Computers beat up my role player

[WayneLigon]

Care to address Gygax's argument, then?

As much respect as Mr. Gygax deserves, in that particular statement he's dead wrong. If I may pretend to read his mind for a moment, I'd think that that particular statment was made in reaction to those who go too far in roleplaying; the stereotype of the Method (and this is in full knowledge that I'm being unfair to the Method school of acting) actor who does nothing unless he's given 'motivation' or the guy that wrecks an adventure because 'I'm just palying my character' are good examples of that.

 

[WayneLigon]

...the term is incredibly pervasive among computer and video game players.

As I pointed out earlier, just because lots and lots of people call a tomatoe a vegetable, their sheer numbers don't prevent them from being wrong. It is a simple matter of fact. People (including myself, all the time) use the word 'hopefully' to mean 'it is to be hoped' when in fact it means ''in a hopeful manner'; the usage is widespread and only the most pedantic refuses to acknowledge what is actually meant. This doesn't prevent every person who uses it in that manner to be incorrect.

The only anyone would even bother trying to make the distinction at this point is if they wanted to position tabletop RPGs as superior to computer RPGs, in some elitist gesture. Trying to undermine an established and well-understood use of the term is inherently going to rub fans of videogames the wrong way.

It is not an elitist position when one actually has a position of superiority over others, instead of a pecieved one; in this case, the fact that the term RPG when applied to computer games is being used incorrectly.

 

[ThirdWizard]

As I pointed out earlier, just because lots and lots of people call a tomatoe a vegetable, their sheer numbers don't prevent them from being wrong. It is a simple matter of fact. People (including myself, all the time) use the word 'hopefully' to mean 'it is to be hoped' when in fact it means ''in a hopeful manner'; the usage is widespread and only the most pedantic refuses to acknowledge what is actually meant. This doesn't prevent every person who uses it in that manner to be incorrect.

Except, of course, that you're making up your own definition in order to exclude video game RPGs from the overall RPG category.

It's sort of like if I decided to define phones by having a physical phone line connected to a wall. Now cell phones aren't considered phones anymore. After all, they have no phone line, so anyone who calls them phones is incorrect. Cell phones just simulate phones, they aren't actually phones, since they're based off of phones and have so much in common with them. The fact that we use them for the same purpose has no bearing, because my definition excludes cell phones from being "real" phones. If you were to not use the phone line definition, then we'd have to start calling walky talkies phones!

 

[Kem]

One can attempt roleplaying in a CRPG but you quickly run up against the limitations of the medium, even in one where you can talk 'in character' to other PC's controlled by real people.

The same thing happens with a Bad DM. However, by your logic, having a Bad DM turns D&D into a non-Role Playing Game. So seemingly to you, the fact that a game is a RPG or not is determined by the DM, and as such, NO game by itself is a Role Playing Game.

Where this is interesting is that the computer game designeers and developers ARE the DM in a computer based RPG. So some must be good and make RPGs and other must be bad and make Gs.

If I'm playing a rogue and I'm given a mission to kill the young prince, like as not I have no choice but to kill the young prince to go further into the game. What if the personality of the thief I'm playing wouldn't kill a child no matter what? Well, I'm kinda screwed then. Even in a well-written game that has multiple pathways through it, there's very likely not going to be a pathway that would match what my PC would do. Sooner than later, I'm going to hit a choice that my PC in a tabletop game would refuse to do. In that case, I have to either (1) just abandon trying to roleplay at all, or (2) modify my vision.

There is a cRPG where if this is the case you can skip it. World of Warcraft Quests are not required to advance, but if you don't want to do a certain dungeon you don't advance, which is ok because doing more in that "Dungeon" Line is dependant on doing earlier things.

As such World of Warcraft fits your definition of RPG. Which I find Interesting. Many MMORPGs fit but regular cRPGs do not.

How do you feel about Oblivion and Morrowwind?

There is nothing at all wrong with modifying your vision! We have to do it all the time in any RPG, or otherwise you're a stick-in-the-ass prima dona stereotype Method actor. But... Enough modifications build up and we're right back to (1) again.

Which means you have to have a good DM, making the fact that a game is an RPG or not completely reliant on having a "Good" DM.

Which some computer RPGs have, and others do not.

 

[WayneLigon]

However, by your logic, having a Bad DM turns D&D into a non-Role Playing Game. So seemingly to you, the fact that a game is a RPG or not is determined by the DM, and as such, NO game by itself is a Role Playing Game.

That would be exactly correct; it is possible to play an RPG so badly that you're not really playing an RPG anymore but a somewhat more complex boardgame. It's not nessesarily determined by having a good GM, but that's the safe way to bet. I have seen a couple games where the players basically wrested any control away from the GM because he was so terrible and for a couple sessions effectively did the 'troupe-style' of play mentioned in Ars Magica before they found a much better GM.

There is a cRPG where if this is the case you can skip it. World of Warcraft Quests are not required to advance ... As such World of Warcraft fits your definition of RPG.

No, because there is little to no role assumption possible in it. It and others like it are close and getting closer; they're very much like a badly-run D&D game. You can do some role assumption in them, but it's very minimal at best. And eventually you still run up on the limitations of the environment.

 

[TwinBahamut]

As I pointed out earlier, just because lots and lots of people call a tomatoe a vegetable, their sheer numbers don't prevent them from being wrong. It is a simple matter of fact. People (including myself, all the time) use the word 'hopefully' to mean 'it is to be hoped' when in fact it means ''in a hopeful manner'; the usage is widespread and only the most pedantic refuses to acknowledge what is actually meant. This doesn't prevent every person who uses it in that manner to be incorrect.

