Crusader Kings III - Review @ Polygon

I completely disagree with the concept that if a game has only a single character that it isn't an RPG.

This is the clarification that is being misinterpreted. No-one has said single character games can't be, effectively, RPG in all but the most detailed of wall of text dissertation. The concept being discussed is that one makes the game more of an RPG by having a party. Closer to the core concept of what is the ideal RPG.

And you agree with this concept in principle when you then say:

For me it partially depends on whether that character is rigidly defined (Lara in Tomb Raider, Geralt in Witcher) or if you have more freedom to make and design the character. The more freedom in making your own character the more of an RPG it is to me. Hence SKyrim and FO4 are very much RPG's for me while Mass Effect would be less so, but still some flexibility, but W3 or TR would not.

In that you can easily see how the fixed protagonist automatically reduces the RPG factor, even though Witcher 3 is generally accepted as being RPG by both you me and everyone, just not very close to being an ideal RPG in concept.

So with that in mind, would you say Skyrim would have been more of an RPG if it had companions and your individual abilities were more restricted to make companions relevant so that you had to play a role within the group?
 
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You are mistaken in what "role" means in games. It has nothing to do with your role within a party, in fact, it has nothing to do with having a party at all. It's about portraying a different persona. How, in your eyes, would a different person of a different race on a different world deal with unusual situations. And so it also has very little to do with whether you are the tank, the healer, the damage dealer, the butcher or the carpenter and much more to do with the choices of those individual people when you are in their shoes, deciding for them. I think the you are being misled by a "role model", which is an entirely different thing.

Role models are cliches. In truth, no two tanks, healers, damage dealers, butchers or carpenters would be portrayed in the same way, neither they should, because in fact, one of the most telling things about bad roleplayers (and badly written games) is being cliche. Nobody likes cliche, and every RPG that was ever played, was better the least cliche its characters were.

PS: And I do agree that The Witcher 3 despite being a very good game and being widely regarded as a RPG, it's more of an action adventure pre-written tale. I've said this before, when the characters or the story are already decided and you just get to play through them, following the same steps every other player of the world did, it's not a RPG, it's more of an interactive movie. And so, when I watch Lord of the Rings, I don't tell my friends that I'm going to play a RPG, I tell them that I'm going to watch a movie. Even though I have the control of the flow, I can pause, go back and forth and decide how fast the timeline advances, eventually I go through the same frames that everyone did, with the same characters, the same dialog lines, to reach the same ending. Just as in the Witcher 3, and many other games regarded as "RPG".

Now in the Witcher 3 there are a variety of endings, and some quests in which you can make different choices, so that adds more RPG score to it, but it's still far from the perfect example of a RPG.

To give a recent example, Wasteland 3, technical shortcomings aside, is what you would call a good RPG. Plenty of choices, plenty of consequences to every choice you make, and the game world is affected vastly by your passing through it in more ways than whether you got into the boss room by picklocking the door or kicking it down.
 
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You are mistaken in what "role" means in games. It has nothing to do with your role within a party, in fact, it has nothing to do with having a party at all. It's about portraying a different persona. How, in your eyes, would a different person of a different race on a different world deal with unusual situations. And so it also has very little to do with whether you are the tank, the healer, the damage dealer, the butcher or the carpenter and much more to do with the choices of those individual people when you are in their shoes, deciding for them. I think the you are being misled by a "role model", which is an entirely different thing.

Role models are cliches. In truth, no two tanks, healers, damage dealers, butchers or carpenters would be portrayed in the same way, neither they should, because in fact, one of the most telling things about bad roleplayers (and badly written games) is being cliche. Nobody likes cliche, and every RPG that was ever played, was better the least cliche its characters were.

No, that's just acting. You're suggesting the only way to properly play an RPG is to be good at maintaining a false persona. You're effectively just making actor-training classes. You're suggesting playing an RPG should be like attending drama class.

Ironically, it is this very process which generates cliches, because if someone needs to pretend to be something else, they can only work off of cliche. Like, if you asked 100 people to 'Role play a gay guy', about 87 of them would bend their hand and talk more high pitched and say thinks like "ooo, luvvie" more. When the reality is that a gay guy doesn't even need to be any different from any other guy in personality.

So when you say "take on a different personality", what are you even referring to? What is your initial reference point other than cliche?

When people get together to Roleplay a P&P game, let's say D&D just because that's one I can talk more knowledgeably about, and they are asked what character they would like to play, the answer will be "what are the choices?"

When the DM says "Well, there are fighters! People who like to use a sword or an axe and to charge head first into battle, they are strong and healthy but..." And before they even get to the drawbacks 65% of the young boys shout "Ooo, can I be a fighter?", because those who's natural personality is appealed to by that description will necessarily want to be a fighter.

