They're Not RPG Elements @ Dwell On It

Dhruin · July 15, 2009

If you've ever posted on an RPG forum you've probably discussed the genre-blurring that seems all the rage. Every game - particularly strategy titles - features "RPG elements". In a brief piece at blog Dwell On It, they point out we've all got it wrong:

You see “RPG elements” on the back of game-boxes for assorted games, frequently tactical combat games, or mentioned in game reviews. The thing is, that what they’re referring to as RPG elements aren’t actually RPG elements.

The things they’re generally describing are classes, levels, abilities and experience points. Units or characters that get stronger and/or more versatile with experience. Those are what we used to call wargaming elements.

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SveNitoR · July 15, 2009

Who gives a f*** what they are called? I like those elements and they can call them whatever they want.

JemyM · July 15, 2009

I will in the future insist on calling levels etc for "wargame elements".

Konjad · July 15, 2009

I never consider leveling/experience etc as RPG-making thing. And yes, many developers call games RPG just because they have some experience points or something like that. Well, as for me - he's right.

Squeek · July 15, 2009

Nino's conclusion is backwards. He does a good job of simply stating it but that's all. The connections between D&D, tabletop miniatures, and Chainmail are easily overstated and confused. Nino fully embraces that, which is the beauty of his point of view, but he doesn't happen to be right.

RPG elements give structure to the concept of imaginary characters living imaginary lives in imaginary worlds, and they do it in a way where it's fun for players to jump into those roles and create their own story (or at least enjoy the illusion of creating their own story).

baron · July 15, 2009

they've almost got a point, the term rpg is so misused and abused. but that's more a generic rant than anything else. and wargame elements is sadly bound to stay on that blog alone.
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Alrik Fassbauer · July 15, 2009

So I was playing wargames all of the times ?

DeepO · July 15, 2009

Yeah, it´s become a Rather Pitiful Gametag, am I right, WargamesWatchers?

Lucky Day · July 16, 2009

I question his history on that - classes and levels and such were part of the whole D&D experience whereas IIRC wargaming was much more simplified. We had talked about the game as more of an experience like acting but today that kind of oldskool play is treated like "dungeon crawling hack and slash" though even hack and slash (or slay) was considered different then and derided on. Later LARPing got popular and people realized that's way too far in the other direction.

With computers I've argued that Adventure games are more pure RPG than RPG's are but people often take issue with that. In the past, some people have argued in cRPG's the use of a party is not true role playing at all, particularly those people into MMORPG's.

I'm with Squeek on this one, he's right in the idea but wrong on the details.

Ostsol · July 16, 2009

This is something that I've been saying for many years. I always refer to character development in the same way that one does in literature: it is the development of a character's personality and values. To me, the development of physical statistics and skills is character advancement. Character advancement is achieved through relevant actions, while character development generally occurs via introspection. For this reason, real character development is unfortunately often simplified into black and white choices in gameplay leading to superficial changes in the plot. From a game development perspective this is completely understandable, but it does show how far CRPGs have to go before they reach the level achievable by a living DM/GM.

DArtagnan · July 16, 2009

What pointless semantic drivel.

Wargaming elements? As if wargaming pioneered the idea of advancement or classes. You might as well go back in time to a point where the concept was first thought of by stone age people and then call them stone age elements.

Look at the average CRPG and then look at the average wargame, then realise that these elements are more prevalent in the former, and less in the latter. What does this tell you? Yeah, they're RPG elements before they're wargaming elements.

joxer · July 16, 2009

This is just a nitpicking crap.
After decades they actually suggest that Diablo belongs to wargaming genre and not into RPG. Like we all didn't know it.
If someone will call something a RPG elemet, so be it. They know what it is, we know what it is. They want us to buy the game because of RPG element(s), we (I hope) don't want to buy the game because of those.

falafel · July 16, 2009

Character development, classes, and rules make rpg games what they are. I don't really need a third party to spell everything out for me, I don't need to be told what my character’s motivation is, if they are a nice person, or what their favorite color is

. I know these things already or will decide them on my own as I progress by playing the game the way I feel my character should.

A game with even the most basic level of interactivity has all the "other stuff" that rpgs have. I could play mario/pacman/doom/metal gear as a pacifist, sadist, or something in between and have a relatively fitting consequence/result occur due to my playstyle.

Benedict · July 16, 2009

I don't know, seems fair enough to me. "Will scratch your nerdly, statistics obsessed power gaming tendencies" might be a more accurate advert, but so long as everyone knows what they mean does it matter?

baron · July 16, 2009

perhaps it's been a bad idea to even post a generic rant and present it as article or whatsoever, considering the quite offtopic flamewar it's generating.

they guy is probably ranting about rubbish like this http://en.dinorpg.com but fails at technically explaining himself.

you're giving way too much attention to a term that's bound to be buried and forgotten within a few weeks - and it would have been days without this thread.
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aries100 · July 16, 2009

Didn't Gygax develop Chainmal, a wargame? And wasn't this the inspiration for the first D&D edition in which there were both cannons and miltary units?

Each unit got stronger through experience, abilities and levels - by leveling up.

The point is that elements from wargames wanderes into rpgs as well as fps elements wander into the rpg genre and vice versa today...

Yeesh · July 16, 2009

Author has a point but doesn't know how to make it. Doesn't matter because author is wrong. This is just a rehash of: It's called ROLE-playing for a reason, duh. And that argument makes me tired. If you want to role-play all by yourself (as you must in any single player endeavor, until they invent computers who give a flying F what you do), then you can role-play in tic-tac-toe as easily as in a CRPG. Instead, what separates our genre from the rest of them are those "wargaming elements."

Of course I don't remember us EVER calling them "wargaming elements", probably because wargames can exist in their absence and CRPGs cannot.

BillSeurer · July 16, 2009

Squeek said:
The connections between D&D, tabletop miniatures, and Chainmail are easily overstated and confused.

Blink.

Uh, no they are not. If anything most people don't realize that RPGs are direct descendants of tabletop miniatures via the Chainmail miniatures rules. Original D&D was developed after Dave Arneson had the idea of playing a game using just the heroes/leaders instead of whole armies of miniatures.

Squeek · July 16, 2009

Squeek said:
The connections between D&D, tabletop miniatures, and Chainmail are easily overstated and confused.

BillSeurer said:
Blink.

Uh, no they are not.

You may not think so, but I do, and to me it seems fairly obvious.

I'm not one of those people who just don't realize the connection between D&D and war gaming. I first played D&D in 1975 at a hobby shop named "La Maison de Guerre" (The House of War), a place that hosted war games using tabletop miniatures. At the time they were displaying a simulated battle that included fantasy characters using the D&D movement rules (but only for those particular characters).

But when you sat down and played D&D, which I did with the owner, that was something entirely different. The first book included references to both but not a blending of both (It was ambiguous and full of errors).

The war gaming and the role-play gaming were two entirely different things, and they were different from the very beginning.

txa1265 · July 17, 2009

Cool ... now we can not only argue about what makes a RPG, but also whether or not they should even be called RPG's ...

They're Not RPG Elements @ Dwell On It

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