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

[Reynard]

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.

This one is also weird becasue there is a middle branch that came out of X-Com that has leaned more heavily into RPG elements. These particular western Tactical RPGs might not actually be RPGs? It's hard to tell sometimes and definitely depends on the specific game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This one is also weird becasue there is a middle branch that came out of X-Com that has leaned more heavily into RPG elements. These particular western Tactical RPGs might not actually be RPGs? It's hard to tell sometimes and definitely depends on the specific game.

I think it's more dangerous to call things "not RPGs" than RPGs, because it's been used so much as a cheap attack and it tends to derail discussions into IS NOT vs IS endlessly. Generally anything that identifies as an RPG probably is an RPG, even if it's a weird sub-genre (like Western JRPGs).

X-COM is something I'd say was "RPG-adjacent" and had "RPG elements", but it doesn't claim to be an RPG or aim to be one - AFAIK none of the modern ones do. Checking on Steam I don't see any of them, not even Chimera Squad describe themselves as RPGs.

Fell Seal and Fallout: Tactics do identify as RPGs and are plausibly RPGs imho (JRPG/SRPG and Tactics RPG respectively). I do think with stuff like Hard West 2 is a bit more hmmmmm, but still, it's more useful to treat it as the RPG it says it is.

Definitely does depend on the specific game.

 

[chuckdee]

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?

You've got that backwards. A poster from now is insisting that this is always the way it was, when I was clearly able to show that it's not. And that JRPGs were indeed being created under CRPG. Just look back and you'll see it from before you were in the conversation. That is what is being discussed here, and the fact that in general, not just by a hardcore subset, if you say CRPG, even during the time that it was changed, there were quite a few people that would have just said that you were talking about computer based RPGs. There's no official council that says that it means something specific now, there's just a general consensus in a niche community that says that bards tale is a CRPG but Final Fantasy as a JRPG is not. Indeed if you look up the definition in more generic places, they still stay to that. In fact, many say that instead of CRPG being the definition for Western RPGs, it's instead WRPG as opposed to JRPG.

I don't know... this seems like one of the cases where the effort to try to move the needle is more than the stakes involved, which was the reason I'd bailed before. Neither conversation has anything to do with the question in the OP, truthfully.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This one is also weird becasue there is a middle branch that came out of X-Com that has leaned more heavily into RPG elements. These particular western Tactical RPGs might not actually be RPGs? It's hard to tell sometimes and definitely depends on the specific game.

I think the distinction on those is that they're very much focused on the group rather than individuals, even though there's distinction among the characters and you can get attached.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You've got that backwards. A poster from now is insisting that this is always the way it was, when I was clearly able to show that it's not. And that JRPGs were indeed being created under CRPG. Just look back and you'll see it from before you were in the conversation. That is what is being discussed here, and the fact that in general, not just by a hardcore subset, if you say CRPG, even during the time that it was changed, there were quite a few people that would have just said that you were talking about computer based RPGs. There's no official council that says that it means something specific now, there's just a general consensus in a niche community that says that bards tale is a CRPG but Final Fantasy as a JRPG is not. Indeed if you look up the definition in more generic places, they still stay to that. In fact, many say that instead of CRPG being the definition for Western RPGs, it's instead WRPG as opposed to JRPG.

I don't know... this seems like one of the cases where the effort to try to move the needle is more than the stakes involved, which was the reason I'd bailed before. Neither conversation has anything to do with the question in the OP, truthfully.

You haven't shown that though, not at all.

Your link doesn't support your position, and your arguments that we need to use a term incorrectly and confusingly are not helpful, not thoughtful and not at all compelling. Especially with the very strange "there's no council which says..." and "niche community" nonsense here. That's not how languages work. Except maybe French lol.

This isn't up for debate. The usage is clear and common, and your "niche community" now is tens of millions of people, where back in the day, it was tens of thousands to low hundreds of thousands.

You're trying desperately to shove the needle in a direction it doesn't go so yes it's going to be hard!

Also you're flatly wrong - ARPGs do not stem JRPGs as you previously claimed. The definition ARPG is Diablo. The direct ancestor of Diablo is Rogue, not any JRPG - indeed it was turn-based for a lot of its development. That you don't know that is fascinating, given you're claiming such wisdom and knowledge.

The term WRPG is essentially dead, replaced by just "RPG", with JRPG being used to mean something more specific in the same way CRPG is. Elden Ring, for example is not typically considered a JRPG, despite being an RPG from Japan, because it is an Action RPG or just an RPG.

 

[chuckdee]

You haven't shown that though, not at all.

Your link doesn't support your position, and your arguments that we need to use a term incorrectly and confusingly are not helpful, not thoughtful and not at all compelling. Especially with the very strange "there's no council which says..." and "niche community" nonsense here. That's not how languages work. Except maybe French lol.

This isn't up for debate. The usage is clear and common, and your "niche community" now is tens of millions of people, where back in the day, it was tens of thousands to low hundreds of thousands.

You're trying desperately to shove the needle in a direction it doesn't go so yes it's going to be hard!

Also you're flatly wrong - ARPGs do not stem JRPGs as you previously claimed. The definition ARPG is Diablo. The direct ancestor of Diablo is Rogue, not any JRPG - indeed it was turn-based for a lot of its development. That you don't know that is fascinating, given you're claiming such wisdom and knowledge.

The term WRPG is essentially dead, replaced by just "RPG", with JRPG being used to mean something more specific in the same way CRPG is. Elden Ring, for example is not typically considered a JRPG, despite being an RPG from Japan, because it is an Action RPG or just an RPG.

Again this isn't worth it. I never said that ARPG stemmed from JRPG. Show me where I said that? And you're twisting the definition of niche community as all of the ones that play on those particular platform wouldn't be referencing them using the same terms. You even say this above - it's not as clear cut as you'd want it to be.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Again this isn't worth it. I never said that ARPG stemmed from JRPG. Show me where I said that? And you're twisting the definition of niche community as all of the ones that play on those particular platform wouldn't be referencing them using the same terms. You even say this above - it's not as clear cut as you'd want it to be.

I'm not twisting anything lol. Use silly nonsense terms and people will point that out.

Even ARPGs descended out of CRPGs as shown in that history.

Oh sorry CRPGs, which is also false. They descend from Rogue, which is its own genre, Roguelikes.

 

[chuckdee]

I

I'm not twisting anything lol. Use silly nonsense terms and people will point that out.

Oh sorry CRPGs, which is also false. They descend from Rogue, which is its own genre, Roguelikes.

It isn't false, demonstrably. I've already said it does not matter. Why do you persist? You can look at that article and see when out of the original definition of CRPGs ARPGs branched off. They didn't spring fully fleshed from nothing.

 

[grankless]

I would simply not get this mad about this subject.

 

[cbwjm]

I must be old, I still use CRPG as a term. I only sometimes use TTRPG if I absolutely need to define that I mean a table top game, most of the time I don't need to though.