So the DM continues "... But usually a bit lower in the intelligence department, a Mage on the other hand is intelligent, booksmart, clever and cunning and likes to use FIREBALLS and..." And whichever kids this descriptor appeals to then shout "Ooo, me, I want to be the mage!", and the mage position will be automatically filled by the natural personality for a mage...

This isn't cliche. But asking someone to pretend to be gay most certainly would be...
 
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It's not about pretending, it's about filling the shoes of that hypothetical person in ways that you find satisfying and credible. You don't need to base yourself on cliches, it's up to you to add whatever nuances you want. Besides, in videogames, no RPG is truly a RPG, as your choices will always be limited by selecting one of two to four answers when presented a dilemma, and so you can't really improvise your own path, but for the sake of discussion, say you were roleplaying a dwarf smith with Scottish accent because you want to tick all cliche slots, you could still make it unique in a way that it's -your- dwarf smith with Scottish accent in a way that is remarkable, and there is no other like yours.

I noticed this when playing in online RPG communities such as Roll20 or NWN, when you hear about your character, if you're doing a bad job, people will describe it as "oh, she's the human weaponmaster, the one who follows the Red Knight", or such cliche definition that will more or less tell what kind of character you are playing. If you're doing a good job, they'll say "She's playing Cassandra!", because there is no class, role or job that defines her, as her name elevated her to be her unique indescriptible self.
 
Accents and nationality have nothing to do with personality. And both those aspects are a result of voice acting or attempting to use accented written language, both things that have no great relevance to the topic of base-line RPG features.

And yes, its practically impossible to make a computer game which permits infinity dialogue responses dependent on what you want to say to an NPC today, so, obviously, associating personality with cRPGs is quite possibly the biggest Albatross you could make the mistake of chasing.

How you choose to behave when playing an MMO or P&P RPG is entirely up to you. If you want to ham it up and show off your acting skills, more power to you and more respect to those who 'put up' with you :D But it's not in the slightest bit necessary. According to your own words, the pinnacle of this acting is when people no longer even associate you with a Role, but instead just as a Personality [celebrity], which I think illustrates my point rather than yours.
 
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Well, if you go back to pen and paper RPGs, @lackblogger; is absolutely correct, that you are playing a certain role, or doing a certain job. You are also interacting with others who have different strengths and weaknesses than you. Of course, a gamemaster can design a game around certain strengths and weaknesses. For example, if two players are playing a bard and a thief in a D&D campaign, the gamemaster could work around those roles.

Going back to a game like Skyrim (or its predecessors), I'd argue that NPCs often pick up the slack for what you're character can't do. For example, in Skyrim you can be a miner and an armor smith. If you aren't you can find an NPC who is and buy equipment from them. You can also buy certain things and services from wizards and temples. So you can still define a role in Skyrim and there are other people in the world who define other roles. Eschalon is similar to that extent. Where you fall short in certain skills can be made good by npcs who sell there services.

At least you can choose to be an armorer, to be a mage, and assassin or whatever, and are not just "the Witcher."
 
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... snip ...
So with that in mind, would you say Skyrim would have been more of an RPG if it had companions and your individual abilities were more restricted to make companions relevant so that you had to play a role within the group?

Well I would have enjoyed it more if it had real companions versus pure pack mules.

I would have to say, however, that companions don't make a game an RPG for me. They make the game much more fun for me but not necessarily a better RPG. But that is me and how my head defines and sees an RPG game, which I think varies a lot from person to person and what that category actually means.

Being able to create and play a character with a lot of freedom is a key component, as is choice and consequence, leveling up, people reacting, exploring (less linear the better), lots of varied quests and options.

Having companions really adds to that and I can see why adding them could also add an RPG aspect to things, at least in the old classic RPG style of gaming I grew up in. But I don't really define an RPG on that aspect that much.
 
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Alright. A summary of the RPG discussion is: Some people think the R in RPG is about playing a certain role in a party/game world (fighter/mage/cleric..), some think it's about playing a certain character (personality-wise, quirks, looks, choices...) and some think it's about both. And some (like me) think it's whatever people think it is in a specific group at a specific time because words have no intrinsic meaning. Did I get it right?

And does someone maybe have anything interesting to say about CK3?
 
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I don't think the true definition is at all all-encompassing. Other genres don't suffer from this level of denial from [favourite games] spokespeople.

Platformers - requires platforming - still has huge variety.
First Person Shooters - requires shooting in first person - still has huge variety.
Grand Strategy - requires a map and conquests over rivals on the map - still has huge variety.

RPG - requires your character to have (not just play) a role - still has huge variety.

Your chair might well have a billion legs and no back, but the defining feature of a chair is that it should be something one can sit on. That is a chair's defining feature, you can sit on it. It goes without saying, of course, that not everything you can sit on is a chair.

I see you are both now struggling to cope with staying on the topic of RPGs and are now desperately rushing towards the philosophical babble spectrum.

