pride" that he wanted FFXVI to be viewed like Dark Souls. You sure as hell don't see him saying the same thing about how anime is just animation in Japan even though the former term "Japanimation" sounds far less politically correct.
its a useful term for games that pretend to bave roleplaying elements but end up not having them insted.
RPG usually means that progression is locked behind the experience levels, instead of player skills at overcoming obstacles. That comes from D&D where the goal was to limit disjoint adventures to the characters of specific level ranges. D&D had roleplaying, because players had to be in a character, since it made no sense to wear sneakers and use a phone line in a medieval fantasy world.
Most roleplaying games are in my honest opinion, better defined as Character Progression Games. Most MMORPG's fall into this category.
Yep, that's basically it!
@@ArchitectofGames Yeah I've been arguing for that for years :p Glad to see I'm not the only one tired of the idea that wow is an "RPG" xD It is for a subset of players, but for the vast majority it's not.
That's the thing, RPG is not the definition of the genre, it's just the name of it.
@@SheonEver It is, but if a name is not descriptive of what it is, then that name loses meaning. I don't think keeping to just accepting "RPG's" for what they currently are is a good idea, because some of those games truly are role-playing games. It'd be better to have names for the different subsets that actually reflect what they are.
@@op4000exe Not true, it only loses meaning if people don't understand the genre it represents. Just look at the awkward mess of 'metroidvania', it doesn't matter that it's not called 'exploration platformers' as they should be; it only matters that people understand what gameplay elements the term represents. What an RPG represents from a gameplay perspective is this:
-strategic combat based on statistics and roles rather than twitch skills
-character progression
-an individual or small party focus (not an army)
The issue is many games that are not that are called RPGs because people don't know what the genre entails, mostly because games from other genres, like action-rpgs(action games by every definition with some added rpg elements, which everyone understands to mean statistics and progression, not having a narrative focus) get called RPGs, when they aren't.
Furthermore, RPG is already an expansive genre with multiple subgenres (jrpg, wrpg, crpg, srpg, mmorpg, traditional roguelike), all of which don't belong to any other genre *except* RPG.
Damn, the twist about the finches at the end caught me off guard hahaha amazing video!
So the conclusion is, roleplaying games are games that put emphasis on players caring about characters? That feels really nebulous to me, and can probably cover pretty much any game that has any kind of story. Is Rimworld an RPG because it's all about making a comfortable life for your little pawns and seeing them progress and thrive? Is Satisfactory an RPG because it's all about increasing the variety of items the character is able to manufacture? Is Need for Speed an RPG because you improve your car and driver over the course of the game? Is Civilization an RPG because you are advancing the interests of your leader?
Yeah we just sat through a 25 minute presentation and in the end he dodged a question that was put in the title? It is clear to me that crpg is way closer to "the rpg" than something like jrpg. I was expecting a more concrete dissection on every trope of this genre, evaluating them and setting up some kind of a bar separating "the rpgs" from "any game with characters" or "any game with some progression".
Just gonna leave my opinion on the game mentioned here from my own understanding of the genre and the video.
Rimworld for one is absolutely an RPG. Not perhaps in the most conventional sense but as he said, even Sims could be regarded as such. Anyways back to Rimworld, the game even features something akin to a Dungeon Master with it's 'Narrator' system and even markets itself as something akin to writing your own story.
Satisfactory on the other hand doesn't focus at all on the character but instead on the production lines. You are indeed improving your production but does it ever feel like your character actually improves or developed only the factory you are building. I think another aspect that was not that heavily mentioned is player choice in HOW the character progresses and grows, be it narratively or having to make choices in gameplay like skill trees or classes etc. Basically not just having upgrades that can all be achieved by the end but choices between mutually exclusive option.
That's also why lifestyle Rpg's like Harvest moon and such qualify but not Satiafactory. You usually have to make narrative choices with your characters relations to other characters, unlike satisfactory were your only concern is your production.
