Ug, this post misses a few key points. In all reasonableness no game needs specifically to lend itself to role-playing beyond giving the player a role to *ah-hem* play. The rest of that role all the mental, social expectations need to be projected then by a player onto the character. The only issue with a game like Diablo being a true role-playing game is that it is currently only capable of being so when other players exist. Thus allowing the fostering of inter character relationships. This is exactly the same as the nature of the true role-playing games like dungeons and dragons.

Along these lines, this statement "Gary Gygax didn't think of morality and choices, He simply conceived a ruleset that allows a fictional character to fight and grow" is imprecise. What Gary Gygax did, was conceive of a framework in which players were not restricted in social or mental freedoms. They would be constrained to physical things much as people in real life are, but would be able to do as they wanted freely. Thus within the framework players are capable of sending the plot whichever way they desire (often much to their DMs frustration) and are capable of fostering meaningful relationships with each character be it player controlled or not.

Again I question you're logic that for a game to be a role-playing game, that players must be capable of changing the plot. The player is given as much freedom as anyone within this framework, they may continue with their quest, they could instead ignore the quest and simply explore. They could chose to foster friendships and gallivant around towns playing merchant, or they can return to town, log off and say they retired. If players wished they could add their own rules, for instance they could play using perma-death.

Ultimately your core assertion is false, role play does not require true freedom. It merely requires freedoms appropriate to the role being played.

"The rest of that role all the mental, social expectations need to be projected then by a player onto the character."

You must be joking. You're saying that roleplaying is nothing but the amount of psychopathic emotional imagination the player loads unto the character... hence that any game can be a roleplaying game if you have for example a chat room(like in MMOs... which is plain false roleplaying improvisation).
You're evidently simply repeating, recycling general clichés thoughts, not daring to reconsider them. Role-playing doesn't begin inside players, their ability to rant(or imagine) some In Character nonsense while they're high on something. Roleplaying starts in the drama itself, in this case the videogames. D&D has role-playing because(and IF) the ruleset gives the right tools, and the master manages to provide a drama that succesfully inspects the characters' roles. Just to try rethink.

With the Gary Gigax' statement you completely misunderstood my point. The shallowness of the statement points out the general thinking:"any game with a ruletset is roleplaying, that's what makes a game a role-playing game"... it's undeniably the general idea of it.
My saying it initially implies infact that people misunderstand what Gygax said. Saying that infact the ruleset, the character growth is not JUST points and levels, but it's the freedom to shape a story with one's choices and interact, is exactly what you say after. You simply repeated what i said. But it's not in the useless social interaction per se, it's the social interaction combined with the drama theretold. That's the keypoint you're missing.

As for the 3rd paragraph, isn't wandering aimlessly being a merchant infact a plot change? The point is that when players are making these changes, they're infact interacting with their roles. This freedom rules out any game that
forces you to simply fight and assign points to new skills... like Diablo.

As for the last statement, i have no idea where you picked "roleplay requires true freedom", you're making stuff up. Role-playing only requires you being able to shape your character psychologically or physically, that when you do this, the story changes accordingly, and when it does, it lets you know that you yourself are different.

This should again rule out many games that are labelled as role-playing only because they have a ruleset, but they don't let you affect the story or the plot.

I can't even count the number of times you've contradicted yourself: you said first that roleplaying is just some kind of freaky abstract emotional self-involvement, in which your mind constructs castles of air even though the game is pac-man... and then you talk about freedom to be a merchant... which is not just projection, but realization of one's own role.

I suggest to read carefully the posts before replying :)

And i would like to clarify even more the difference between social interaction and social interaction in a well scripted drama: if you simply spout empty words to a person, like speaking in character, or imagining something inside your head, you're doing nothing, because you're not changing yourself, you're just ranting like a monkey. First it's the ruleset that ought to guide your social interactions, but even more than that it's the drama that will efficiently RETURN a result to your interaction, a return that's coherent with the main drama. Because you can be a character inside Macbeth, but you shouldn't be a generic guy, it's the drama that gives you a better role.

Oh wow, the pain of being paraphrased. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to role-play.

I'm not saying any game with rules is a role-playing game. I'm saying that any game with an appropriate framework has the potential to be a role playing game. You're right in saying that role-play doesn't begin at the players, it begins at this framework, this world defining system that provides the boundaries and structure of role-play. The locus of discretion from that point onwards is indeed, internally driven by the players. In this way role-play becomes and improvisational dramatic piece as opposed to a pre-described one. This of course happens by degrees, from Diablo, to DnD, to real Life, all of it is role-playing, the only thing that differs is the degree to which the actor may influence the world around them and the amount of freedom and precision that role prescribes upon the player.

