One of the things that amuses me on the internet is people telling other people that a computer game isn’t a RPG.

For those of us who mostly exist in the tabletop space, well – computer RPGs typically lack the one distinguishing feature of a tabletop RPG: A Gamemaster. You don’t have the human interaction and creativity that allows the game to deal with any wild suggestion the player comes up with.

Computer says no. Again and again.

Some computer RPGs say yes to a surprisingly wide amount of stuff – see Baldur’s Gate 3 – but even they are constrained by the programming.

Definitional Hell

The fun thing is that even within the tabletop space, coming up with an exhaustive list of the traits of a RPG is its own form of hell. Or gatekeeping.

I saw people saying the only CRPGs would be MMOs, because there you have lots of players interacting. Interesting. Taken to the tabletop space, does that mean that 1 on 1 games (one player, one GM) aren’t RPGs?

Likewise, you have people saying that if you can’t create your own character, it’s not a RPG. What then for playing Against the Giants with pregenerated characters?

It’s very easy to come up with ways to exclude games.

Stuff You Didn’t Expect

If there’s anything that entirely too many years playing RPGs has taught me is that… there are more ways of approaching designing a game than you’d expect.

One of the seminal games for me, which I encountered during my time at University, was the Amber Diceless RPG. It has no random factors in it at all – no dice, cards, or anything else. In theory, everything can be resolved by how you do in the attribute auctions in the beginning of the game, and then by your ingenuity during play.

Is that a Roleplaying Game? No random determination of outcomes? For some, that would definitely disqualify it.

As the years have gone on, we’ve had other approaches to the game. The Troupe style of Ars Magica. The DM rolls no dice of the Powered by the Apocalypse system. And whatever the heck the Jenga tower is in Dread.

And, even there, the list is very incomplete. Where does Fiasco, which doesn’t have a GM, fit in?

Core features of a RPG?

Is it then that you can’t define what a RPG is?

More – do we need to?

The term helps give a general description that lets potential players know what to expect. And, in general, it includes a Gamemaster, one or more players, pretending they are characters in a fictional universe, and the Gamemaster describing the results of their actions as they explore that universe.

Resolution systems? Character creation and progression? Scenario structure? All up in the air.

Fun with Computers

Just bringing it around to where I started the discussion, there are a few times recently where CRPGs are excluded from the CRPG genre. Which, when they start getting put together, I wonder if there’s a CRPG genre at all.

A CRPG must…

• Allow you to create your own character
• Feature character progression which is unique to each character class/archetype
• Allow you must be able to make story choices that affect the progression of the story
• Allow you can choose whether to approach an encounter with combat, stealth or role-play.
• Combat is turn-based or real-time with pauses
• Have companions
• Have an isometric perspective
• Have resolution that is probability and stats based, not dexterity (player reaction) based

…at least, according to a number of definitions on the internet I could google. It’s funny how many games you might assume were RPGs don’t fall into those definitions!

All of which is to say is: Definitions aren’t always everything!