First of all, excellent article!

As for MMORPGs: Most of these are guilty of mixing too many things into the cauldron at once, with variable success rates. It might be argued though, that the ones that make it work, don't mix everything all at once, but spread it over different timeslices.

My experience with MMORPGs is primarily with Final Fantasy XI, which goes a bit against the norm and actually has a story. But the story based aspects of the game, is to a large extent experienced separately from the other aspects of the game.

Initially, it is a sandbox exploration experience, but to advance you must go into character driven "leveling grind" mode on occasion. These two rarely overlap in the same gaming session.

When you change into "story mode", grinding and exploration are likewise put on the backburner.

I reckon many of the same rules apply to traditional JRPGs, allthough the change of timeframe is often faster and more frequent.

Attempting to tackle what others say "can't be done" is a fools errand...until that one fool figures it out rendering the naysayers foolish.

This is one of the reasons why I love working in games, i'm surround by people who see the word "can't be done" as permission to try!

Actually Ni No Kuni is a strongly narrative RPG, but even more as you say it is a JRPG. They are a specific genre altogether, but actually so specific that no one ever mistake them for something else.

Thus why we call them "JRPG" and not just RPG, what I wanted to focus on here are the three main RPG genre that are most often unclear to people especially when they are somehow all flagged as "Action RPG".

As for mixing experience, as I say you can do it, but you have to ensure that you are doing it for the right reason and that you know exactly what you will gain or lose by doing so.

Most of the time you will end up noticing that you are simply diluting your main experience by doing so, but again, this is not an hard rule, simply a guideline.

As you can imagine, I thought about the JRPG a lot in the context of this article while I was working through the draft process and editing it for publication. But this is primarily an article, I decided, aimed at Western developers making Western-style games, and on top of that, mainly packaged console games.

I did recognize that JRPGs don't always fit the mold suggested by this article, but I also thought about the rather deliberate way in which they are designed to do so.

I would love to see this article updated to incorporate a discussion of JRPGs and possibly also Strategy RPGs a la "Final Fantasy Tactics." To a certain extent they could be fit into the existing archetypes you're discussing (most JRPGs seem like a sub-type of the "Narrative RPG" category, for example) but then again, then again they have a lot of unique qualities that might force them into their own category.

You comment is finally made something click I hadn't put together until right now - the reason I can't stand RPG's anymore. You are right, they usually have a heavy narrative section, then go off with fighting for a while. The problem is when the RPG world decided to make everything action based instead of turn based it turned into a much 'faster' game. It made the talk sections very "boring" in comparison to the point that it was either an action game or a talk game. When things were more turn based it game the lull to the combat that blended better with the talkie parts for me. It is rare that I get in the mood to play a game that is both of these qualities, action and narrative, I either want to relax and 'watch' something while still interacting, or play something with a lot of action. I tend to gravitate to action if it is provided though so even if I'm in the mood to play narrative if a bunch of action gets thrown in I tire of the narrative and just want to get back to the action - thus killing the effectiveness of the narrative.

It was one of the reasons I think I like Eternal Sonata so much despite the fact I can hardly touch a JRPG anymore. It was as fast as I wanted it to go, so when I got into the mood to play narrative type games it was a consistent feel - until one got to the end of the game where it forced action upon you... which was exactly when I felt the game lost focus and such for me. Luckily it was near the end so I just cranked it out the rest of the way.

I kind of missed them on purpose, like I said above to Robert Boy, I wanted to focus here mainly on the three Big RPG genres that are most often put in the big bag of "Action RPG", MMORPG, JRPG, Tactical RPG, or other very abstract genre like Minecraft are clearly defined for everyone and don't have that kind issue.

Not to mention that MMORPG and JRPG would probably need a full article just for them, as they are very specific, and going into the JRPG especially would mean diving into the Japanese culture and to why and how it impact their vision of RPGs in general, so much that we are actually calling them differently.

Games like Minecraft aren't RPGs, they're just sandbox. As with a real sandbox, some people decide to play pretend, others just like to build things out of the sand. A person can choose to play a role in a variety of games. To be an RPG, a game is *designed* to facilitate playing a role.

I think you're taking the term "role playing" too broadly. A role-playing game isn't just a game in which a player plays some ambiguously defined "role", it's a game where a number of roles within a system are possible (and often necessary) and the player can choose which one they prefer (or, in the case of party-based RPGs, where the player plays all the roles through separate characters).

I also think one of the keys of RPGs is that they're stats-based rather than action-based. One of the primary things that sets an RPG apart from other games is that the *character*'s skill level is just as important as the player's, and that the character's skill level changes over time.

