There’s an interesting article on RPGWatch about roleplaying, or the lack of it, in single-player RPG’s.
We’ve discussed this before. And it’s quite true that the typical RPG doesn’t allow much leeway for real roleplaying. As the article points out, in live RPG, it’s mostly in conversations that the players act out their roles.
Of course, there are actions as well. You could give “good” responses in conversations, then go around and slaughter innocents, game permitting. But it’s really the personal interaction that makes RPGs what they are.
I’ve seen this in the live games I’ve been in, including NWN online. Even with the most detailed design, there is no way to capture that in a solo RPG. At best, conversation choices fall into very broad categories of “good”, “neutral”, and “evil”, regardless of whether it’s a D&D product with “alignment”.
I think one of the more exasperating features is that everything is set beforehand. You can’t make any responses, or ask questions, of your own. This limitation can make it difficult, maybe impossible, to think of yourself as being “in character”.
Indeed, the article mentions that many solo RP’ers say they “play themselves”, and to an extent, I do it myself. There’s no way to add nuances, subtleties, to your character.
For example in the NWN online session where we were dealing with Shane, there was a point where Taralyn was becoming fed up (Shane can be a little trying at times). So I moved back a few steps and typed in something like: “*Taralyn steps back to cool off*”.
So that way I show she has patience, though not a lot, but yet has strength enough to keep in control. You can’t do that sort of thing in solo play.
The real question, though, is: in single RPG, does it really matter? Your character is the only actual person there. Everyone else is just a scripted nonentity. All the interaction has been determined ahead of time. RP here is just going through the motions.
Read the article and see what you think.
Scorpio,
^^^ good article.
saw your interview -> nice.
I sometimes emulate the old c64+ultima games for memories.
( I think I prefer III )
Do you play Minions of Mirth?
if you get bored maybe you should try:
aveyond or cute knight?
See you later…
Computer RPGs certainly have restrictions on what the player is capable of — much like any ruleset will limit what you can and cannot do. Ultimately, the onus of role-playing falls on the player to operate within those rules. I don’t tend to play myself in CRPGs, but it would be foolish to assume there aren’t elements of my personality within any character. Nonetheless, I still enjoy picking character types that are a bit unlike me and then imposing my own restrictions — mostly because CRPGs don’t really punish breaches in role-playing (a paladin in NWN2, for instance, can waltz through someone’s house and rob them blind without punishment, divine or secular).
I’d argue that role-playing is still quite possible in CRPGs. To use myself as an example, I have been playing a paladin in NWN2 who has the background of “Bully.” I dump his skill points into the Intimidate skill, even though it’s not a major paladin skill and he chooses to intimidate people whenever the opportunity presents itself. It’s a small variance on the stereotypical paladin, but it’s still some effort to create a personality. And when my thief breaks away from the party to scout ahead, she steals whatever she can, as long as the paladin is out of sight. Again, the game doesn’t impose these restrictions, I do. And in that, I find some small satisfaction in playing the roles.
Role-playing among players is also influenced by the NPCs created by the game. To use NWN2 as an example (since it’s fresh in my mind), the NPCs are rather stereotypical and bland. The surely, battle-hungry, Scottish-accented Dwarf has been done to death. Please stop. Make the Dwarf a female, for Pete’s sake; that could open up a whole string of unusual quests just from that small change to the boilerplate tale.
If the player approaches the game with imagination, role-playing is still possible. Just don’t expect to see every quest open up. That’s called “replay value” and it’s a good way to get more value from your hard-earned $50.
It is possible to role play in a CRPG but the player has to have the self control to do it. That’s right - self control. It’s easy to take the quick route, grab a high damage sword or spell, skip dialog and rampage, collect the goodies, then save the world. It takes self control NOT to take that route and instead build a player that can persuade.
The other issue is design of the CRPG. Most CRPG’s are little more than an FPS in CRPG clothing. The dialog is atrocious, charisma means nothing outside of prices at the merchant and cyber nookie from an underdressed valkarie or barmaid. Until designers quit being lazy and allow for a non-violent approach or even a minimal violent approach and concentrate on adding branching, non-repetative, adaptive dialog it won’t change. You can usually keep revolving through the dialog options until you’ve seen all the dialog and no penatly for wasting the NPC’s time like you would in real life. No fallout from your dialog actions. If dialog leads to cyber nookie, then the barmaids father ought to come hunt you down for a crossbow wedding since she is now pregnant. Or, if your playing a female and sleep around the PC gets pregnant. How about a 4 month pregnant paladin with morning sickness trying to save the world? Why not?
Designers take out consequences and give us nondiscript NPC’s with no personality of their own who never tire of repeating dialog with the player and never bring up the fact that their gold keeps dissapearing whenever the player is around. Bad guys never beg for their lives before the death stroke and good guys never tell the player off for being a jerk or abandoning them in a fight.
Your rep never follows you from town to town.
It is possible BTW. Fallout did it with rep, Darklands your rep spread by word of mouth to cities you’d never been too. Others have done it. Indigo Prophecy is the only game I’ve heard of lately that didn’t let the player kill anything.