Need for Speed can be considered straddling the line but move more I thing the factor of players choice and mutually exclusive choices, be it in narrative or gameplay, makes it clear that NfS is not an Rpg. Cars can be considered strict upgrades and there is not usually mutually exclusive choices to be made. The characters skill improving is more something narratively you as the player have no input over and car upgrades are can be considerd some form of customisation I suppose but not directly linked to a character itself In a meaningful way.
Now civilisation. In the video was mentioned crusader Kings, also a strategy game where you usually control whole countries... well kinda anyways usually you only control the king of a nation specifically and you improve that specific characters in many ways, making decision about how that character improves.
In civilisation you have your nation and the leader well... kinda just exists as a representation of that nation than an actual character of their own. The science path in the game is once again just straight upgrades you all want to have and don't really offer many of these mutually exclusive choices, if at all. But the main crux is that a nation I NOT a character a person can relate to.
Perhaps that's another aspect is that the character/being/thing we are improving has to be something a human can relate/empathise with for it to qualify as a character to begin with. It doesn't necessarily have to be a human or even humanoid, as most people can easily emphasise with animals for example, but something akin to a singular living being(in the sense of consciousness) and not an abstract representation of many like a country or an inanimate object like a car.
I agree that this conclusion doesn't fully work, with too many counter examples to be useful. Although, your counter examples mostly don't work very well imo, you're pushing it :) Characters are not a focus of Need for speed or Civilization. There is no deep narrative focus, no arc work, and no deep gameplay focus and tools about them.
I think a focus on characters, both from narrative and gameplay, is AN aspect of crpg, but indeed I don't think that's the critical, fundamental heart of it.
I like to think of it like this:
There's games where you play a ROLE, and
there's games where YOU play a role
Seeing Suzerain being acknowledged in this video made my day :)
Victoria 3 but more sad: The Game
This video really puts into perspective just how much of a fustercluck this genre really is. RPGs are a genre that are hard describe, but you just kinda feel it when you play enough of them; But your description on character focus might be one of the better ways i've heard it described.
15:46 What I love about Baldur's Gate 3 is that it seems to be a "narrative RPG" WITH full voice acting AND combat. They didn't skimp on anything!
Pillars of eternity and Divinity have real similar mechanics but diffent vibes if you're looking for more in that area of rpg.
@@Nuka13 Forget PIllars, try Pathfinder Kingmaker instead, much better.
Full voice acting*
The MC is a silent protagonist or rather voiceless.
@@1InVader1wrath of the rigtheous too
Its a deliberate choice. Some gamers dont enjoy their own character having a voice since it's not their own.
thank you for crediting the music tracks in the video
love how the video starts exactly like the one from soviet womble about battle royale
Oh hey, nice to see Moon showcased here! That "Why all JRPG kill God" video was absolutely amazing, can't recommend it enough.
19:56 This is a sadly common misconception. As a DM who has run editions 3.0 - 5th, the longest being 4th, I can assure you that 4E embraces roleplaying every bit as much as its predecessors and successor. The primary differences come down to 1. significantly more standardized and symmetrical class design, 2. explicit, rather than implicit, class and monster roles, 3. significantly more emphasis on tactical movement and positioning in combat, 4. skill challenges, which provided structure and explicit win conditions to high stakes non-combat encounters (instead of the "argue with the DM about how many times you should be able to roll until you win or they tell you that you fail" chaos inadvertently pushed by previous editions). 4th Edition was significantly more tactical in its combat than 3rd, 3.5, or 5th, but this absolutely did NOT come at the expense of narrative freedom. Anyone who says otherwise is speaking from a place of ignorance.
I think it's more like, making the combat explicitly operate like a video game made it difficult for the players to use their abilities in creative ways. In classic D&D a player could just say their intention, like "I'm gonna try to hobble the ogre by cutting its tendons" and the DM may allow it and ask for a skill check. But in 4E you've gotta spec into that ability and it has an effective range, damage score, cooldown, etc. So like, it feels like cheating to try to do it anyway if you didn't buy the skilll.