I agree with Adam. The term RPG itself has become grossly misused as console developers found making more traditional RPGs without a keyboard was difficult to do. Having an inventory, a skill level and the ability to talk to NPCs doesn't necessarily = RPG.

Jordane: True, I get where you're coming from. And yeah JRPG's is a totally other beast all together.

Matt: I did not say Minecraft is an RPG. I did mention the words RPG & Minecraft in the same sentence, so I can understand that that can be difficult.
An RPG is however not just a game designed to to facilitate playing a role, because with that statement, you encompass all games. It's about different roles.

Adam: You are right, a skill level is one of the traditional mechanics RPGs have used, tabletop & videogames. What I was trying to say is that with the evolution in technology they will be needed less and less, since skill levels are basically a mechanic to replace actual skills. In D&D games the archer could shoot better, hence his higher archery skill-points, which then translates into a formula based on the dice roll. But when playing in a virtual world, a place where actual archery can take place, somehow buffing your skills with extra perks when leveling up is a bit of an unneeded mechanic imo -> better archers will land more shots..
Im not for removing skilltrees all together, and in certain games it can be very suitable. Im just saying that with the advancements made in games, the adaptation of tradional "work arounds" is less needed. Shooters have moved from being a type of game, to a mechanic..

Adam, Raymond & Brion:
I think with the classification of any kind of media / art, the best way to go is the tradional explanations, to avoid miss communication. An RPG is a fictitious game that can be played as different characters. Nothing more, nothing less. With a videogame RPG you can swap out the fictitious with virtual. Skillpoints & Skilltrees is just a mechanic used.

Brion: I used a dictionary. I tend to follow those more then random people on the internet

DayZ provides a glimpse into the future of videogames.

There may not be the orthodox prescripted story imposed on the player from without,
but there is definitely an emergent history generated from within via the actions of its
participants within the context of the simulation. Griefing is less of a problem now that
players do not recieve a starting weapon and hopefully the holstering of weapons will
be added before it leaves Beta as this would encourage friendly collaboration:

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/3902-holster-pistol/

A couple of players could lower the danger of looking for resources around a helicopter
crash site, by having one watch over the other from a remote hill with a sniper rifle as
their buddy was preoccupied with scavenging and inventory management. Their chat,
their anxiety, the tension within the relationship between them, would forge a diary of
'Day N in DayZ': a history they wrote with their actions, soaked in the atmosphere of
dread and paranoia that the game system cultivated, yet allieviated by the feeling of
protection that the player projects (perhaps, ultimately erroneously) onto a stranger
who has yet to betray them and in these dangerous days they are forced to call friend.

Yet, this aesthetic could not exist without the dynamics of fellowship, yet that requires
the mechanics to approach a complete stranger with your pistol lowered, engage in a
conversation to establish that they are indeed friendly and commit to both holstering
their weapons before exchanging food and medical supplies as a "gesture of trust". To
release DayZ without this simple mechanic is to frustrate the emergence of team play
and the different kinds of 'stories' that can happen to those playing as a friendly group.

This concrete example brings me around to my main point: Entanglement.

Entanglement is what will ultimately unify all genres of RPG. It is the provision of some
mechanisms that support dynamics that once opted into incur a penalty on abandoning.
Forging friendships in DayZ is almost an example of this, except there is no penalty for
betrayal: player B could return to the hill with what he found at the crash site ready to
share what he had found as arranged and player A could snipe him as he got close and
loot his corpse for everything he had. Unless there is some mechanism where player A
was blacklisted as a result of his actions, then some new player N could make the same
mistake. Yet, in the world of DayZ it would actually be against its core aesthetics of
fostering paranoia and dread if such a mechanism were to be introduced. Probably, the
only thing that would work is if the game prevented players changing the name of their
character mid-game. They could still reinvent their identity and appearance when they
inevitably died, but player B knowing that player A was indeed that jerk who betrayed
his friendship during his previous life would stop him trusting him a second time, even
a 'culture of revenge' could sprout up led by a group of white knights who would enact
retribution on player A on B's behalf, provided they had incriminating video. Hence, it
may need a way to capture the last five minutes of gameplay that was always on that
had a Theatre mode and the ability to upload proof of misconduct to the community...

Entanglement also works in a single-player adventure. A relationship can be optionally
cultivated to some gameplay advantage (e.g. Donnie Brasco mob infiltration), yet the
AI-driven NPC buddy requires you to do things that 'funnel' the game experience in a
direction that is in harmony with the game's underlying theme. The game my struggle
to orchestrate contexts into which your NPC will request your involvement, but if you
fail to service this relationship the access you hoped to achieve through their trusted
connections, wealth and opportunity, simply don't arise. Indeed, they may get angry
with you and become an enemy. Either way, your involvement with them leaves your
relationship polarised for good or ill from neutrality: you are entangled thereafter.

