What defines a RPG?

[Torillian]

Mnementh said:

Torillian said:

oooo....someone actually cared enough to read it and discuss it with me. You're my new favorite forum poster, guy. much love. Now on to the discussion.

So you are the author of that article? It is somewhat confusing, as here you have a nick, but the article is signed with your name. Probably it would help, if the articles also include the nick.

Torillian said:

 Well I disagree with you that Monster Hunter fits the bill under my definition. The most important part of the definition is that the character themselves have stats that can be changed over time, while in Monster Hunter the base character remains the same and it is only their equipment that changes.

The mechanics IS the same as experience points: you make some achievements (kill foes) to increase the abilities of your character. It is hard to differentiate between stats associated with the character itself and stats associated with something external. The effect on the gameplay is the same. The only difference I can make out is, that you can change a weapon or armor in monster hunter, while you usually cannot change your character stats. But that's not true for alle games, some allow relearning skills...

Torillian said:
The reason I think Tokyo Jungle would count as an RPG is that the stats of the character itself are changing from generation to generation which is separate from the equipment that you can get to improve their performance. It's a minor distinction but without it you get a lot of games that I don't think anyone would usually call RPGs leaking into the genre. Increasing a character's damage and health through equipment is fairly common in Action titles particularly, such as things like the recently released Darksiders 2.  

Yeah, that's why my definition is about the control the player has over the development of the abilities of your character(s). That's a main difference. In Zelda you always have the same items at the same point in the game. Yes, you can omit heart containers, but that has only low influence on the abilities, the other effects are stronger.

Torillian said:
As for your definition, I hope you don't mind but I'm going to try and poke holes into it. That's how I settled upon my definition was trying to find things that fit my definition but I didn't think they should or usually are thought of as RPGs. If the only requirement is that you have some control over how the character plays through your decisions throughout the game then I think you'd have to include a whole lot of action games like God of War where you gain red orbs by killing enemies and you can use those to upgrade different weapons dependent on what you prefer to use. To me this fits your definition but I personally would not think of God of War as an RPG.

I only played a little God of War (the first) and wasn't much impressed, so I never played really much of it. How much does this customization of weapons influence Kratos? Does he really gets different with weapon customization? Are there different paths for customizing the weapons, or only 'better'?

Torillian said:
 Feel free to poke holes in my definition as well, I'm already happy enough that you just read the article and gave it some thought, so you'd have to try really hard to hurt my feelings.

How do you think about Pandora's Tower? As said, it has experience points and levels, and the stats go up if you level up. But you really have no influence about it. If you play the game a second time, it is the same Aeron. Maybe you have not fought so much monsters in between, so you are a level short the second time you face a certain boss, but overall there is no real difference. Your definition makes it clearly an RPVG. My definition not. And it doesn't feel as one for me, as the control over the char is the in my opinion the main point in the pen&paper RPGs.

Also some pen&papers have no mechanic like experience points. But they are RPGs all the same. You create your character and sit at a table with friends and do crazy stuff. The XP-mechanic is common, but not the only way to develop the char.

 

I am indeed the article writer.  I apologize for the confusion but since gamrConnect and gamrReview are now separate entities it doesn't make a ton of sense for my forum nick to make an appearance on gamrReview.

You're right that the end result is the same whether you are getting increased stats or better equipment, and it's largely an arbitrary distinction, but I make it because it helps to define the genre in a way I find acceptable and doesn't include highly variant and off the wall games such as God of War.

To me player choice is secondary because it gets used in so many other genres.  Adventure games often have a large amount of player choice throughout so it would be difficult to make a distinction between something like Heavy Rain where your choices dictate which characters remain alive throughout the story and skyrim or Fallout since both have a lot of player choice in their gameplay mechanics.

It doesn't make a massive effect, no.  But that means you have to define between areas of grey like "which of these games has an acceptable amount of character development through the game to be an RPG, which is a situation I did my best to avoid.

Yes I'd call Pandora's Tower an RPG even though you don't have any choices throughout the leveling process.  I'd suggest that since you can craft and change your equipment that it fits your definition as well.  I realize that my definition for RPG doesn't work for the table top iterations but I'm only trying to define the term as it pertains to video games.