I laughed out loud about the cool youth pastor thing. 🤣 That being said, i think this is one of your stronger videos. Thanks for posting it, it was enlightening and a pleasure to watch.
You somehow convinced me that modern Final Fantasy games didn't break a tradition, but envolved naturally to what they are now.
I've seen an interview with Hironobu Sakaguchi a while ago (though I can't find it again, so take this with a grain of salt) where he said that Final Fantasy is the blue (dialogue) boxes.
Granted, I haven't seen a lot of blue in a while, but that may still stands
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 thats... a very interesting way to say "story-driven". even if it turned out to be an urban legend, i want it to be true.
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740Isn't it just joke
@@vilarzky.m.6907Not really. It's saying the story makes it final fantasy, not the mechanics.
@@Avendesora JRPG check list
- Destined Protagonist
- Antagonistic embodiment of individualism
- A kingdom representing unchecked industrialization
- Some ancient power, usually an allegory for nature
- A young woman with a link to that power
- At some point the heroes need to kill God
All games require their participants to adopt roles. I am not referring to computer games or even only computer or table top role playing games. I mean all games, ever, sports, pastimes, contests, hobbies. So if you don’t adopt a role, you can’t play any games. The reductive term RPG is simply used to describe games that emphasise the development of the participant’s role over the activity/activities that’s being engaged in, as that is the emphasis. It matters less what limited actions (talk, fight, explore) you perform in the game and more who and what you are as you perform those functions. For me this is the way to interpret the term RPG in the modern era, as when you accept that all games require you to perform a role to some degree, you quickly see that it’s only a matter of emphasis.
Super interesting deep dive. I've recently been defining RPGs as games that have numerical representations of most of their internal systems since it seems like people tend to call something with numbers on screen "RPGish" nowadays.
My theory is that, because DnD was an attempt to gameify complex and lifelike interactions, it needed to be able to represent lots of real life things with tangible tools that could easily affect each other, and the perfect way to do that is by representing things with numbers. It made it a perfect fit for computers because all the computer would be doing is the busywork of calculating everything (ignoring the problem of a computer lacking the creative writing ability of a human DM). I think people became attached to the significance of the numbers, however, so computerized iterations of the RPG continue to represent background processes with numerical values even though that was no longer needed. A computer can represent background numerical calculations as pixels happening on screen, so what is the point of putting up a number next to your axe slicing through a goblin's neck? Isn't it clear what's happening? Yes, and it doesn't matter because that's not the point.
I think it's something of a simulacrum effect. People got attached to interacting with and thinking about the numbers because you needed the numbers in order to tangibly interact with an abstract system, but now in an era where the numbers are no longer needed because the computer is the one handling the busywork, people still want the numbers because of the unique feeling it gives us to see a direct numerical representation of our actions.
Consider these two different examples:
1) You take several turns in Octopath Traveler 2 to buff up your spellcaster so that on his turn he can triple cast a hyper-powered spell that deals 99,999 damage three times in a row and one shots a boss who then disappears in a puff of smoke.
2) You execute an enemy in God of War and Kratos rips them in half and tosses the pieces of their corpse on the ground.
The exact same thing is happening in both cases, which is that you are *demolishing* an enemy in a videogame, and both are viscerally satisfying, but for *completely* different reasons. God of War is satisfying because you are visually seeing a representation of extreme gore and violence that, if our world morally permitted the venting of ones' frustrations in such a way, would be VERY cathartic to perform. Octopath Traveler is satisfying because you made a complex web of compounding decisions that resulted in you being able to wield exponentially more power than the game seemed prepared for at the time.