Let me apply all this to your article:

The Narrative RPG will become increasingly obsolete for eight reasons:

- Telling a predetermined, often linear, story limits player freedom and creativity

- Increasingly large-scale, open world Sandboxes, make this prohibitively expensive

- An emergent history forged by the actions of the player(s) can be superior (DayZ)

- A open world can include hack 'n slash dungeons with loot, gear and XP from skill

- These dungeons can hold an optional objective deep within them (for relevance)

- Players can revisit dungeons after a interval to find new monsters and treasure

- It is equally legitimate to 'hunt, shoot, fish and loot' as it is to 'rescue the princess'

- Entanglement provides a mechanism to ensure that players stick to a chosen path*

*Hence, you would be penalised for dungeon crawling whilst in the middle of a quest
to rescue the princess, unless the princess was the objective held prisoner by a boss
deep within a specific dungeon, yet a stealthy rescue may preclude extensive looting

I see no practical reason why every kind of adventure game couldn't be combined to
make one ultimate hybrid of genres, in other words a MMORTSFPSRPG with a scope
so broad that it multiple adventures were given coherency by an underlying theme,
rather than just one adventure that was the scripted crystallisation of that theme.

Nick gets it. You should check some of the interviews with Dean Hall, DayZ's creator. He has a real interesting way of working and looking at things. ShannonZKiller on youtube has an 11 part interview with him a few days ago, might be worth checking out. He goes into development quite deep (as always), and shares some of his insights on the impact of DayZ, as well as his thoughts on the industry.

Brion: Repeating yourself doesn't make it more true. Different mechanics is Not a role. And that's probably where your confusion surrounding Role Playing comes from. You should not use your own opinion on what a word means, that way you'll wind up miss communicating a lot with people.

Role playing is not restricted to video games only. The fact that video games use the word to describe their genre, and in the last 10 years often used it wrongfully, or at least at a bare minimum, does not change the fact that Role Playing, and Role Playing Games are things that exist outside of videogames, and that they already have a pretty clear definition for them. A couple of dozen mislabeled video games won't change this.

"Role playing is not restricted to video games only."

But the notion of RPG, within the context of video games, does have a specific meaning that differs from the broad term "role-playing". Have you ever heard of the etymological fallacy? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy) The original meaning of the term role-playing, which indeed originated outside of gaming, need have no bearing on what the term RPG has come to mean within the context of gaming. (Queue complaining about how all the examples provided on that page are of word change over centuries, thus missing the point entirely.)

Surprise surprise, not all terms involving multiple words are merely the sum of their parts, and not all terms have meaning that is uniform through all contexts and throughout time. Whale sharks are not whales, high school is neither high in the air nor the metaphorical pinnacle of education, and many video games either don't fit the traditional meaning of games or don't feature sequences of still images representing scenes in motion (J.S. Joust being one, but there are many hidden-object and point-and-click games, especially older ones, where represented movement is so sparse it might as well just be window dressing - yet we call them "video" games).

"You should not use your own opinion on what a word means, that way you'll wind up miss communicating a lot with people."

This is funny, considering your opinion on what RPG *should* mean in the context of video games is at odds with most of the rest of the discourse taking place in this space - discourse driven by players, developers, marketers and journalists. I don't think I've ever heard anybody refer to The Walking Dead as an RPG, despite the player's taking on a particular role, and people are happy to call games with almost no narrative role RPGs because of character progression mechanics. *Your* understanding would lead to miscommunication, in a space that is not especially confused about the terminology.

Meaning, sadly for you, is influenced primarily by usage. This means meaning is frequently muddied and inconsistent across large populations, but I think in this particular case, it's not as ambiguous as you'd like it to be.

"The fact that video games use the word to describe their genre, and in the last 10 years often used it wrongfully, or at least at a bare minimum, does not change the fact that Role Playing, and Role Playing Games are things that exist outside of videogames, and that they already have a pretty clear definition for them."

Um, no, actually it does. That is how jargon works, which is a well-established linguistic phenomenon. A term becomes used in a novel way and takes on new meaning in a narrower subset of the broader linguistic, as in this case. Meanings coexist. Role-playing has a different meaning in video game jargon than it does in general language, just like terms such as "experience," "level," "spawn," "boss," "item," "raid," and more. Or if you think video games aren't allowed their own context-specific jargon (because, what, that would invalidate your position?), let me introduce you to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_poker_terms

Oh, the horrors, terms being used the way they aren't used outside of poker! How dare they! Banks and fields and sharks and wheels all exist outside of poker, and the fact that poker players wrongfully use these terms doesn't change that, amiright?

