Pen and Paper RPGs

[Jonas]

Indeed, I always thought adopting the term "Roleplaying Game" for the original computer approximations was a mistake. I understand they began as an attempt to emulate real roleplaying, but it's just not an accurate description of what the genre entails, and every time a discussion involving CRPGs descends into semantics centered around this name that never fit the genre to begin with, my head hits my desk most painfully

[AEmer]

Well, and I'll be very careful not to enter into a discussion of what is and is not a roleplaying game or other genre definition nonsense, sparing your desk from the stinging pain of your head hitting it, but I think there's some sense to the name, and how it was chosen.

The way I see it, roleplaying, as in freeform, improv or mimic'ing roleplay, is not bound by rules, and is therefore not a game in the ordinary sense.

A roleplaying game is in contrast rulebound roleplaying, with some larger, overarching purpose. The original roleplaying game is, of course, Dungeons and Dragons, itself based on old rulebound wargames. The way I recall that it was developed is, someone wanted to introduce roles and characters and roleplaying into already complex rule systems. The roleplaying, in other words, is a flavor strapped onto a game, rather than the game being incidental to the roleplaying.

CRPG's are then the computer version of this concept.

It doesn't make intuitive sense; you'd say a roleplaying game was a game-like activety where the focus is roleplaying is the obvious interpretation of the word, when the meaning has historically been a game flavored with people acting out characters and roles, but whose main purpose was some specific kind of gameplay, usually tactical fighting.

Being intuitive about it is all well and good, except JRPG's can ligitimately be called roleplaying games in accord with the historical definition, and they can't with the intuitive one. The answer is, obviously, learn to recognize games called roleplaying games as roleplaying games, rather than engaging in some ideological debate based on how you think a word makes more sense as opposed to how its actually used.

[Jonas]

I find your description of the origin and original meaning of the term "roleplaying game" to be completely accurate, but my problem is that when the term is transferred to computer games, it is used to describe a genre of entertainment where no actual roleplaying is taking place. In the translation of a roleplaying game to the computer, the roleplaying part does not make it across, and only the game part remains. And then certain people fixate on the "roleplaying" part of "roleplaying game" as some sort of platonic ideal for the genre, typically without even recognising that the only way roleplaying is ever gonna work in a computer game is if you play online with likeminded people. Neverwinter Nights can be played as a roleplaying game, but this dynamic is created by the players using the game in a certain way, and you are never guaranteed that you'll get to play the game as a roleplaying game. I would strongly argue that any singleplayer game cannot be a roleplaying game, because computer-controlled characters will only ever respond to actions selected by the game designers.

[AEmer]

it is used to describe a genre of entertainment where no actual roleplaying is taking place.

Yes, that's a side effect of the translation.

I'm not sure I completely agree; even if you don't have opportunities for much unique expression and improv, I'm not sure that these things are key to the idea of playing a role.

You're right though - people use their intuition to interpret what RPG means, rather a dictionary or even observations of how other people use the word. If we could go back in time, we should convince the inventors of D&D to all it a character game rather than a roleplaying game, because that encapsulates the idea, since whether there's improv based roleplaying is really secondary in almost all games in the genre now.

[fantsu]

Cyberpunk 2020 is the best one around if you want to play modern or sci-fi.
I guess that RuneQuest (2nd and 3rd) are still the best fantasy related RPGs.

Both games have HUGE amount of backround material and the worlds are pretty much perfect.
There is super realistic rules released for CP2020 (few years ago, not by Talsorian games anymore, cannot remember the name but it was made by some real Delta Force members),
and it is probably the most realistic way of playing RPGs around. Perfect if you want to include battles in game.

If you want to go easy, D&D is always simple game to play.

[Jaedar]

I'm bored, so I figured I'd make some more contribution to this.

I find your description of the origin and original meaning of the term "roleplaying game" to be completely accurate, but my problem is that when the term is transferred to computer games, it is used to describe a genre of entertainment where no actual roleplaying is taking place. In the translation of a roleplaying game to the computer, the roleplaying part does not make it across, and only the game part remains.

I certainly agree with you that the roleplaying is lessened, as the freedom that comes with having a GM is removed. This will always be the case until we discover AI. But I don't see why does means none of the roleplaying and only the game part remains. In my mind, this is the difference between a game like skyrim, where you can 'roleplay' all you like, but the game doesn't react to it at all, so you're basically just playing with your imagination. You can also roleplay ala alpha protocol and so on, where you make choices according to the character you play and the game reacts accordingly. This is very reminiscent of actual roleplaying, with the caveat of not being able to say or do exactly everything you can think of(although you can't do everything in a pnp either, but it is a lot less limited).

because computer-controlled characters will only ever respond to actions selected by the game designers.

