Computers beat up my role player

[I'm A Banana]

Yes, you could. And, presumably, that would be you making the decision to do so, and it would be a decision that you and your group could change at any time during the game. In other words, your statement that you were going to run such a game would in no way mandate you to disallow PCs to change the status quo.
...
However, for all that you might argue that cRPGs are RPGs, I doubt very much that you would run such a game, or that you could find players for such a game as a tabletop game. When people sit down to a role-playing game, they expect a bit more.

...well, THAT sounds pretty presumptuous and arrogant to me!

There's only a superficial difference between a re-spawning mob in WoW and two rolls on a random encounter table that specify the same creature twice. NEITHER really pays attention to some sort of self-sustaining ecosystem of monsters.

And PC's can change the status quo in CRPG's: they slay the boss, they save the world.

In a role-playing game, the NPCs are able to ad lib lines (through the DM) and respond to what the players say. They can also change their actions based upon what the players do. Since, in a role-playing game, there is an infinite number of things that the players can say, there is an infinite potential for responses.

Infinite potential is one of the differences between railroading and open DMing. Certainly, a DM who plays more to the open side is using the advantage that he's actually there to it's greatest potential. A DM who has a heavier hand might only allow character choice within a very limited region. Like Doug pointed out, a human DM can be even MORE limiting than a computer DM.

Of course, I also wonder how you can suggest that something that prescripts not only the adventure you can do, but also how you can respond to that adventure, as well as what lines can be spoken (or reacted to) by any part is "kind of" railroady.

It's railroading. The question is whether or not that's a problem. FFX was criticized for being too "linear," which is CRPG lingo for railroading, while a game like FFXII is largely considered to be open enough to have hours of fun in outside of the main plot, and FFXI spends MONTHS of time aside from the main storyline.

People enjoy non-linear gameplay just as they do in tabletop games, and more and more games are being able to deliver this. WoW does it quite well, in fact. Final Fantasy is one of those that has to balance a tendency to want to tell a good story with the idea that it's a game. It does better in some campaigns than in others.

If you cannot see the difference between unlimited potential in terms of actions, dialogue, decision making, and ad lib, as well as an unlimited potential to create lasting and meaningful change in the game environment, as opposed to simulating a player who has already prescripted the potential actions, dialogue, and decisions you can make, I doubt I can make it clearer.

I said there was a difference. I also said that aside from the obsessive hardcore fanbase, it doesn't matter to such a level as to require a distinction between TRUE and FALSE RPG's. So there's no reason for this thread to bother making a distinction, either, really.

 

[Halivar]

Interactive fiction (IF) is the new-fangled buzz-word for "text adventure games". They are (generally) text-based. The computer doesn't present visual representation of things, merely text describing them. The user acts by typing (pidgin) English sentences. (Though there are shortcuts for common commands.)

Man, I wish more EnWorlder's were into IF. If anyone could come up with some really great IF, it'd be the forum.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It should be noted that with a crpg the developer team can still be surprised by player actions. For example:

1) Exploits. Bugs which allow players to cheat.
2) Combinations with unanticipated consequences. Much like the combo of Frenzied Berserker, Robilar's Gambit and Deft Opportunist described in another thread.

Not if these do not already exist in the program. You are basically saying here that you can have a rpg where the only real (non-simulation of programmer player) decisions are based on cheating and errors in the program. This sort of definition makes the term meaningless.

Explain to me how Monopoly, Chess, and eating ham sandwiches are not roleplaying games.

Player actions in a human rpg are not without limitations. They are limited by:

1) The rules of the game world, its physics.
2) The rules of genre.
3) The game rules.

Not so. Any of the above can be overridden during game play. Grab the 1e modules, for example, and you can see examples of each and every one of the above being overridden because the author thought it desireable to do so for the purposes of game play. Then talk to people who played those modules, and see how the DMs changed them if they like because they thought it desireable to do so for the purposes of game play. Then talk to the players who did things unforseen by either module writer or DM, and got unexpected results, because all involved thought it desireable to do so for the purposes of game play.

The only true limitations to a role-playing game are

4) The DM.
5) The other players.

And once you realize that the DM is one of the other players, that limitation is pretty small. It is also, note, the defining limitation of "rpgs" as Gary defined it, and as I define it.