I genuinely believe that if God of War showed damage numbers, health numbers, healing numbers, critical hit numbers, enhanced damage numbers, colored elemental damage numbers, etc, it would be considered an RPG. It already has stats and numbers on its gear, but because in the midst of combat all those systems are *merely* visually represented with particle effects and not number pop ups, people don't consider it an RPG. Yet FFXVI is considered an RPG even though it's far more similar to God of War than it is to Octopath Traveler 2.
I still think your definition is a good one, but I think there's something to mine as well. I think I'm more trying to identify *why* the profuse presence of on-screen numbers seems to produce such a specific effect in people and why people seems so eager to categorize games that do that into the "RPG" category, even though as you said, that word has a much more complex meaning.
There's plenty of people all over the Internet who, in fact, do not agree that FF16 is an RPG because it lacks party composition, status effects etc. It's reasonable to say that FF16 is being called an RPG because Final Fantasy is established as an RPG franchise and only a minority of people cares about arguing over stuff like this
@@M4Dbrat do you count yourself among them? The minority of people that care, that is?
@@Tohlemiach Well, I am in this comment section, so yeah, to a degree
representing things with numbers is just taking real world interactions and putting them into a language format that is easily understood by children. Numbers are shorthand logical arguments. Math is logic. Math is argument. Math is comparison. Math is the study of change. Numbers arent gamifying. Thats like saying putting distances in the real world into numerical systems called meters is gamifying.
@@neglectfulsausage7689 Maybe you misread my post, because you're making the same exact point. To quote myself:
"DnD was an attempt to gameify complex and lifelike interactions, it needed to be able to represent lots of real life things with tangible tools that could easily affect each other, and the perfect way to do that is by representing things with numbers."
I never draw a direct parallel between numbers and gameifying. The thing that is doing the gameifying, grammatically speaking, is DnD. It is an attempt to turn a fantasy adventure into a playable experience, thus a "game." Games are defined by iterative interactions with a set of rules, and numbers are very tangible, as you pointed out, so numbers are great way to represent real things, and in order to play a game you need real things that you can put in relation to each other in order to create rules to play the game by, thus numbers were a good tool to achieve this.
So no, it's not "like saying" that at all. Your example is completely wrong.
Also, numbers aren't just for children. I have no clue why you made that comparison. They make things easier for *anyone* to grasp, not just children. It's why governments are always talking about GDP. Way easier to point to a bigger number than talk about the infinitely more nuanced question of "how is our nation doing?"
Whenever I think of roleplay I think of gmod roleplay servers. When I see AAA games that are labeled as RPG I'm usually disappointed.
Of course RPGs arent about Roleplaying. It's in the name. They are Rocket Propelled Grenades, i don't think we have to argue about that definition.
Of course! How could I have been so blind!?
@@ArchitectofGames That would probably be due to the flashbang...
@@StuffandThings_😂😂
If I had a nickel for every time a video essay asked me "which is the real Galapagos Finch" I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it is weird that it happened twice!
The end about how the name Finch wasn't actually accurate reminds me of how Crabs are often not event related to True Crabs... they are typically things like Lobsters, Shrimp, or other crustaceans who evolved a similar shape to crabs.
Oh so THAT'S why I felt like my logo was unoriginal
One of my fave jrpg's is Tales of Symphonia, and one of the reasons has to be how it handles characters and their development. It's got a great overall story, and it weaves in all the stories of the individual characters beautifully. Not to mention it's got a lot of really solid mechanics, and a ton of mini-games and optional content. And the soundtrack is incredible. But none of that would work without the characters. That's an rpg to me.
A bit too old for my current taste.
I like blasting things with Shion's Full Beam shot in Tales of Arise
Playing on Arelith server of Neverwinter Nights, I think that's where I can find the true definition of roleplay.
Set in a world with its own rules, we are merely a small part of the ecosystem instead of being "the chosen one".
We craft our own story.
We set our own goals.
We find a way to fit ourselves into the crowd.