Whereas GM-controlled characters will only ever respond to actions selected by the GM. Capacity to improvise doesn't change the fundamentals.

Personally, I was hoping that some developer would take one of those chatbot programs(they're fairly advanced at this point, and can pass for actual human beings.... to some extent) and adapt it to a cRPG at some point. Granted, it would have to be text only since computers can't speak or emote very well yet but it could still be a massive improvement.

A crpg is simply an approximation of a regular rpg, handled on a computer. The new platform certainly has some limitations, but it also has some improvements(ridiculous computing speeds for one, which means you could eschew the parts of the dice rolling that's supposed to account for all the variables a human could never track but a computer could).

[Jonas]

If you consider choosing between pre-written options to be roleplaying, then choose-your-own-adventure games count as roleplaying too? That's a very low bar you've set up there, and frankly I don't think it would need to be stretched very much to be taken to mean that all games are roleplaying games. I mean if it's roleplaying to select between 3 different personas in Alpha Protocol (Bond, Bourne, Bauer), then we may as well call it roleplaying to control Sam Fisher through a Splinter Cell installment. I'm playing the role of Sam Fisher. Indeed in some academic circles, the word roleplaying is used just this way - to describe merely a certain aspect of a player's interaction with an avatar. It's like an actor playing a role that is entirely pre-written for him by a playwright (albeit with a particularly anal director with absolutely no tolerance for changing the lines).

I don't know what to say to your second point about GM-controlled characters only ever responding to actions selected by the GM. Other than... your GM sucks, it would seem? So what happens if you do something completely unexpected? Your GM just politely informs you that he didn't plan for that and will you please instead do this particular thing that he did plan for? If so, your GM sucks. At the very, very least you'll be able to craft your own persona and the GM should account for that and respond accordingly. If I decide that my character in Skyrim is a Prince of Elsweyr who was dethroned by his evil brother and exiled to Skyrim, the game isn't going to give two shits nor change in any way whatsoever to account for this. If I do the same in a campaign with a GM and the GM doesn't respond at all... the GM sucks and I don't know why you even bother playing with him or her, go play Skyrim instead, it has much better graphics.

Finally, if a chat bot is what you want, look into interactive fiction. I'm not saying that to be facetious, it's genuinely been done pretty well in certain IF games, and if you're really interested in that avenue of game design, check it out - it can be pretty cool. It's still not very close to actual well executed tabletop roleplaying though.

[Jaedar]

So what happens if you do something completely unexpected?

he... selects an action. The fact that it has or has not been preplanned(or not) does not change the fact that it is made in response to my action, does it? The fact that my actions and the GM's responses can be drawn from a much larger pool does not change the fundamental exchange.

If you consider choosing between pre-written options to be roleplaying, then choose-your-own-adventure games count as roleplaying too?

That's not all there is to roleplaying, but I considering choice an essential part of it yes. I would argue however, that it doesn't become roleplaying until your choices are made from a base character concept(usually stats which allow/disallow certain choices or make them riskier, and more detailed things if you're pnping) or develop your character. I'd probably argue more things as well but I can't think of them now.

Finally, if a chat bot is what you want, look into interactive fiction. I'm not saying that to be facetious, it's genuinely been done pretty well in certain IF games, and if you're really interested in that avenue of game design, check it out - it can be pretty cool. It's still not very close to actual well executed tabletop roleplaying though.

Got any good places to start?

Even so I'd like a chat bot combined with other things. I think a chat bot would just really improve upon the talking bits of a crpg as it allows the computer to improvise more and would actually allow free speech.

I mean if it's roleplaying to select between 3 different personas in Alpha Protocol (Bond, Bourne, Bauer), then we may as well call it roleplaying to control Sam Fisher through a Splinter Cell installment.

I believe you're forgetting/ignoring the fact that a lot of the choices in the game aren't split like that. You have some point though, but remember that in splinter cell you can only play sam fisher, in AP you can mix and match 3 people Not saying Ap is a perfect example either, but it had some good ideas and implementation when it came to choices and consequences.

[Jonas]

he... selects an action. The fact that it has or has not been preplanned(or not) does not change the fact that it is made in response to my action, does it? The fact that my actions and the GM's responses can be drawn from a much larger pool does not change the fundamental exchange.

I'm not sure I understand your point.

