When did the "C" drop from CRPGs and when did "TT"RPG spring up?

[Von Ether]

RPGs played on a computer used to be called CRPGs and D&D was an RPG.

At some point computer game journalism dropped the "C" and called CRPGs simply RPGs. I guess this was in the 90s or so? Yet when the tabletop rpg industry started getting traction again, instead of adding using CRPG again, the writers added TTRPG, which doesn't seem as practical or efficient. It's more letters and there was already a term in place.

So now the original hobby has to have a special signifier while the offshoot hobby has "stolen" the original name., which seems backwards to me.

I don't know where I read it, and I could be wrong*, but I thought I read somewhere that the game company marketing departments back then leaned on the journalist to drop the "C" to make the coverage seem more legit. Was that a thing? Or was it just laziness that later on was compounded by the ignorance of those who had no idea there was an older hobby that already had that name?

*Definitely "Don't believe everything you read on the Internet" territory.

 

[overgeeked]

RPGs played on a computer used to be called CRPGs and D&D was an RPG.

At some point computer game journalism dropped the "C" and called CRPGs simply RPGs. I guess this was in the 90s or so? Yet when the tabletop rpg industry started getting traction again, instead of adding using CRPG again, the writers added TTRPG, which doesn't seem as practical or efficient. It's more letters and there was already a term in place.

So now the original hobby has to have a special signifier while the offshoot hobby has "stolen" the original name., which seems backwards to me.

I don't know where I read it, and I could be wrong*, but I thought I read somewhere that the game company marketing departments back then leaned on the journalist to drop the "C" to make the coverage seem more legit. Was that a thing? Or was it just laziness that later on was compounded by the ignorance of those who had no idea there was an older hobby that already had that name?

*Definitely "Don't believe everything you read on the Internet" territory.

At a guess it was when video game RPGs started wildly outselling tabletop RPGs on the regular. So the bigger, more profitable, and more widely recognized kind of RPG gets the shorter acronym. Another possibility is when you moved from journalists who knew tabletop RPGs existed to journalists who did not.

 

[Reynard]

"CRPG" is still a thing -- or at least it has come back -- to differentiate those games from Skyrim, Witcher, Ellen Ring etc. It is used for party based games, usually with a top down or isometric perspective and often (but not always) a tactical turn based combat system.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Another possibility is when you moved from journalists who knew tabletop RPGs existed to journalists who did not.

Reminds me of a bit from story about Twin Peaks' influence on Link's Awakening...

“They were talking to me about a Twin Peaks game, and they mentioned Zelda at the time,” says Frost. “They said, ‘One of the things we love about your show is how there’s all sorts of sideways associations that can drive the story forward.’ They asked me about that as they were thinking about expanding the Zelda universe.”
Though he’d never played a Zelda game, Frost had enough experience with fantasy storytelling that he had some suggestions. “I’d played lots of Dungeons & Dragons when I was young, so I was familiar with the kind of story they were thinking about,” he says. “I think I said, ‘Don’t be afraid to use dreamlike, Jungian symbolism. Things can connect thematically without having to connect concretely.’ It was things like that that I was urging them [to consider].”

 

[Umbran]

Honestly, I picked up "tabletop RPG" to be able to differentiate from "live-action RPG".

 

[billd91]

At a guess it was when video game RPGs started wildly outselling tabletop RPGs on the regular. So the bigger, more profitable, and more widely recognized kind of RPG gets the shorter acronym. Another possibility is when you moved from journalists who knew tabletop RPGs existed to journalists who did not.

I think this is related to the idea that the computer RPGs long ago outsold tabletop RPGs, but I saw the emergence of TTRPGs as emphasizing the tabletop aspect - that they're multi-player games typically played face-to-face as a small community of players and not algorithmically run computer games with loose raiding bands of players.

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm noticing the JRPG acronym is getting a lot more use these days, too. Confusingly, it is being used for both tabletop and computer games.

 

[Reynard]

I'm noticing the JRPG acronym is getting a lot more use these days, too. Confusingly, it is being used for both tabletop and computer games.

I don't think it is new. JRPGs have been called that for a long time.

The move into TTRPGs is newer, though, just a few years ago I remember suggesting trying JRPG design for an alternative combat rule system for D&D and got shouted down pretty hard.

 

[Count_Zero]

I'm noticing the JRPG acronym is getting a lot more use these days, too. Confusingly, it is being used for both tabletop and computer games.

Well, partly with JRPGs we're getting more Japanese tabletop RPGs translated into English - so it makes for a good mark of differentiation (as well as an indicator of whether a tabletop game is using game mechanics influenced by Japanese tabletop games.)

 

[payn]

I’m really moving into OPMRPGs these days. Oil painted miniatures role playing games.