Players are numb and blindly dull their minds while developers nurture their apathy by rehashing the same old crap over and over. I don’t need a “part 4 or 11 or 17″ or whatever to a tired IP that treads the same ground with new graphics. Give me stimulation for my brain. Penalize me for sleeping with the bar maid, or robbing the merchant blind evertime I visit. Have the princess die cause I took too long to get their cause I was too busy robbing the town blind. Throw my player in jail with a cell mate named Bubba who’s in for necrophilia and advance the clock and have my player leave jail with a few less teeth and walking funny. Let me actually play a bad guy and let the world suffer and the character along with it. Let me be a good guy who fails for lack of focus on the goal and the world and the player suffer for it. Heck, give me an ending possiblity where my character becomes a beggar with one leg and a tin cup begging alms from the enemy that bested him before dying one wintery night in a back alley forgotten. How about playing the game and at the end show an NPC step forward and save the day because I mucked up and show the NPC being cheered while my character stand on the sideline.
Just give me something different! Give me something worth playing! F[CENSORED]!
Where’s my valium? *Vagabind steps back and takes a deep breath*
I agree with Vagabond that part of the R in CRPG involves a player’s own choice to behave a certain way whether or not the game imposes it. Choosing a role and playing it out even if it’s not something that is rewarded or punished by the game (although in the case of some good games there WILL be consequences to behavior). It’s all in our own hands, not the scripting of the game.
Some games do use things like reputation, fame, infamy, etc. to gauge how others respond to your character, and that’s a good touch.
Part of the problem, though, is the game designers need to appeal to a wide variety of players and they can’t do that if the character and story choices are too obscure or specific. While that pregnant female paladin may be appealing to you, Vag, I don’t know if it would to many people, so the designers aren’t going to spend time programming and scripting for that sort of instance. :) However, you CAN choose to roleplay on your own that your female paladin is pregnant, and conduct your actions accordingly. It may not be as rewarding as having actual in-game responses to such a situation, but it’s possible.
There is never going to be a computer game that will be as good as multiplayer interactions with other players, because there’s just no way to program and script for every situation that we can come up with. Every bone-headed move we might make or super clever “outside the box” plan we could dream up to solve the problem presented in game.
That’s something I really like about NWN: you can play it online and interact with other people in ways that you just can’t in a regular CRPG.
But then again, you can’t simply hop on and play with your favorite party of adventurers any time of the day or night in an online game.
I can’t imagine in our lifetimes seeing a world simulator come into being that is rich enough to encompass all of these possibilities. It just ain’t happening. The closest we’ve seen (and are likely to see anytime in the near future) is The Sims.
The Sims pulled it off by maintaining a very narrow set of rules that were neverthelesss highly organic, and leaving much (most?) of the context up to the player’s imagination. The sims themselves use fairly rudimentary logic that governs their behaviors with their environment and with each other. Your own mind provides the interpretation of these behaviors, attributing to them much more complexity, context, and human emotion than they really posssess.
Your mind is hard-wired to do just that. But computers can’t handle it. Computers still have a tough enough time just calculating a reasonably short path from point A to point B. But creating a story around a player’s actions that feels remotely compelling and believable - or human? Nope, not happening. We’re nowhere near being able to have machines pass the full Turing test yet.
The only remaining option is for designers to create the branching-tree-from-hell of all reasonable options for a game. The problem is that you might spend $30,000 dealing with the pregnant-female-paladin story thread, but only five people, spending $50 a piece, are actually going to explore that thread. Woops! Pretending you actually got all $250 of that money spent (in today’s mainstream game dev business, the developer might see $25 of it), you’ve still wasted $29,750. And all your other players who took the stereotypical path are complaining that your game is too short.
Sure, you want to throw a FEW of these options into every game. That gives life to your product, even if it’s not efficient. But you cannot create an entire game that way.
Okay so the pregnant paladin might be a stretch. I’d be happy with a picture at the end of the game with a description of the outcome that was based on lots of hidden flags that you trigger (or not) through the course of gameplay. The game “Princess Maker 2″ comes to mind with its 57 major different endings with variances.
True you couldn’t realistically do that many cut scenes but you could bresent a pic with lots of different outcomes.
Back to the “R” thing. There is alot that can be done with dialog. Most games use such rudimentary dialog options it’s pathetic. It’s one of the main parts of games that hasn’t evolved and has probably devolved instead. The big companies are so into voice acting that they end up limiting the amount of dialog they could have. I’d rather the NPC not have a voice (outside of combat taunts) and give me twice as many dialog options, non repeatable conversation, and flags based off the dialog.
Voice Acting is turning into the new “video acting” that almost ruined games in the mid-90’s. Everyone just HAD to have it after Wing Commander III and games sucked bad for several years after that.
I think the whole term “role playing game” is a near useless classification at this point other then as a “genre” classificaiton. It encompasses several very different types of play styles that almost qualify as seperate types of games. Many of these styles (particularly gamist) have nothing to do with playing a role.