The GM is choosing the NPCs actions, but he's not choosing yours, nor is he giving you a list of possible actions to choose from. You do whatever you think befits your role, and he responds to that. It's roleplaying because your role (as interpreted by you) is dictating your actions and the game is changing in response to that. In my opinion that's a huge difference.

That's not all there is to roleplaying, but I considering choice an essential part of it yes. I would argue however, that it doesn't become roleplaying until your choices are made from a base character concept(usually stats which allow/disallow certain choices or make them riskier, and more detailed things if you're pnping) or develop your character. I'd probably argue more things as well but I can't think of them now.

Well to be honest that's an awful thing to say. You should look into experimental or freeform roleplaying, which is often done entirely without a character sheet or even any real ruleset. That's roleplaying without the game. You're saying it's not roleplaying unless there's a game? I forcefully reject that notion, sir.

Got any good places to start?

Emily Short is typically regarded as one of the best IF authors in the world, if not the best. You can check out her stuff on her blog: http://emshort.wordpress.com/my-work/

For a good place to start, try Galatea - it's basically just one conversation with a single character.

Even so I'd like a chat bot combined with other things. I think a chat bot would just really improve upon the talking bits of a crpg as it allows the computer to improvise more and would actually allow free speech.

I think something really huge has to happen with chat bots before that's worthwhile. In their present state they'd get in the way of the game way more than they'd help. If a bunch of AAA studios suddenly decided that text parsing was the way forward for in-game conversation, I'm sure progress would happen in leaps and bounds, but we'd have to endure a long period of rubbish character interaction first. I've dabbled in interactive fiction, and I swear the 500th time you get the message "I don't know what that means" or "That word isn't used in this story" you want to punch your monitor.

[Jaedar]

Well to be honest that's an awful thing to say. You should look into experimental or freeform roleplaying, which is often done entirely without a character sheet or even any real ruleset. That's roleplaying without the game. You're saying it's not roleplaying unless there's a game? I forcefully reject that notion, sir.

Talking about roleplaying games now. I know you can roleplay in other circumstances. Sorry if this wasn't clear.

I'm not sure I understand your point.

My point is that the difference between the player being able to pick almost anything to do and picking from a smaller predefined list(the almost anything is also a list, based on what your character is to you, the setting, etc. It just tends to be bigger because you will consider things that the designer of the encounter didn't) are not fundamentally different. They vary in scope and I believe you'll find that most GM's try to plan stuff out so that you can't utterly derail their scenario anyway(if the quest is to defeat the evil necromancer, you're probably going to have to visit his tower at some point regardless of how much free will you have). Planning everything out meticulously beforehand just requires a lot more work for the same variety of options.

I've dabbled in interactive fiction, and I swear the 500th time you get the message "I don't know what that means" or "That word isn't used in this story" you want to punch your monitor.

To be fair, isn't this mainly solo-people doing this? If you put a bunch of coders and designers to working on it, you could probably reach much better results than one guy coding and typing up all of it. But yeah, maybe the tech isn't quite there yet. I'd like to be though. I also know it won't happen anytime soon, what with fully voice acted games seems to be a requirement to even get published these days(unless you're zelda).

Also, thanks for the link, will check it out.

[Jonas]

My point is that the difference between the player being able to pick almost anything to do and picking from a smaller predefined list(the almost anything is also a list, based on what your character is to you, the setting, etc. It just tends to be bigger because you will consider things that the designer of the encounter didn't) are not fundamentally different. They vary in scope and I believe you'll find that most GM's try to plan stuff out so that you can't utterly derail their scenario anyway(if the quest is to defeat the evil necromancer, you're probably going to have to visit his tower at some point regardless of how much free will you have). Planning everything out meticulously beforehand just requires a lot more work for the same variety of options.

All right so I'll definitely grant you that most GMs tend to railroad their players a little, but that is far from always the case. When I ran a D&D campaign with an evil group (total hell, total fucking hell) I pretty much just worked out some overall character goals with each of them and set them loose in a city in Forgotten Realms. They sort of appointed a leader and started making plans for how to achieve their objectives. I had some wing-it sheets and some vague ideas for events and how those events might pan out if the players didn't intervene, but I pretty much improvised the whole thing. If they ever got stuck without any ideas for what to do next, I'd throw in some NPC from the wing-it sheet with a quest, or I'd have the city guard raid their secret base or whatever. I know that's not how everybody does it, but I also know it'd be next to impossible to do in a videogame.