To strain an example; If I play a Barbarian in Diablo, with full awareness of my characters lore, his background society etc. Then I would logically undertake the same actions the game wishes me to. I would indeed help many of these random strangers, and I would indeed fight demons and I would love every minute of it. I have no motivation for staying at home or in town or taking up a mercantile life, there is no freedom to chose that within my role as the role being adopted by the player is precisely defined (much as the role of an actor in a stage drama is tightly defined). If I was to stray from this I would no longer be "role-playing" that particular role.

Also;
"As for the 3rd paragraph, isn't wandering aimlessly being a merchant infact a plot change? The point is that when players are making these changes, they're infact interacting with their roles. This freedom rules out any game that forces you to simply fight and assign points to new skills... like Diablo."

This to me, indicates you have not played Diablo before. Diablo provides you with towns, merchants, narrative sequences, it is not pre-described that a player MUST leave town, it is merely implied (quite strongly) that they should do so.

Oh and this;
"Because you can be a character inside Macbeth, but you shouldn't be a generic guy"
Why? Simply because this is boring role? Because it has little impact on the story? There is simply no valid reason that one cannot role-play a generic character in Macbeth.

It would seem that you are not describing at all why Diablo and other such RPGs aren't true role-playing games. Ultimately role-play is not something that requires story change, player growth, or *gasp* character growth. It simply requires the acting out of a role, the above factors are commonly associated with role-play, but are NOT requirements for it.

I disagree with everything you say. Acting-out, improvisation, real-life, and oh my god even something as stupid as lore and background... they are useless without the best element of all. You're listing what i always bashed at in boards during these 10 years of discussions about RP. It's all junk if they're not guided by the ability to CHANGE yourself and the story... you cannot, EVER play a role if your character and the world around can't be CHANGED... to play a role means that you may manipulate one, if you cannot there's no way to play your role, you're undergoing one. The merit of my definition is that it doesn't need moral choices, just that when you change your character's physical attributes, you're changing the story... when the story is changed people will see you differently, and that's when you are faced with your role, the world around you is the mirror of your role. And it serves the purpose of making you realize that YOU chose your role. Some people think this can happen only with moral choices(so did I), now simple character progression is sufficient.

"I'm saying that any game with an appropriate framework has the potential to be a role playing game"

No. Any game with an "appropriate" framework IS already a role-playing game; there's no such a thing as potential, a game is a finite product, you don't need the player to do miraculous jumps of imagination, you only need them to play normally, as the game is meant to be played. The player can blather empty nonsense, or knit "realistic" backgrounds that will make him feel immersed or involved... but it's absolute useless bullshit if all his talk isn't motivated by change of the drama. So in Diablo there can never be role-play because you can't change its story in anyway.

Your "awareness" is nonsense, cause it has no active purpose... you're again undergoing your role of the barbarian, not "playing" with it. Even when you know the whole background of your barbarian, the fact that you can't choose how to have the plot progress, even if "logically" you would do the same things(which is utter nonsense) you're still not playing the role, you're the spectator of the role. You're doing what the programmers told you to do, accordng to what you said, when you see a movie and you know all its background, you're role-playing the movie. I hope you understand how dumb this would be.

"it is not pre-described that a player MUST leave town, it is merely implied (quite strongly) that they should do so".

The game doesn't proceed if you don't do it. And the story doesn't change. Your role in the events doesn't change, no matter what class you pick, you're always the same guy with the same role. That's because Diablo never cared about role-playing, it's just a game where you manage a character's skills technically and strategically. It's just numbers, there's no trace of HUMANITY in Diablo, that's precisely why there can't be roleplay.

"There is simply no valid reason that one cannot role-play a generic character in Macbeth".

There is and a big one: because that character is made up simply of a player's own mind, and it's not inserted in the events... and a character that doesn't fit in the drama can't roleplay, because the story wouldn't touch his role... and without a story there can't be a role. Read the definition of a role for example in theatre or narrative.

"It would seem that you are not describing at all why Diablo and other such RPGs aren't true role-playing games. Ultimately role-play is not something that requires story change, player growth, or *gasp* character growth. It simply requires the acting out of a role, the above factors are commonly associated with role-play, but are NOT requirements for it".

I quote all this because it's maybe the summary of all your mistakes. I just said above why Diablo isn't a RP. and as i said(here and previously) acting out is useless if it's not guided by change... first in your role, CONSEQUENTLY in the drama... and from the drama it backfires inside yourself as a person... rince and repeat, this cycle is:

role-playing.

I hope i made myself clear this time.

Oh your clear, and I'm still disagreeing. Everything you say is all extremes there is no regard for subtle difference and shifts within the concept of role-play, not to mention the contradiction(oh god the contradictions). Allow me to clear something up, a "ROLE" must be pre-described to some extent, there MUST be some defining boundary. Yes we agree? Who sets this boundary is irrelevant. Whether it be the player, actor, narrator, developer, writer, all that is necessary for role-play is that a role is crafted and a player plays it (there is NO pre-requisite that different people do the crafting and the playing).