See my article on role playing styles based on Ron Edwards work:
http://www.onlineroleplayer.com/Default.aspx?tabid=76
Gary Gygax once said that CRPGs aren’t RPGs. They are a type of entertainment all of their own. While I think many people would agree with him, after reading Ron Edwards, I think Gary might have missed the boat.
The issue here is that a “role playing game” has never really meant a game where you “role play” except in the sense that you are playing someone else in your mind (arguably we do this type of “role playing” when we read a good book or watch a good movie. We tend to place ourselves into the heroes shoes through the unique human capacity to empathize.)
So if a role playing game isn’t *necessarily* about “role playing” (though that may be an element for certain play styles) then what is it? It’s really just a genre that implies that you are playing a fantasy character (or characters) in a fantasy setting with a series of rules similar to pen and paper style games of that same genre. It really doesn’t mean much else. From this point of view, a CRPG is an appropriate name for the games we play.
Scorpia,
ROLE Playing?
Since when is playing a game on the computer about playing a role?
I see Bruce’s point. In Doom, I am a marine fighting creatures escaped from Hell, so I am playing a role there as well, though I haven’t ever heard anyone call Doom a RPG. It’s the fantasy setting, the advancement of your character, and the other D&D type elements that define the genre we call a CRPG, not the literal playing of a role.
Okay, here is the “technical” definition of a “computer role playing game” in my mind. Please note how vague it is:
A computer role playing game is a game that is intentionally similar to the Pen and Paper variety of role playing games. These similarities are typically most or all of the following -
a. Character advancement (Often, but not always leveling after gaining experience by killing things.)
b. Development choices (Usually includes archetype classes or a skill system that forces choices of specialization.)
c. An inventory for the gradual collection of gear
d. A combat system based. (Typically die based, but sometimes some alternative)
e. “Monsters” to fight
f. In a “fantasy” setting (This may be sci fi or even a “modern” setting — but almost always with “fantasyish” elements of some sort thrown in)
Role playing games popularly have side elements that are “common” and by common I really just mean “some of the most popular have some of these elements.” In truth, there are usually more counter examples to these elements then there are examples:
a. A strong storyline
b. Choices that affect outcome
c. A “party” of adventurers
d. A chance to “play a role” in some way (similar but not the same as “b”)
Again, a CRPG that actually has all of these is usually the exception, not the rule.
Sadly, *every* debate I’ve ever seen on the net about whether a game is or isn’t a role playing game ends up debating only the second set of critera. While these well meaning individuals “mean well”, they simply have missed the fact that “role playing game” is simply a genre classification. It has nothing to do with “playing a role” and it has nothing to do with the second set of criteria.
I should point out, however, that of a necessity, the first set is the only group that should really apply. This is because pen and paper RPGs are only defined by the first set too. There really is no requirement that a pen and paper RPG have a story (gamists often play it for the combat and game elements only), nor a party (you can even play solo in T&T), nor choices that affect outcome except whether you die or not, nor any role playing (again, think “gamists” play style here.) A pen and paper role playing game with none of these elements can be VERY fun to play and a legitimate game. (Think D&D minuatures — and save your breathe, I know YOU don’t PERSONALLY consider it an RPG. But technically it is as much as the original D&D was. It’s just a gamist variety.)
Also keep in mind that D&D itself — the “grand daddy” of RPGS — was originally more like D&D minatures then like a modern RPG. Based on the books I’ve read, I understand the the evolution of an RPG was very slow and painful. It was originally just a wargame where you play a single unit and there were fantasy elements.
This, by the way, explains why Paladins in classic D&D get a mount at a certain level. This makes very little sense if you are “role playing” (why can’t you just buy the darned thing when you have enough money) but makes TONS of sense if you’re playing a wargame. The original D&D WAS still a wargame. It was slowly adapted into a new play style over time.
Oops, forgot one of the more important parts of the definition of an “RPG”. Typically they have “stats” of some sort to define the character.
Cute Knight
Inspired by Princess Maker, but with more of an RPG twist. Including a big dungeon in the pseudo-3D style of the old SSI Gold Box games…
Over 50 endings, sure. A lot of “The Sims” style open-ended tasks which invite you to use your imagination as to what role you are playing. Plus some contextual grounding with tons of interesting events, romantic opportunities, etc.
The catch? Well, it’s incredibly replayable, but a full game is also pretty short. Once you are familiar with the game, you can crank through a full game within 2 hours or so.
Is that roleplaying? You know, I never really thought of it that way. I thought of it more as “exploration.” There’s not a huge variety of geographic exploration (it’s one town and one dungeon, the dungeon being only 5 levels deep and randomized every time), but there’s a lot of exploration of events based on doing something at a particular time or when your skill is at a particular level.
There’s a lot to be said for this type of game (and I think I’d call it “exploration” too, but with Bruce’s definition it would probably actually be roleplaying). Sometimes a couple hours of fiddling around is just what I need!