Anyway, as concerns your notion that free will is a list of options... really? That's what you're gonna go with? There's no fundamental difference between the entire scope of your imagination as restricted exclusively by your own interpretation of a character of your own design and a list of options decided by somebody else? When you talk to a person in real life, do you generally picture a set of dialogue options that you might select from? Because fuck me, I'd love to have a list like that. It'd make picking up girls so much less of a pain in the ass

To me, the difference between "any amount of options" and "no options" is literally, mathematically, infinite.

To be fair, isn't this mainly solo-people doing this? If you put a bunch of coders and designers to working on it, you could probably reach much better results than one guy coding and typing up all of it. But yeah, maybe the tech isn't quite there yet. I'd like to be though. I also know it won't happen anytime soon, what with fully voice acted games seems to be a requirement to even get published these days(unless you're zelda).

What you're talking about is basically true artificial intelligence that can pass the Turing test. It's not exactly trivial; there are large amounts of extremely well educated people working to solve this problem, not in the games industry but in computer science and related fields. Eliza worked because it pretended to be a psychologist and they have a set of really annoying tricks like just repeating the last couple of words from your previous sentence, but with a question mark at the end, or just asking something vapid like "How does that make you feel?" or "What do you think?" whenever you tell it something that it doesn't understand. Any implementation of text parsing with current tech would essentially boil down to a list of options that the parser can recognise and has an answer to. Except now you don't know what the options are, you just have to try whatever comes to mind until you stumble upon something that works.

Like I said, progress might happen faster with serious money thrown at it, but the initial large amounts of money would essentially be wasted on doing other people's RnD. It's not a commercially attractive prospect.

[AEmer]

That's a very low bar you've set up there, and frankly I don't think it would need to be stretched very much to be taken to mean that all games are roleplaying games.

If roleplaying games did not have the gameplay identity they developed during the period where the only roleplaying was pen&paper roleplaying, I would say that, yes, all games where there is character identity and choice - which is nearly all games - are roleplaying games.

But they have developed a gameplay identity, so now we use the gameplay type to distinguish whether something is a roleplaying game, even though almost all modern games would've initially qualified, had they been released back in 1975.

I'm playing the role of Sam Fisher. Indeed in some academic circles, the word roleplaying is used just this way - to describe merely a certain aspect of a player's interaction with an avatar.

This is a great example. It has every bit as much right to the word roleplaying as D&D 1.0 did - except D&D came first. Now that the word is established, and is associated to a specific type of gameplay...which is not splintercell.

It's a bit ridiculous, but you really do need stats and experience points for it to be a roleplaying game.

Although, if a specific circle of people, or a specific community, decides to change the definition of a word, and everybody agrees, that's obviously fine. Then you just need to worry about the context in which you use the word as you use it...maybe in time it could even become the dominant meaning, absolving us from this particular bit of genre naming nonsense.

But for now, in the general case, it simply isn't what it means. It means what every WoW and diablo and final fantasy player thinks it means: A game where levels and stats and choices made outside of combat determine your options and abilities during combat.

Why? Because language doesn't care that much about quality of oppinion, and in this case the quantity of people believing this to be the definition is absolutely overwhelming.

Well to be honest that's an awful thing to say. You should look into experimental or freeform roleplaying, which is often done entirely without a character sheet or even any real ruleset. That's roleplaying without the game. You're saying it's not roleplaying unless there's a game? I forcefully reject that notion, sir.

If you were in labor, and that statement was a fetus, I think you just expunged it in such a fashion that it torpedoed the midwife and killed her.

....I don't know why I just said that.

Anyway, as concerns your notion that free will is a list of options... really? That's what you're gonna go with? There's no fundamental difference between the entire scope of your imagination as restricted exclusively by your own interpretation of a character of your own design and a list of options decided by somebody else? When you talk to a person in real life, do you generally picture a set of dialogue options that you might select from?

Yeah, that's pretty much what he's going with, although I don't think it's his imagination that's the limiting factor here, but rather the machinations of human interaction. While there are infinitely many actions, I believe his point is, there is a fairly limited number of equivalency groups of actions available to you, and within each of those groups there are infinitely many permutations.

TBH I kindof agree with him; if the distinction is, do you have access to all the action types, or merely a subset, and do you have access to improv'ing the choice you make or must you take a specific version of the choice...well, then I don't think it's fundamentally that different.

In computer science, there's no fundamental distinction in what a finished program can do, and what a program that is being written along the way and adapted to the data can do...both have the same theoretical permutational power as a turing machine, is the observation we would make.

Because fuck me, I'd love to have a list like that. It'd make picking up girls so much less of a pain in the ass

You'd never dare take the more risque options anyway and you know it But yes, it probably still would make it easier. Always having the option of saying something suave from alpha protocol? I would enjoy that. Once we have voice-to-text and a chatbot that can come up with options for us, I will be a happy camper.