Pladio, it seems from what you have said that you struggle with the notion that Gothic is missing an element required for it to be a pure RPG and that Gothic represents to you a pure RPG. Instead of nonsense-babble, perhaps you could just elaborate on what Role your character plays in Gothic? What are the Roleplaying options like?

Sorry for the delay lackblogger.

I read through what you said again and I think I understand your view better. Still not mine, but I do understand it better.

From my point of view, in Gothic I can play similar roles to what you determine as classes (e.g. fighter, archer, mage). However, to me that's not the only elements in an RPG that matter. IF that were the case, then League of Legends would be an RPG as you play in groups of five and most of the time, people play their roles of glass cannon archer, tank, bruiser/tank, mage and then a support class healer/shielder.

For me other elements such as C&C matter a lot and character progression as well as the story itself. To me Gothic has those elements in spades.
 
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Alright. A summary of the RPG discussion is: Some people think the R in RPG is about playing a certain role in a party/game world (fighter/mage/cleric..), some think it's about playing a certain character (personality-wise, quirks, looks, choices…) and some think it's about both. And some (like me) think it's whatever people think it is in a specific group at a specific time because words have no intrinsic meaning. Did I get it right?

And does someone maybe have anything interesting to say about CK3?

I watched quil18 playing it on Youtube for a few videos. Looks like the new elements are quite nice, but doesn't seem like a massive change on CK2 for me yet.

I won't be buying for now, but probably will once it gets discounted by 40% or so.
 
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Honestly you can think what you want, free speech is a thing and I'm very glad for that, so I don't know why I felt the need to explain anyone anything, I'm not here to educate, but to read news about games that are potentially interesting to me. Go on with your day, and have a nice one. I shall do likewise.
 
Every time this topic comes up, it makes me laugh. You all can debate all day about what constitutes an RPG, but it's pointless, because regardless of what an RPG traditionally was or the fact that CRPGs had their roots in pen and paper role playing, here is the realty:

RPG, in the case of video games, is a marketing term. It is a way of selling video games. That's it. The term may have originated as an offshoot of pen and paper RPGs, but over the last four decades it has evolved into the description a game with certain mechanics (questing, leveling, loot, etc). People recognize that as an RPG. You can say something is not a "real RPG", but that won't stop most gamers, retailers, and game websites as calling it such. Why? Because the definition of RPG in video games is no longer the same as RPG in general, and in the video game world, Diablo, Witcher, and Final Fantasy are generally considered typical RPGs. Trying to get picky with definitions would just confuse people who simply want games of a certain style to play.

Anyways, I may have to try CK3 eventually, though I found CK2 (and most other Paradox games) too convoluted to learn. If this one is easier, maybe I'll have to give it a shot.
 
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Every time this topic comes up, it makes me laugh. You all can debate all day about what constitutes an RPG, but it's pointless, because regardless of what an RPG traditionally was or the fact that CRPGs had their roots in pen and paper role playing, here is the realty:

RPG, in the case of video games, is a marketing term. It is a way of selling video games. That's it. The term may have originated as an offshoot of pen and paper RPGs, but over the last four decades it has evolved into the description a game with certain mechanics (questing, leveling, loot, etc). People recognize that as an RPG. You can say something is not a "real RPG", but that won't stop most gamers, retailers, and game websites as calling it such. Why? Because the definition of RPG in video games is no longer the same as RPG in general, and in the video game world, Diablo, Witcher, and Final Fantasy are generally considered typical RPGs. Trying to get picky with definitions would just confuse people who simply want games of a certain style to play. .
Well said better then my earlier reply.:clap:
Anyways, I may have to try CK3 eventually, though I found CK2 (and most other Paradox games) too convoluted to learn. If this one is easier, maybe I'll have to give it a shot
There is still a learning curve but yes Paradox made the third game more accessible. Starting with how the GUI is more user friendly, and how your notified of events.

They even simplified how you build up your provinces.
 
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Well said better then my earlier reply.:clap:
There is still a learning curve but yes Paradox made third game more accessible. Starting with how the GUI is more user friendly, and how your notified of events and problems.

The even simplified how you build up your provinces.

Thanks for that piece of information. I have more time these days, since my youngest kid is six. More time and more accessible sounds good to me. Maybe I'll actually learn this game and enjoy it :)
 
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Thanks for that piece of information. I have more time these days, since my youngest kid is six. More time and more accessible sounds good to me. Maybe I'll actually learn this game and enjoy it :)
I wont lie there is still a lot to learn but as I said already it's simplified for newbies. Paradox always tried with with every new grand strategy game and succeeded.

Hearts of Iron 4 is another example if you ever played the previous three games.
 
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Huh. Seems the only thing about the term "RPG" people agree on is that nobody agrees on one definition.

