What is an RPG?

[Jumpin]

HoloDust said:

Jumpin said:

While Dragon Quest is often considered the first RPG, there were games before it that used to used alternative means to simulate mechanics. The early Wizardry games used written commands instead of menu selection and such, and they also used out-of game manuals to describe the story - some people get confused thinking Dragon Quest lifted the mechanics off of Wizardry because they played the Japanese remakes/remasters of Wizardry that replaced the original mechanics with those from Dragon Quest; menus, HP, and such. For example, if you played a gaming console version of Wizardry, it wasn’t the original, but a Japanese remake. Also, it’s worth noting that Wizardry is WAY bigger in Japan than anywhere else. Anyway, the point being that Wizardry falls in the early phase of RPGs, while Dragon Quest 1 was probably the first feature complete RPG. If you know punk music, Wizardry is Velvet Underground, Ultima is the Stooges, Dragon Quest is like the Ramones, and Dragon Quest 3 is the Sex Pistols - the console remakes of Wizardry are like if the Ramones covered Velvet Underground songs. If that makes sense—to explain a little, The Stooges and Velvet Underground came about earlier, and are often considered punk or proto-punk because of the similarities, but The Ramones were really the first to put the full package together, and The Sex Pistols are the ones that gave it the coat of paint.

First time I hear anyone considers DQ as the first RPG, given that there was nothing proto about Ultima 1-4 (all released before DQ), which had overworld, random encounters, NPC interaction and dungeons - all characteristic of D&D, which Ultima copied. If anything, Proto VRPGs were long before on mainframes in universities, trying in various way to emulate TTRPGs of the time. Not that we actually called RPGs "RPGs" in 80s, most folks I knew referred to them as FRP (Fantasy Role Playing) games.

As for punk, I'd say proto punk goes long before Stooges, at least to Kinks, and probably earlier. Personally I would never consider Velvet Underground as anything near punk, Stooges, yeah, they were almost there, as well as MC5. For me, the first song that had that classic punk sound is New York Dolls - Trash

Heh. I was actually thinking of assigning Ultima to the New York Dolls. But chose The Stooges instead because better known.

Although, I’d call The Kinks Power Pop rather than Punk. Granted, there is a lot of stylistic similarity between Power Pop and Punk—you could probably call them cousins or siblings. The Kinks, no doubt, had direct influence on the genres and sub genres of Punk and Alternative all the way up to the 1990s. Anyway, to tie it back, The Kinks could be assigned to (and I’m just spitballing here) adventures (maybe text based), which have a lot of similarities to RPGs, and have similar influences as well as having influenced the RPG genre - perhaps we can call it Zork, which is the earliest one I can think of off the top of my head.