I ended up seeing players who roleplay mundane things other than class-based adventurers: Town's alchemist or woodworker, content with not going on adventure anymore because of "been there done that" factor. Local priests who provide for new players. Thugs who pickpocket adventurers who had just returned from lucrative journeys.
It felt so immersive. A plot is not set on you, meaning you literally can be whatever you want yourself to be.
Adam, whilst I love your conclusion & wrapup, I felt that the research and presentation thereof fell below your normal standard. I appreciate that this was especially hard in this video, as there was a huge amount of ground to cover and the video already hit almost half an hour length, so you do have my sympathies and understanding.
Just some of my concerns are (it's late right now and I'm writing on my phone):
1. Whilst you did acknowledge chainmail's influence on D&D, ultimately you glossed over the true living history of the game and surrounding culture. Here on RUclips, Matthew Coalville has some excellent videos exploring the dungeon crawler roots, and how these still strongly affect the game design to this day (and arguably cause many of the system's issues).
2. Citing diablo as influencing WoW is absolutely true, but completely glosses over the real history of the game design of MMOs, with WoW being very much a dikuMUD derivative. This would have been actually a really fascinating angle to look at, given how the split between dikuMUD and MUSHs ties into the dungeon crawler versus role playing angle that really lies at the heart of the topic you were discussing. For me personally I look to the works of raph koster around this, but many others have also looked at how this transition from MUDs to MMOs happened.
And finally, 3. JRPG. I too keep reaching for this term, but honestly ever since Steph Sterling's video on the origin of the term, I try to avoid it and feel it's important to look critically at how we use this expression - especially since it came ultimately from racism. There's absolutely a distinct genre needing a name, but as you even point out, the character-led angle to them was never a 'japanese' thing.
As I said, I thought your eventual conclusion was spot on and well summarised, and I absolutely appreciate how researching & writing these is an utter nightmare, so you have my sympathies & understanding :)
I've thought about this too. There really is no rpg that really let's you interact with the world as character class. Never have I ever played a monk in a game and actually doing monk-like activities. The monk just serves as a healer for the party. The same with playing a rogue. It's not really about committing frauds, extorting people or trick your way to power. It's about dealing much damage without taking damage. Classes are basically there for you to choose which role you serve in combat, not really about how you interact with the world. Heck, even warriors are just there to serve as "tanks". You don't really serve in a military or a knightly order with the purpose of maintaining order and stability in a chaotic world.
That's because those "class" in most video games are mostly a vestige from early RPGs. Many tabletop games did away with the concept as soon as the early 80's. The class mechanic has then be standardizes and formatted to fit combat archetypes specific to video games that, unfortunately or not, where then reabsorbed by tabeltop RPGs. For exemple, no tabeltop RPG players in the 90's I knew used words like DPS, healer or tanks, that was not relevant to the tabletop experience.
So my take-away from all of this is that Duolingo is an RPG
RPGs *were* never about roleplaying, but they were, and are, about having systems inspired by pen & paper roleplaying games, which is where the awkward genre name comes from. The systems being:
1) strategic combat based on statistics and rolls rather than twitch skills
2) persistent character progression
3) based around an individual or party
Every RPG that existed when the term came to prominence used these systems, everyone knows when a game adds 'RPG Elements' it's referring to systems of statistical progression, and everyone knows what 'RPG Combat looks like -- picking your characters' actions from a list of options. Yet, when it comes to defining what an RPG is, most people will come up with something entirely abstract and interpretational that excludes many, if not most, RPGs, and includes many games from decidedly different genres; usually 3rd person action games, action-platformers or shooters.
I don't like that it's the TECHNICAL part of DND that many people have come to think of as "that's what RPGs are". Such things as hp bars, char stats, loot, inventory, class should not define an RPG in my opinion.