(Even more entertaining is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting_descriptors )

RPGs always include role playing. A mission includes a dramatic set up - which frames the play within a narrative.

You can have minimal narrative mechanics, but IMO that's like decaf coffee. You are missing the key feature of the product.

Role playing games are called "Role Playing Games" not "Character Progression Games" or "Stat Games."

So far it's been impossible for computer based RPGs to simulate characters or socially mediated narratives based on characterization (roles) at the level humans are able to achieve playing pen and paper RPGs.

The three categories of computer game based RPGs described above are three attempts to deal with the limitations of using computers as a platform for RPGs and to emphasize other aspects that computers can deliver well, such as cinematic style narratives, reasonably simulated 3D worlds and intense real time combat.

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RPG as computer game was based off of the popularity of role playing games. These games were popular for a reason. New devices that make use of computers as networked communication platforms and esp layered reality present opportunities for tapping into the dynamics that made RPGs popular to begin with.

The reason you feel RPG is a bad name goes back to my original point that dungeon crawlers with no narrative are not RPGs.

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While the video/computer game genre "RPG" obviously shares a name with pen and paper "RPG"s, I don't know if it's accurate to assume that that means both types of games have the same aesthetic goals or need the same mechanical elements.

While computer RPGs focused on one aspect of the tabletop experience - the mechanics - other types of games seem to have emphasized other elements of that experience. Interactive fiction games, for instance, focus more on an immersive second-person narrative space the unfolds through a dialogue with a storyteller/DM (most of my personal tabletop RPG experiences have 'felt' more like IF games than like console RPGs).

But, for whatever reason, games simulating the mechanical aspect of PnP RPGs were christened "RPGs, "while game simulating the narrative style/interactions were not, and developed their own name, "IF." But I don't think that means that one is necessarily more similar or more beholden to the PnP model than the other.

RPG is basically a really problematic term, as in almost any game with characters you are playing some role (I remember first encountering role playing games in late elementary school, and being confused by the term as I had already been playing the role of Mario and MegaMan for years...), and, ironically, a lot of games labelled as RPGs, and which are exemplars of the RPG computer game genre, don't actually emphasize role-playing. I think Jordane's article helps navigate those confusing multiple shades of the term, witohut completing abandoning the term 'RPG,' which might be too confusing, even if it would ultimately probably be appropriate.

Reading this thread kind of explains it to me. I think it's save to assume that Brion & Luke never actually Role played anything in their adult lives.
And if they think they did, because they tried game X where character B could jump higher, that'll hopefully explain my point.

All that statistical stuff comes from war games. The innovation that created role playing games out of war games was adding layers of characterization/roles/role play and the game master who essentially directed the group storytelling effort. That's what originally made them popular.

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>But, for whatever reason, games simulating the mechanical aspect of PnP RPGs were christened "RPGs"

Computer game point systems match war game stats. Adding role playing to war games increased their popularity. Adding various degrees of role playing to computer games increases their popularity, if executed well.

Another reason for "christening" games with no role playing as RPGs might be marketing. Some people selling fantasy fighting games may want to try and fit into the popular fantasy RPG market.

If some one is creating a role playing game and is de-emphasizing dramatic characterization and narrative play aka role playing in favor of stats they are missing an opportunity. Humans are social creatures.

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"lacking a better name they borrowed the term as well." Your story is essentially distinction without a difference.

"Playing a game with narrative isn't a social activity, it's about the farthest thing from it"

The context is role playing games. They are not costume playing games or figurative archetype playing games. The social narrative interaction is what distinguishes the role playing game engine from the statistical war game engine or IF. Collaborative narrative is their appeal and strength.

Dragon Age is from my point of view, as for every Bioware games a Narration driven RPG.

That being said, it is still an RPG, so yes, definitely the character progression and leveling system are and need to be good, they are simply in my opinion not the real focus here.

You can't really grind in Dragon Age, there are no re-spawns, there is a finite amount of experience and even currency that you can acquire. In the end your experience has a beginning and an end which is purely defined by the story.

On the other end, a true dungeon crawler, like Diablo, use the narration as a context, but never has a limitation to your character progression, quite the contrary you can literally "break" the story flow by redoing past level, killing bosses multiple times etc, simply to keep having your character progress.

So yes, it is always important to have a nice Level up system and fun combat, but that does not prevent you from focusing your experience on the narration.

For example, the simple fact that you have dialog with multiple choice and even morale choices to follow show that the narrative evolution of the character in Dragon Age is very important, whereas there is no such thing in a Diablo game.

