simple and/or complex RPG's you've played?

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The D&D relation at least lets me understand, where that various and different definitions come from. Around europe Dungeons and Dragons is less present, instead storytelling Pen & Papers were/are more common, that are less based on fighting, but more on interaction and social interaction/detective skills.... So calling games like Diablo an RPG always seemed rather offending and weird to me and normally in games-magazines, they are rather mentioned as a subsegment specially called Action-"RPG", while pure RPGs are games like the Forgotten Realms series, Witcher 1, Drakensang, ... In comparison with D&D at least I understand now, why typical Hack and Slash games or rather Action games without any RPG elements (in the europe understanding) get called RPGs. ^^

I suppose, but Gauntlet 4 and Legends did become much more RPGish I don't remember if Gauntlet 3 did or not...

Does anyone remember HeroQuest? It was a D&D type game. Not overly complex however at times it could be very difficult to survive.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqQEvdW1XM4[/youtube]

It sounds like it might be very similar to the gameplay style of Seven Sorrows and Dark Legacy ; an area puzzle game, rather than an RPG.

Here is my ranked top 10 RPG:

1. Planescape: Torment
2. Baldur's Gate 2
3. Final Fantasy VII
4. Mass Effect 2
5. The Witcher
6. Mass Effect 1
7. The Witcher 2
8. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
9. Quest For Glory: Shadows of Darkness
10. The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind

I guess all of these are fairly complex, with PS:T (my favourite game of all time) taking it Up To Eleven in complexity.

For people that like classic RPGs, based on P&P engine. The shadowrun indie starterproject finally produced their shadowrun game some weeks ago. It has a classic RPG controlling as you might know from Baldurs Gate, and did as well get very good reviews from different gaming magazines. I am actually playing some games, but will definitly have a look on it.

I don't know what an "area puzzle game" is, but Gauntlet Legends is the same as Dark Legacy (DL has some remixed bits and some extra levels).

They have stats you can level up, a shop, an inventory, a story, NPCs...I don't know how much more you need to be able to say that the game contains RPG elements =)

I have a near-complete copy of the actual board game It is a LOT simpler than D&D, but it's still pretty fun, and gets pretty challenging sometimes...especially if you don't keep the teamwork going.

The videogame versions of it are alright, they're fun to play for practice (but full of spoilers if you intend of being a player-character), but for some reason they left out all of the furniture. I know it only changes the gameplay a small amount, but I still miss it.

There's a difference between an RPG and a non-RPG which contains some elements which relate to RPGs.
for a while in the 90s game journalists seemed to be throwing the term "RPG elements" around all over the place, but most of the games connected to the term were plainly not RPGs.

Plenty of non-RPGs have statistics which level up, a shop, an inventory, a story and NPCs...
'Dust : An Elysian Tale' was a good example of this... but there are many more.

Dark Legacy is primarily a hack n slash game with area puzzles thrown in.
An area puzzle game is a puzzle game in which the entire area is a massive puzzle (or interconnected combination of puzzles) ... generally involving the solving of those puzzles in order to reach a different area and progress.

I had forgotten all about this game...
I had this for the Master System, as a child.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTfCi59KCx8[/youtube]


It's f*cking terrible !
Seriously, it's so utterly terrible as to be impossible to play.
I was disgusted with it even as a small child, when good and reasonably cheap games hadn't even been invented yet !


So, this is allegedly an RPG....
(O.o) .... riiiiight....

Well, I reckon that if games like 'AD&D : Heroes of the lance' can pass as an RPG, then pretty much anything can.... from Borderlands to "Fred the pathetic gimp waddles through a dungeon and then falls down a hole".
OK so I admit that the second one I just made up, but it should still be allowed to be an RPG... especially if Fred the pathetic gimp has some statistics which arbitrarily increase once in a while (maybe every time he waddles along a bit without falling down a few holes in the process).

what do you reckon ?

I'd say whether a game is primarily a RPG depends on how much the game focuses and relies on its RPG elements in character building.
Most games these days have incorporated some at least simplistic RPG elements into them, because it can make almost any game a little more engaging to have some control over how your character develops in a technical way. But most games that have some underlying RPG elements are usually primarily a different type of game. The primary RPG games are the ones where the technical RPG stuff is a primary focus of the game.
I admit it can be a bit of a sliding scale though, and some games can be a little difficult to categorize as just one thing.

So then what would a game have to be to be considered an RPG?

Because if you're going to be that picky about it, you can take it literally, and say that almost every videogame is a "role playing game", because you are playing the role of someone else

Well, that's what I said before.

