Author: Karl Paananen (---.mich.net)
Date: 07-24-2001 16:10
What is a role-playing game, and are CRPG's really role-playing games?
When role-playing games first appeared, everyone agreed that they were somehow different from other games. But it took people a while to figure out what the difference was between a role-playing game, like D&D, and a normal game, like, say, Monopoly. Many people at first said that what made a role-playing game different was the fact that in a role-playing game you pretend to be someone else. This is why they were called "role-playing games." But if you think about this, this definition doesn't really work. In Monopoly, you DO pretend to be someone else, you pretend to be a real estate speculator in Atlantic City.
So this definition fails. But what really is the difference between Monopoly and "Role-Playing Games"?
My thesis is that what defines the "Role-Playing Game" is a LIMITLESS NUMBER OF OPTIONS.
In "Monopoly", although you take the part of an Atlantic City real estate speculator, you do not have all the options that would really be available to such a person. You can't diversify your investment portfolio by putting some of your assets into other areas, you can't put your money in the bank and get interest, you can't invest in real estate in cities other than Atlantic City, you can't come to the realization that the pursuit of wealth is merely a shallow goal and so become motivated to donate all your wealth to charity and retire to a monastery to seek enlightenment, etc.
But in a role-playing game you do not have these limitations, there are no limits to the options available. Role-playing games are designed with a lot of rules to cover a lot of situations, and then give some guidelines to the players and GM on how to develop new rules for the new situations that inevitably come up.
If I tried to do any of the things in my list during a game of Monopoly, the other players would say "No, you can't do that, there aren't any rules to cover that." But in a roleplaying game the worst that should happen is the GM saying "Hmm, I don't really know how I am going to rule on that, give me some time to develop some rules...", and in many situations a good GM will make an immediate decision.
So which is a CRPG, is it a normal, Monopoly-type game, or a Role-Playing Game? I would argue that all CRPG's currently on the market are NOT role-playing games. No matter how complex they are, and how many different options they give the player (and yes, they keep coming up with games that have more and more options) there is still always a limit on the options available. You can't say to a computer, "This is what I want my character to do, I know it's not technically covered by the rules, but I think it's what my character would do, and I think we can develop rules to cover it."
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