You may think that this can actually mean a player is more limited in a role-playing game than while playing a computer game, but the fact is that your example offers no point-by-point comparison, and if you do a point-by-point comparison you could literally fill the internet with the freedoms offered by a role-playing game while simultaneously filling the internet once again with the limitation offered by a computer game.

Infinite possibilities, which contain a few limitations based upon the makeup of your group, are still infinite possibilities.

Absolute restrictions to actions, which contain several hundred possibilities, are still absolute restrictions.

One is playing a role-playing game. The other is simulating the decisions of a player (programmer) playing a role-playing game.

 

[WayneLigon]

When they invent a computer game where my character can decide on a whim that he likes the cute daughter of that shopkeeper over there, can woo and win her then I'll say that CRPGs are actual RPGs.

Until things like these can occur, then there really is no discussion here: CRPGs are not RPGs.

 

[Raven Crowking]

When they invent a computer game where my character can decide on a whim that he likes the cute daughter of that shopkeeper over there, can woo and win her then I'll say that CRPGs are actual RPGs.

Until things like these can occur, then there really is no discussion here: CRPGs are not RPGs.

Well said.

And on that note, unless something new & interesting is said on the subject, I'm going to follow the lead of wiser heads and retire to the sidelines.

 

[Shadeydm]

...well, THAT sounds pretty presumptuous and arrogant to me!

There's only a superficial difference between a re-spawning mob in WoW and two rolls on a random encounter table that specify the same creature twice. NEITHER really pays attention to some sort of self-sustaining ecosystem of monsters.

And PC's can change the status quo in CRPG's: they slay the boss, they save the world.

No it's not a superficial difference when in DnD you kill the clerk in the potion shop he stays dead but in WoW you you can't hit him or affect him in any meaningful way execpt to give him money for potions.
In DnD you can kill the boss and save the world in WoW you kill the same boss over and over again to get different items off his loot table to complete you or your friends set. You really see no difference here?

 

[Mallus]

Nope, I think the exact opposite.

Thanks for the clarification, I was misreading into what you said...

Your actual point reminds me how cool it is to hear my about homebrew setting as told by the players. It's a far more interesting place than the one I described to them.

 

[I'm A Banana]

No it's not a superficial difference when in DnD you kill the clerk in the potion shop he stays dead but in WoW you you can't hit him or affect him in any meaningful way execpt to give him money for potions.
In DnD you can kill the boss and save the world in WoW you kill the same boss over and over again to get different items off his loot table to complete you or your friends set. You really see no difference here?

I said there was a difference. I said that difference didn't matter enough, outside of a hardcore obsessive fanbase, to bother making a distinction betwen TRUE and FALSE RPG's.

I kill a boss in Final Fantasy he stays dead. I kill the Earth Fiend, the peasant's fields start to re-grow. The dialogue with them changes.

WoW, though it has great open-endedness, certainly falls short in empowering the player to change the world. Kind of like DM's who wouldn't let you kill Orcus because he had some sort of BS "can only be TRULY killed on his HOME PLANE" loophole.

I'm not saying they're the same. I'm saying they're similar enough that the distinction that already exists between computer RPG's and tabletop RPG's is sufficient, and we don't really need to bother calling one "really" RPG's and the others just "pretending to be" RPG's, unless we want to get pedantic and condescending about *true* *role* *playing* like some Vampire LARPer looking down his nose at the people who roll dice around a table.

 

[Halivar]

RPG's are in the eye of the player. When I play Ultima 7, with all of its shortcomings, I adopt a persona, I create goals completely separate from the main game quest, and I try to assume my role as completely as I can. For me Ultima 7 in a role-playing game. Not because of what the programmers intended, but because of what I put into it.

Conversely, in my Friday night D&D game, we have two players who hate role-play (one player has even outright said it aloud). They don't want story, or immersion; they enjoy the strategic challenge of combat, and will pull out comic books to read during the sessions in between fights. For these people D&D is not an RPG.

If you can immerse and role-assume with a reasonable suspension of disbelief, you're playing an RPG. If you can't, you aren't.

 

[Doug McCrae]

When they invent a computer game where my character can decide on a whim that he likes the cute daughter of that shopkeeper over there, can woo and win her then I'll say that CRPGs are actual RPGs.

You can do that in Fable.