But with Dragon Age, you could fast-forward through all the dialogue and still have a great time just with the dungeon crawler elements of the game. Similar thing with Mass Effect (and in fact, they added a skip-story mode to the 3rd game).

In games that don't focus on one extreme, the emphasis comes as much from the player as it does the game. You can play something like Dragon Age focusing on the story and you can play it focused on the combat and leveling. Neither approach is wrong or better than the other.

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It's possible that Devil May Cry, and Darksiders would fit in to your Artisan/Manipulator/Experientialist Action RPG.

Since they feature what is essentially a string of fighting games - increasing abilities usually as combos (very player skill connected). This leads to more and more intense battles and sensations.

There is usually narrative flow associated with success, and some leveling up (albeit minor).

He does say it's alright to mix as long as you know what you're doing.

It's also worthy to note that yeah, having all of them and in just the right way is awesome, but the more features you want, the more expensive or time-consuming it can be to develop it.

Michael,

Splicing two -- traditionally separate -- genres can be incredibly successful -- if done correctly. The point of this article, while applying to RPG's in the traditional sense, is to point out that more often than not, more is less. Creativity and the ability to think outside the box is a must in this industry but re-inventing the wheel, so to speak, can be risky.

Stressing one tenet gives a game a structured focus, but adding pieces from another discipline can go a long way in making your game stand out. For example, Borderlands uses a healthy hybrid of player progression and narrative, and then folds it into an FPS. I use this as an example because I feel that this game successfully blends multiple tenets from RPG's and genres, and perhaps most importantly, they marketed it towards hardcore gamers. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't lacking in many areas.

FPS fans may not have liked it because it didn't play like Halo; RPG fans may have been turned off by the lack of depth and immersion. But they weren't trying to please everyone who played those respective genres; as Jordane said, "I don't know the secret of success, but the secret of failure is certainly trying to please everyone."

While I certainly do not disagree with you, I am an advocate of Jordane's post. Often times when developers add a mix of RPG tenets/genre splicing they can lose their overall focus and attempt to please all players who tend to enjoy them individually. Just because a game has narrative, shooting, and progression doesn't mean a narrative, fps, and progression fan will enjoy them.

@Tyler

thanks for the response...fair enough. i didn't necessarily want to sidetrack the article (in a hurtful way) especially to those who feel that it applies to their situation (perhaps they are on a project where it is not clear which aspect of the game is the "focus").

also, i am not against streamlined games or games that have focus and simplicity (i.e. Tetris) and i can see the point about the "please everyone" design approach (should be avoided)

...but even as a lover of "old school" RPGs, i wonder how many design decisions are left to "convention" (i.e. we are making a narrative rpg, therefore lots of exposition and in your face narrative through deep dialog trees) rather than figuring out the best way to have the player have experiences...(more simply, instead of assuming the branching narrative is accomplished through dialog trees, how can I get a player to make choices that matter).

i think we would all agree on is communication and having a common vision among the team is paramount, if this article inspires people to effectively communicate a shared vision to achieve project success, i'm all for it.

(I just tend to get confused when people call Dark Souls a "Dungeon Crawler", or Dragon Age a "narrative RPG"... to me this doesn't communicate the core of what either of those games is about and what makes them good/special.)

cheers,
m.

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AIML

Brion:
What I meant was "Almost a direct clone" from Dragon Quest, I just removed item usage and levels, since the power of your character party is static as well the enemies you bump in specific pockets of the game (Right after the "NPC conversation phase" is over actually).
I'm trying to come up with a spin. All I got so far is that each character belongs in a class, and all classes are equal save one particular mechanic: They can use buffs in mid battle to up a specific stat, or in the case of the Strategist, their equivalent of "MP". I guess I need to study some more turn based games to truly make one unique.
Joshua:
Thank you for the sugestion! I wonder if I can mesh that system well with some ideas I got for combat...

Honestly? It sounds like you're re-inventing the Sakura Wars series. Sakura Wars is a JRPG series, only one of which was ever released in English. The gameplay is divided into "visual novel" segments, which can be described like this:

"The flow of the narrative is left to player choice of what character will he interact and what conversation options he choose. The player is limited of how many actions (Interactions with NPCs) he can do before the main plot picks up and he loses his chance, forcing the player to select NPCs of his choices over others."

The other half of the game consists of Final Fantasy Tactics-like battle sequences, in which your characters' battle stats are determined by the state of the relationships between the characters (as determined by your actions in the visual novel segments).

>only one of which was ever released in English

I guess you can't blame him for not knowing about it then.