Just finished Wasteland 3, that was a good game. I'd definitely call that an RPG. The ending was even satisfying for me based on the moral choices I made, etc etc. I've never played a Crusader Kings game but I'll pick this one up and suppose that I will decide for myself if I'd call it a RPG or perhaps something else.
 
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Huh. Seems the only thing about the term "RPG" people agree on is that nobody agrees on one definition.

Just finished Wasteland 3, that was a good game. I'd definitely call that an RPG. The ending was even satisfying for me based on the moral choices I made, etc etc. I've never played a Crusader Kings game but I'll pick this one up and suppose that I will decide for myself if I'd call it a RPG or perhaps something else.
Yeah, I'll probably pick CK3 up as well eventually. It sounds interesting to me since I enjoy both genres they are trying to mix.

At the moment I'm playing wasteland 2 and I'm enjoying it (except the boring interface. It is functional but boring) so maybe after that.


About the RPG term: I agree with you.


Slightly off-topic about language:
I had a friend and colleague at my last job who, like me, loves language. He is also a published writer of fiction. He told me how he and his proofreader had a big verbal email fight about the correct spelling of a single word (for any Swedish speaking people: framdeles/framledes - both are actually seen as ok now, but the first one is seen as more correct).

My friend was championing the spelling he grew up with, which is also officially the more "correct"one, and the proofreader was championing how people actually say and write the word today and that younger people will react negatively to the correct spelling. In the end my friend, being the author, chose his spelling.

The interesting thing to me as a layman is that the newer spelling actually is an even older version of the word, than the one my friend uses. So the spelling/pronunciation of the word has almost gone full circle.

My friend could see the silliness of arguing over a single word like that, so after he won the argument and the book was published he sent a gift to the proofreader with a note to thank her for putting up with his stubborn ways. :)

Even if one accepts that language always changes and that not absolute definitions exist, it doesn't mean one can't fight it. Impossible to win in the end, but it can be fun and if done in a constructive way also a way to learn things. :)
 
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framdeles/framledes

No! It's fremdeles :p One letter difference can make another language. I think your (and others) examples demonstrate that the conversation here has been pointless. All those walls of text, hours spent writing clever argumentation and aggressive pointing fingers for nothing. There is no one truth or one right definition of "RPG".

PS: For those who did not get the comparison, similar languages are often called languages for political and historical reasons. If they existed in the same country, they would be called dialects.
 
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In the end, the best cooker in the world is everyone's own mother, and you can't prove anyone wrong about defending that. Probably for everyone the best cuisine is also the one from their own region/country.

I was born in Spain and grew there for a good part of my life, and I kept seeing in horror how English words got "Spanized" as globalisation struck - only pronounced and written in awful and aberrant ways, since anglo-saxon root sounds don't translate well into a latin-born tongue. But just because they were used so often, they were actually made official words by the Real Academia de la Lengua (something like "Royal Institute of Linguistics", the organism that decides the official language).

I can never come to terms with how words that are misunderstood and mispronounced by simpletons and rednecks end up becoming official words, just because the dumb masses spread them and in the end, they are accepted as an official part of the language. And I suppose that's why I can't come to terms with seeing that everything nowadays is a RPG because it was dumbed down by people that misunderstood what a RPG is about and never actually played one.

It's like this tale where two strangers meet, and one doesn't speak English but in an effort to understand each other, the English speaking person points at the moon and says "moon". The non-English speaking stranger runs back to his non-English speaking land and tells everyone that in this exotic, wonderful language, a "moon" is the tip of your finger, or the pose in which you point up with your hand towards the night sky, and everyone begins to use it in that simple, dumb way, and it becomes an official part of their language.

It's true that a word means what use the general public gives to it, and some terms are hard to define. But it's also true that if a word means something to me, nobody, not even the Royal Institute of Linguistics, is going to convince me that the word means something else. I know what a word means to me, and that's the end of the discussion. And that goes for anyone else too, of course, which is why points of view collide, and semantics is such a heated topic in many forums.

And still, my mother's cooking is the best cooking in the world.
 
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No! It's fremdeles One letter difference can make another language. I think your (and others) examples demonstrate that the conversation here has been pointless. All those walls of text, hours spent writing clever argumentation and aggressive pointing fingers for nothing. There is no one truth or one right definition of "RPG".

PS: For those who did not get the comparison, similar languages are often called languages for political and historical reasons. If they existed in the same country, they would be called dialects.

Haha, I'm happy to hear (but not surprised) that it's almost the same in Norwegian. Did you know that it used to be called "framledes" in Swedish before "framdeles", and that "alldeles" also was called "alledes"?

I live in Värmland in Sweden (close to the border between Sweden and Norway) and here a lot of people's dialect incorporates Norwegian words, so yes I agree that Swedish and Norwegian is in many ways more of dialects than different languages.
 
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