Except now you don't know what the options are, you just have to try whatever comes to mind until you stumble upon something that works.

I guarantee google is working on this very problem as we speak. They're also trying to synthesize a real voice using google talk snippets, and all sorts of other good jazz. Do you think they developed these technologies just to put automatically generated captions on youtube videoes? Do you think they built the universal translater just to help foreigners wish eachother merry christmas?

If google has the only AI able to pass the touring test, and they peddle it out to people for searching and other personal assistance jobs, they win. Apples Siri project for the iphone 4 has been developed for the exact same purpose: Big Biz needs a massive influx of data to build AI.
By having a ton of permutations of the data in question, they're slowly able to chip away at what computers are unable to do but humans are able to do. Translation, voice-to-speech, image recognition, even symbol recognition via the google-driven captcha's. With google voice, siri(apple), skype(microsoft), videosharing sites like youtube, itunes and whatever microsoft has, picturesharing sites like picassa, social networks like google+..., these corporations get the data they need. Once they build up the more basic skills of their AI, they can advance forward and handle intelligent response generation. Arguably that'll take a while yet, but it's coming...and the ultimate goal is undoubtedly not merely to offer services to people, but to fully integrate into peoples lives.

Soon enough, we'll have a doodle for a dungeon master

[Jonas]

All good points but please do bear in mind the distinction between roleplaying and roleplaying game. With my Sam Fisher thing, I was talking about roleplaying, and arguing the case that we essentially have a choice: we can either say real roleplaying doesn't exist in videogames, or we have to assume roleplaying exists in all avatar-based videogames. I hold the opinion that the games we might call computer roleplaying games don't have more of anything that can be called roleplaying than other avatar games.

I still powerfully disagree that there's no real difference between tabletop roleplaying and choosing between options in a videogame, but at present I don't know that I have a way to formulate it which I haven't already employed.

[AEmer]

All good points but please do bear in mind the distinction between roleplaying and roleplaying game. With my Sam Fisher thing, I was talking about roleplaying, and arguing the case that we essentially have a choice: we can either say real roleplaying doesn't exist in videogames, or we have to assume roleplaying exists in all avatar-based videogames. I hold the opinion that the games we might call computer roleplaying games don't have more of anything that can be called roleplaying than other avatar games.

Ah, yeah, I may have confused the two. When the same words mean different things in different contexts, and those different contexts are subtle...yeah, you get the picture.

I still powerfully disagree that there's no real difference between tabletop roleplaying and choosing between options in a videogame, but at present I don't know that I have a way to formulate it which I haven't already employed.

But I do think there's a difference.

The idea of writing a computer program that does the same thing as a crew of programmers developing another computer program is almost absurd, even though the potential is there. One is an absurd task, and programming a game master has some of that absurdity.

I just don't think the difference is fundamental, and here is an example of why:

If you're walking down a corridor with 2 doors, you have 4 equivalent choices - door number one, door number two, continue down the corridor or go back. A game can offer you these choices with relative easy - just as much ease as the GM can.

Most situations have a limited amount of branches. The big trick to P&P is that the branches of a CRPG tend to merge back together again, whereas a real RPG can feel as though you're always heading further out the branch, and there are new branches, and so forth. Even that is untrue if you follow pre-made campaign materials, but a GM who designs the campaign as it progresses will feel very different in nature to anything else.

I just don't think it changes the nature of the game; obviously, when you tailor-make the campaign, you don't have to design all those alternative branches, so you can focus all the effort on exactly the right branch - but theoretically, the same level of focus could be given to all the branches given enough time and resources. The branching is not actually infinite, it's just incredibly more detailed...which means the difference isn't fundamental in nature.

[Jonas]

But I do think the difference is fundamental, I'm just trying not to get into a debate about the nature of choice and freedom of will because I have no background in philosophy and I fear I will fare poorly in such a debate. I don't believe our options in most situations are limited in any easily divisible fashion, such a world view conflicts with the idea of the human brain as a true emergent system.

But I need to clarify something before I attempt to continue down that avenue: are we comparing videogames to real life or to a tabletop roleplaying game right now? Because the nature of tabletop roleplaying depends so heavily on the attitude and disposition of your game master that the unfolding of events can resemble real life (with options limited purely by the power of the player's imagination and the laws of reality) as easily as it can be completely identical to a computer game with all the restricted freedom and constant negotiation of power over the narrative between player and game as that typically entails.