I like to think that RPG should have gameplay roleplaying, dialog roleplaying, variation in methods of solving problems, both gameplay (for example, level design in immersive sims), stealth/combat/physics/dialog methods, and dialog variation necessarily, which can also lead to the solution of the quest without combat. THAT'S IT. Everything related to the choice of "class", skills, perks, dice, character stats, loot, even inventory - all this can be anywhere and is NOT part of the RPG now for me. My emphasis is precisely VARIETY. Not the roleplay per se, but the variation. And deep variation. It is the depth of this variation that will distinguish RPGs from, for example, the choice of dialogs in Titanfall 2.
For example, if Baldurs Gate 3 had combat like SEKIRO, but with the systematics, variation, story and all the other stuff left over from Baldurs, it would be the game of the century. I like to think that RPGs shouldn't be limited to the DND system and cubes with math.
None of the games they distinguished as RPGs when the term came into existence meet that criteria, so they must have thought something else defined these games. The criteria I've found holds up the best is:
-strategic turn-based combat based on statistics and rolls
-character progression
-an individual or party focus
There are some major historical flaws to this video, the biggest of which is ignoring that Ultima (and its 0-th iteration Akalberh, bot single-handedly developed by Richard Garriott in the late 70’s and early 80’s) *is* the very first iteration of RPGs from their table-top version to the computer. CRPGs were not born when computers became powerful enough, as this video indicates, to support their virtual worlds; they were there since the 80s. The original Final Fantasies borrowed heavily from the NES ports (or re-imaginations) of the Ultimas. The Ultimas themselves started stepping away from the combat-only focus as early as 1985 with Ultima IV. In the 90s, Ultima VI and VII and entire day/night schedules for their NPCs. I suggest the author of the video to review their literature on these games. Most videos on the work of Richard Garriott should contain the main information.
Good! Not a single frame of The Legend of Zelda. It always grinds my gears when somebody calls it a RPG, which happens a lot!
Script Planning: Ok, what’s the best analogy to use for videogames?
Sovietwomble and Architect of Games: GALAPAGOS FINCHES!
One thing that bothers me about games like the Elder Scrolls series is that you can easily become leader of ALL the factions. I feel like it might be more interesting if completing certain tasks would make others no longer available, the world changing with you in a way. I guess I just feel more engaged when there’s some pushback, and replayability might be better when your actions have irreversible consequences.
Elder Scrolls sandbox strengths are also its weaknesses. It really does throw you plenty of things and allows you to go about them however and whenever you want, but at the price of making everything in the game feel like they're independent each other rather than have the world, your actions and the results influenced by each other.
I fully support longer video essays from you, my dude, this was great.
I think what I find is that many games that used to be defined as action adventure games are now being called RPG's. Many old action adventure games used to also have RPG elements. Not sure when the change to them being considered RPG's happened.
Am action adventure game is a game with a narrative focus, and an interaction layer that could be considered action. More modern examples would be The Last of Us, Uncharted, or God of War.
What separates them from RPGs, is the lack of player choice, either in regards to story, or mechanical interaction.
In contrast, three very similar games, that are RPGs would be Mass Effect, where no meaningful choice can be made regarding mechanical interaction, but the story is entirely decided by the player, Pillars of Eternity a game with a set storyline, but an absurdly constumizable breadth of mechanical interaction, and Dark Souls, a game.with a bit of both of the above.
What defines an RPG is player control over the narrative and or method of mechanical interaction.
Great video, however, it is role playing. The main thing about RPG (as opposed to other genres) is that the focus is on the skill of the avatar, not on the skill of the player. You might be able to change the story, but it will involve some skill check. You might want to try to fight this enemy, but it's difficulty will be guided by your stats, you might visit this lava area, but your survival will be controlled by the resistance of your gear. Pretty much all the games here have this in common.
tldr: you decide what the character does, but the character decides how successful it is, hence, role playing.
I always interpreted rpg as the role each of your characters play in battle/gameplay. like defender, healer, dps, etc. and for games like bloodborne the way you battle changes greatly on your build.