I reckon that if you're going to insist that any gamer with "RPG elements" is an RPG, then that includes nearly every computer game.... since most of them have things like a shop, NPCs, a story, or an inventory... and many have some sort of levelling system ; whether character or weapon/equipment based.

Perhaps the OP should clarify what they mean when they ask about which RPGs people have been playing.




^ This, except with the first line changed to read "I'd say whether a game is primarily a RPG depends on how much the game focuses and relies on its RPG elements (in general)", because a game could have the most RPG-style character building process in existence but then still blatantly be a different kind of game. You could stick RPG-style character building into any game... like Mortal Kombat or Mario Kart, for example.... with statistic based development which progresses based on "XP" earned from doing stuff in each fight/race.

You know, thinking about it now....

AD&D : Heroes of the Lance is a so-called RPG and it has :

No shop

No NPCs (other than really sh***y cheat-assing enemies)

No story whatsoever.
It can't even be bothered to explain your motivation as an adventuring party, before kicking you down a dungeon.

It does have an inventory... although it's borderline impossible to pick up items.
I can testify that having instructions does nothing much to help you play the game, because the 'instructions' are terrible and incredibly sparse.
And also because the game is so hopelessly defective that half of the "movements" aren't recognised properly anyway.

As I recall, it also has no levelling system ; whether character or weapon/equipment based.
If you ever manage to successfully pick up better equipment then you can use it.... but that's about it.

So... how are RPGs defined ?
I wonder....

I mean, this game is Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ... so it's undeniable that the thing has "RPG elements" .... but I would say that to call it an RPG is an offence to legitimate RPGs around the globe. This game should be ashamed to even exist !

Around here in Europe RPGs are supposed to relie much more on story and exploring, then pure fighting. You meant that in unlike every game you play a role...in german its better defined, while you slip in almost every game in a role of the mainactor, roleplaying is about actually playing the character, so you must be offered desicions, about where to go, what to do, as well as the possibility of personal character development: Not in the way to choose if you want to level fireballs or lightning, but what kind of personality you have. If you want to play your character good, you must be given that opportunity, just like someone that wants to play his char badass, must as well have this opportunity.

So at least around here, its less about inventory or shops or whatever, but simply that you are playing (not slipping in an defined role) a role in a world, giving you free oppourtinity to quest, to fight, to simply roam around, gossip to people, do as well completely senseless stuff like learning different skills and jobs, with rather no real effect about the game and so on. The trend for single character RPGs is as well pretty new, because normally RPG is as well about the balancing of the group, so every kind of skills (social skills, wisdom skills, combat skills, ...) should be needed so that you have the task about balancing your group about that, instead of the actual: You have only one character, and anyway on what skills you develop him, there will be a way to manage the game. Specially when its mostly only about different kind of combat skills, so fighter combat skills or magic combat skills or archer combat skills... In classic RPGs you often had characters with you that were rather sh***y in any way of combat, but instead offered you other necessary skills that gave you benefits in social situations of crowded places.

The earlier AD&D games you seem to mention are around RPG players normally called "Dungeon Crawlers", which specifies that they focus simply on the "dungeon crawling" element. There are as well other terms known for RPG areas, so as example a so called "railroad-RPG" specifies, that you are not given the freedom to experience the story and world on your own, and that you have no freedom to choose about the story, but can only experience it.

I don't even know what genre you would call 'AD&D : Heroes of the Lance' ... probably it's a "waddling through a dungeon then falling down a hole" genre of RPG.
Dunegon crawlers to me would refer to games such as Shining in the Darkness or Eye of the Beholder.
'AD&D : Heroes of the lance' is technically set in a dungeon, and the character does move at a speed similar to crawling.... but it's more like some sort of mediocre 2D hack n slash game or something. But with more falling down holes.


I think there are a lot of linear RPG around (as compared to open world RPGs) , which give a fairly restricted path through the game.
And similarly, there are a great many RPGs where the characters are pre-defined and just handed to the player as-is... many of the Final Fantasy games do this, for example.... or RPGs which are based on a franchise (for example, Tenchi Muyo or Magic Knight Rayearth)
Some RPGs also primarily focus on combat. In particularly, games from the S-RPG (Strategy RPG) genre often do this - for example Disgaea, Stella Deus, Onimusha Tactics, FF tactics, etc.

I like the idea of unconventional RPGs with unusual combat... for example, Sigma Star was just great !

I'm presently playing Card hunter (just started today) .... do you think it would classify as being an RPG ?
Or not ?
I honestly am not sure....
Perhaps it's an RPG with card-based combat - with fighting played on an S-RPG style board ?

I think it could be quite difficult to get a solid definition of RPGs expressed which is consistent and informative enough to be meaningful, as it's such a wide-spanning term.