This;
"No. Any game with an "appropriate" framework IS already a role-playing game; there's no such a thing as potential, a game is a finite product"
is naive. To say that a game cannot grow beyond the boundaries of what it's developer intended ignores the fact that humans interact with it.

Also one of your key points, that the playing of a role must engender change within both player and narrative is romanticised drivel. For instance what if the EXACT purpose of my role play, was to play a role that engendered no narrative or character change (not necessarily both at the same time). Such if acted in a play for instance, could in fact be a potent character, and instead of engendering change in himself, serves to engender change within the audience.

And onto the next item;
"There is and a big one: because that character is made up simply of a player's own mind, and it's not inserted in the events... and a character that doesn't fit in the drama can't roleplay, because the story wouldn't touch his role... and without a story there can't be a role. Read the definition of a role for example in theatre or narrative."
Wait...wha?! If I'm conceiving of a generic character in Macbeth, I AM inserting him into the story in some way, shape or form, therefore he is part of the drama and thus has a role that can, in fact, be played. If your saying that the only characters allowed in Macbeth are only the ones conceived by the original writer then your simply ignoring the human imagination for the sake of literary purity (which makes me wonder at the consistency of your own view, as if all one does is conform to a writers view then by your own definition one would not be role playing).

Either way this;
"Even when you know the whole background of your barbarian, the fact that you can't choose how to have the plot progress, even if "logically" you would do the same things(which is utter nonsense) you're still not playing the role, you're the spectator of the role."
would serve to indicate that role-play of any kind is, in fact an impossibility. The fatalist in me would point out that once one adopts a role (fully and wholeheartedly), then any outcome is predetermined until one actually CHANGES role, as the role one adopts in a game of Diablo is incapable (the role, not the game limitation) of change, then the result of any interaction in the game is pre-determined, one can only role-play the role as it is thus intended by the designer.

Ultimately there are several contradictions within your own writing that I would get sorted out before coming back with more nonsense, once that's done, I'd appreciate it if you actually look into the complexities of character before making such sweeping statements about what kind of character can be role-played and what cannot. Also maybe look into how extreme many of your views are and rather than treating the concept as black and white, view the grey areas in between.

Either way, I think I've exhausted my willingness to debate the topic, it was fun while it lasted, cheerio.

"humans interact with it".

Humans are useless, humans are the foam out of waves; it may add them beauty but they're not necessary. Just as how Macbeth is a great play for what's said into it, not for the way some bozo reads it or feels about it.

"For instance what if the EXACT purpose of my role play, was to play a role that engendered no narrative or character change".

Then there's no roleplay. If your role is immobile and the story is too, you're not allowed to play with the role.

"Such if acted in a play for instance, could in fact be a potent character, and instead of engendering change in himself, serves to engender change within the audience".

you're now talking about meta-theatre for god sake. Those spectators aren't players... if a role engenders change in the audience(like in a videogame), and they can't in turn change your role, there's no roleplaying, it's a one-way interaction, they're not role-players, you're claiming that YOU are but it would be as if you're claiming to BE the character of a videogame!!! An actor is way different from a videogames player. You changing the audience is like an action-flick that aims to change people. But it's a subject too drifting, not worth following, it's evident that you're confused, trying to cling on whatever subject you're finding.

"I AM inserting him into the story in some way, shape or form".

Very good. Then he's not generic anymore, is he? My point exactly, thanks for delivering it back to me. :D

"one can only role-play the role as it is thus intended by the designer".

Priceless... i just saw Predator. I can't change the main character, but it's not important, i can still roleplay that role because i adopted, that's enuff. Perhaps if i throw my dice before the ending, it will be different.

Very good i contradict myself... but you won't tell where and how. That speaks volumes. :)

Let's just say we both disagree, then. I do it to defend new intuitions, which are the product of progressive analysis and speculation based on established modern conceptions to forward criticism, your disagreament is simply re-using common thoughts and will to preserve them... if it's old don't change it, it's surely right.

Role Playing Game is very vague and I don't think it is limited in anyway to leveling up a character or distibuting points to skills.

"Then there's no roleplay. If your role is immobile and the story is too, you're not allowed to play with the role." - The McAndrews

The story of a game doesn't necessarily have to be told in any way. By playing, the player creates his own adventure, his own events and fun through the game world and mechanics he can interact with. Games like Borderlands and Shadow Complex are great examples as well as any competitive online game. Halo and Call of Duty 4 have RPG features too and it's not about following a beautiful story.

Plus, in many games the player can unlock new skills and follow a clean progression curve. That's also a RPG element. RPG simply is a natural order of progression allowing a player to play a role in something and basically life is also made that way. Everything as a function, a role to play in order to maintain the balance in the universe.

RPG is part of all games.