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

[chuckdee]

I mean, you can disagree all you want but in video gaming industry and fandom, CRPG, JRPG, ARPG, and Action RPG are all distinct genres..

Now, but not then.

Take a trip down memory lane:

1982-1987 - The Birth of Japanese RPGs, re-told in 15 Games

A look at the roots of Japanese RPGs – from the hardware to the early proto-RPGs, the Ultima-clones, the first Action-RPGs and genre landmarks like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Ys.

www.gamedeveloper.com

See how they intermixed and moved with the same ideas. I'd say in 1986 was when they started to break off and become their own thing with Dragon Quest. But it is definitely a subset of CRPG, just with a distinctive style rather than a completely different animal as you posit. Even ARPGs descended out of CRPGs as shown in that history.

 

[Reynard]

Now, but not then.

Take a trip down memory lane:

1982-1987 - The Birth of Japanese RPGs, re-told in 15 Games

A look at the roots of Japanese RPGs – from the hardware to the early proto-RPGs, the Ultima-clones, the first Action-RPGs and genre landmarks like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Ys.

www.gamedeveloper.com

See how they intermixed and moved with the same ideas. I'd say in 1986 was when they started to break off and become their own thing with Dragon Quest. But it is definitely a subset of CRPG, just with a distinctive style rather than a completely different animal as you posit. Even ARPGs descended out of CRPGs as shown in that history.

Who was talking about 1986?

 

[chuckdee]

We were. The whole thing was about when the C dropped from CRPG. Which means you have to go back to the beginning. And at that point you said that JRPG were a whole different thing and not CRPGs. So I went back to the beginning.

 

[Reynard]

We were. The whole thing was about when the C dropped from CRPG. Which means you have to go back to the beginning. And at that point you said that JRPG were a whole different thing and not CRPGs. So I went back to the beginning.

Yes, in the days of yore before the video game industry had really found its footing outside of arcades, the RPG genre was a wild west -- like all genres. That is hardly relevant to the discussion about the genre differences after that point, where CRPGs coalesce around (wait for it) computers, and JRPGs form specific tropes, when action RPGs emerge in the early 90s and so on until now when we have roguelikes and soulslikes and others. With a few exceptions, console players played different kinds of RPGs than PC gamers, and that is one mechanism by which those early genres metastasized.

Near as I can tell, "TTRPG" entered the regular parlance in defining themselves against MMORPGs, because it happened about the same time. I am sure people have used "ttrpg" from the dawn of the hobby, but its regular use seems to be from the late 90s and early 2000s under that particular context.

 

[chuckdee]

That's convenient as that was not mentioned anywhere in the OP. Originally, computer RPGs were called CRPGs and TTRPGs were called RPGs. They just asked when that changed. Which makes your interjection of JRPG etc a bit minimizing of the topic, IMO.

 

[aramis erak]

Most JRPG fans won’t disagree with them being CRPGs.
Most ARGP fans won’t disagree with them being CRPGs.
Most JRPG fans won’t disagree with Final Fantasy main games, at least prior to the MMORPG one, being JRPGs. Some of the side ones are ARPGs.
They’re ALL CRPGs… but there’s no distinct term for story driven Western type stuff like, oh, Ultima and Bard’s Tale… but it’s only theme and massive damage inflation with rapid leveling that separates the JRPGs from Tradtional Party-Based CRPGs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Hard disagree.
Also, Final Fantasy is widely considered the most quintessential of JRPGs on consoles.

I mean, you can be wrong if you like but you're still wrong.

That is not how CRPG is used today, nor how it's been used for over a decade at this point.

I mean, you can disagree all you want but in video gaming industry and fandom, CRPG, JRPG, ARPG, and Action RPG are all distinct genres..

This is correct, though the distinction between ARPG and Action RPG is clumsily used. Specifically ARPG stands for Action RPG, and whilst it more traditionally refers specifically to Diablo-inspired looter games, it's sometimes used for stuff like Elden Ring just to shorten "Action RPG". Also just "RPG" is often used for things like Elden Ring, Mass Effect, Witcher and so on.

Note there's also SRPG and TRPG or "tactics RPG", all three of which refer to basically same subset of games - Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre, Triangle Strategy, etc. - largely to mostly-Japanese RPGs focused on strategy/tactics and often on battlefields (or at least fairly large combat areas) rather than a single party progressing through a dungeon. There are some Western examples like Fallout: Tactics or Fell Seal.

Re: TTRPG, as you point out, it's been used for quite a long time, but it really took off in usage after 5E became a big hit - i.e. not in 2014/2015, but when it went bigger than that, and a lot of people who'd never played a TTRPG before, but had played videogames that were RPGs were needing to explain/differentiate it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Most JRPG fans won’t disagree with them being CRPGs.
Most ARGP fans won’t disagree with them being CRPGs.
Most JRPG fans won’t disagree with Final Fantasy main games, at least prior to the MMORPG one, being JRPGs. Some of the side ones are ARPGs.
They’re ALL CRPGs… but there’s no distinct term for story driven Western type stuff like, oh, Ultima and Bard’s Tale… but it’s only theme and massive damage inflation with rapid leveling that separates the JRPGs from Tradtional Party-Based CRPGs.

This is just nonsense. It's just absolute nonsense. It's flatly untrue. There absolutely is a distinct term for party-based games like Ultima and The Bard's Tale series - it's CRPG.

It wasn't 10 years ago, but no matter how stuck in the past you insist on being terminology-wise, you can't change the present.

 

[chuckdee]

This is just nonsense. It's just absolute nonsense. It's flatly untrue. There absolutely is a distinct term for party-based games like Ultima and The Bard's Tale series - it's CRPG.

It wasn't 10 years ago, but no matter how stuck in the past you insist on being terminology-wise, you can't change the present.

We can't ignore the past when talking about the etymology of words. That's not being stuck in the past, that's using the past to inform our passage through to the present, which is what this thread is about. The original post didn't say when did it happen after CRPG was repurposed to something else. So we started with what was there originally, which if you read my post, it's exactly as was stated.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We can't ignore the past when talking about the etymology of words.

Etymology-wise, sure. It's important to understand the evolution of a term.

But other posters are attempting to insist the meaning of words from decades ago is their meaning now (including the one I was responding to), and you seem to be bordering on doing that yourself. CRPG means something specific now, even it it didn't during the Reagan years.

Indeed, for some reason you've quoted what wasn't a response to you, as if it was. Why?