You seem to have a poor grasp of how language works. There is no such thing as the "one true definition" of a word. The only thing that matters is the widespread use of a term. No one person has the right to tell others that word usage is incorrect. This is the reason we get regional dialect and lingual shift, after all.

In the case of your example, certainly, the scientific definition says that a tomato is a fruit. This is a scientific definition, so it only applies to scientific discussion, since that is the field of discussion where such precision is required. And even for other people of authority on the matter, farmers and nutritional experts, tomatos still count as vegetables. Regardless, the scientific definition is only more accurate when having a scientific discussion of plant biology, and does not override the layman supermarket use of the term.

Even with that taken care of, I reject your claim that this analogy is applicable to the current discussion. After all, the two uses of the term RPG do not even refer to the same thing. Essentially, it is a single word with two distinct definitions. One definition is "a genre of videogames", and the other definition is "a type of game played with dice and imagination" or something more elaborate.

A better example of what is going is the use of the word "plant". One definition is "a biological organism that is non-motile and often absorbs sunlight", and another is "a factory". If you were to claim that a factory could not be called a plant, since biologists defined plants to be a certain thing, it simply would not make any sense, since both definitions are commonly accepted. The same thing is happening here in the discussion of "RPG".

It is not an elitist position when one actually has a position of superiority over others, instead of a pecieved one; in this case, the fact that the term RPG when applied to computer games is being used incorrectly.

So you are explicitly stating here that pen and paper RPGs are better then electronic RPGs? Thus, you are stating that your fun is better than someone else's fun. How can you say that is anything other than elitist?

 

[Raven Crowking]

You seem to have a poor grasp of how language works.

Ad homimen attack.

While you are correct about the nature of linguistic drift, you seem to fail to realize that changing definitions cannot be conflated. Thus, if a whale was once considered a fish, and a trout is now considered a fish, that does not mean that the term "fish" as applied to a trout now necessarily applies to a whale. Nor does it mean that, if we went back in a time machine, that a whale would actually be a fish under the modern sense of the word.

Similarly, the term "rpg" once had a more specific meaning that did not encompase what are now called "computer rpgs". Simply because an industrial segment coopts a term doesn't mean that the term is justified, or that use of the term is acceptable to all people.

I, for one, have long ago agreed that, if you alter the original meaning of the term to include computer games, then by necessity computer games are rpgs under the altered meaning of the term. That doesn't make them rpgs under the original meaning, however.

So you are explicitly stating here that pen and paper RPGs are better then electronic RPGs? Thus, you are stating that your fun is better than someone else's fun. How can you say that is anything other than elitist?

No, he is very specifically stating that the term RPG applies to RPGs rather than computer games, and seems to be stating that he believes this to be more than a subjective statement. The "wrongbadfun argument" doesn't apply.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Except, of course, that you're making up your own definition in order to exclude video game RPGs from the overall RPG category.

Excepting, of course, that that meaning of rpg goes back to the roots of the term, was not made up by WayneLigon, and is included or implied in many early rpgs. And, of course, that the person who was most involved in coining the term on this thread stated that it meant what WayneLigon suggests in meant, and that the meaning he uses for it precludes computer games at this time due to the restrictions they impose.

 

[Doug McCrae]

No, he is very specifically stating that the term RPG applies to RPGs rather than computer games, and seems to be stating that he believes this to be more than a subjective statement. The "wrongbadfun argument" doesn't apply.

I'd say that's precisely what wrongbadfunism is. The claim that one style of roleplaying is objectively better than another.

Wayne's been quite explicit that rpgs without acting are not as good as ones with acting. Thus, for him, to define a game as an rpg makes it inherently better -

Is it bad to do that? Not really, he said in an offhanded manner. I've done it when I was just in the mood to game with friends and not take on the added work that really getting into character and setting a mood and all the rest. It's not bad, but it's also not as good as doing the work of role-playing, either. I don't condemn people that enjoy playing like that on a regular basis, but I will say they could do better. I don't dislike them: I kinda pity them.

 

[Cameron]

That would be exactly correct; it is possible to play an RPG so badly that you're not really playing an RPG anymore but a somewhat more complex boardgame. It's not nessesarily determined by having a good GM, but that's the safe way to bet. I have seen a couple games where the players basically wrested any control away from the GM because he was so terrible and for a couple sessions effectively did the 'troupe-style' of play mentioned in Ars Magica before they found a much better GM.



No, because there is little to no role assumption possible in it. It and others like it are close and getting closer; they're very much like a badly-run D&D game. You can do some role assumption in them, but it's very minimal at best. And eventually you still run up on the limitations of the environment.

Excepting, of course, that the term "role assumption" need not mean "be anything but yourself with utterly no limits whatsoever except that you can't be yourself". Role playing is playing a role. It can be *any* role, including projecting your own self (ethical outlook, mannerisms, mode of talking, accent, etc.) into an artificial setting, which by its very nature, will have some defined parameters. Sure, a setting being arbitrated by a living person would be more adaptive and therefore more fluid than one set out within a computer programme, but at the end of the day, there are still parameters and boundaries that you cannot (or in many cases, should not) violate.

To say that there is a threshold in these boundaries which will elevate one game into a role playing game while another is not to be granted this title smacks highly of elitism.