Any discussion is welcome. I am currently trying to make a game similar to a combination of Fable and Kingdom Hearts.
I find that I have way more motivation if I have someone to talk to about games. My hope is that there are people out there who feel the same.
No pressure, but I do look forward to hearing from all of you.
Many people have different expectation about RPG and feel stronly about their version is the right one and everyone else is dumb, how do you expect the conversation to go. People who like Witcher 3 will looked down on kingdom heart as a rpg (personally it’s action adveneture to me lol), Wrpg vs jrpg will rage, turn base vs real time will bicker about the true strategic depth, someone will mention zelda and it will muddy the water (action adventure too) and then some will lost it when pokemon will be drop as a reference, that will be nothing when someone will troll with call of duty xp system …
I mean what define an RPG? It has plot and lock and key (like adventure game), there is no single format for combat (can be any action game or the distinction of scale from strategy game is really vague, after all suikoden has 108 characters and grandia made placement important, so do fire emblem count?), xp and skill progression is everywhere now, story and open world don’t make an rpg, and what about auxilary system are they mandatory (like branching dialogue, karma point, moral decision, cooking, crafting, etc …)
RPG is both too fluid and too personal to have a sensible discussion that don’t devolve in religious and ideological semantic debate full of drama.
Neoshaman, you have already surpassed my expectations for how I thought the conversation would go.
I think my view of an RPG was deeply skewed by the games that I first played. I was spoiled by Chrono Trigger in particular. I played everything that I could get my hands on, but had the best experience with JRPGs and their linear story lines.
I am attempting a simple action RPG because I think an open world WRPG would be too much for me to get right.
Any conversation here would add to add to what I am doing and at least cause me to think. I would even settle for someone complaining about the dancing NPCs in Secret of Mana.
An rpg is just a role playing game. So long as the player gets to play a role, usually restricted to being a single in game character, & develop that character in a way that they want without restriction imposed by the game then the game technically would meet that definition.
In order for the player to play their role & immerse themselves into the characters life the game needs a story with progression that interesting choices that challenges the players moral compass, to let them explore characters that may be the opposite to how they behave in real life, or to perhaps behave in a way that they have to constrain themselves from behaving in public I.e. Using the game as a form of release.
See it’s happening! peoples trying to control what RPG mean (though I did that when I call KH and zelda action aventure 
).
Every game where you play a character you a play a “role”, even without character you still has a “role”, in sim city you are a mayor thing and do mayor stuff, in ninja gaiden you do ninja stuff and in mario you do mario stuff, ie you enact a role. I’m sure in the last of us you are totally immersed in the life of cis white male asshole (look at the ending) and his surrogate daughter.
But is having choice in game is “role” or “self insertion” 
not the same thing. I would say “role” don’t let you have choices else you can act “out of character” ie breaking the role!
@tedthebug Would you (as a player) rather see an in-game effect from your moral compass being challenged, or simply be affected yourself?
For example: you kick a puppy in game, then townspeople get upset with you, or the townspeople do nothing and you are left to consider more puppy kicking because there is no consequence?
@neoshaman I think it is great. I think its more important to think about what an RPG means to you than to force it into a genre.
Would you agree that all games that are considered an RPG focus on storytelling?
If I find an exception does that count?
I think there is many simulationist RPG that are basically glorified the sims for nerd (Mount and blade or akhalabeth), they have less “plot” than they have “settings”.
And then that’s the problem of when does story start. Loose interpretation is emergent story, then tetris has emergent story complete with climax (damn i was about to die then the line finally was there I got it back to the floor!). Then people will say it need to have character, so any game with simulated character will have story, but then people will say I need “structure”, then diablo will be literature it has character, and a final scene, then people will say it need good progression, then JRPG and their formula will be the next step, and people will say it need good writing and say only planescape torment has real story, then some people will say you don’t need “word” to have good writing and game like limbo will be mentioned.
So where is the goalpost, it keep moving! It cover everything!
But we admit “plot” then no, there is RPG without plot.
@neoshaman Exceptions always count. I had forgotten how much I loved Diablo.
I do like the games that tell you a “story” with the atmosphere (sound, camera angle, colors, etc). There are games with RPG elements, like GTA, that have a story, but does anyone remember it or do they spend most of their time running over prostitutes?
What would you consider your favorite RPG?
That depends on the world setting to a large extent. Personally I wouldn’t do it just for fun but if it was integral to the world/plot then I would do it as minimally as necessary, or if it was done in a fun/silly way (like kicking chickens in Fable, which was also necessary at one point to open a portal gate thing) then I would likely do it more. The decisions ideally would be integrated so well into the story that if I was immersed then I would make the decision fitting my character & the situation without even thinking about it, only afterwards would I possibly reflect on what I’d just done & how it makes me feel or think.
Edit:
Many games highlight who the enemy is so a large portion of that decision is taken away from you. If enemies & npc’s were indistinguishable & your actions decided their reaction, & then your reputation affected how future encounters played out then that would open up a lot of possibilities around play styles.
@tedthebug That’s really interesting. I, unfortunately, do not currently have the funding/time to give a ton of choices and effects, but I will be thinking about this.
I do enjoy the player’s actions changing the world, even if they are all scripted, like Chrono Trigger. I would like some morally ambiguous choices though, just to keep the player confused on if they are good.
Moral judgement should stay out of it. If you can’t judge intent, then you aren’t in any position to determine morality. If you bump into a girl and she drops something, is there anything wrong with taking care of what she dropped before you check to make sure she didn’t bust her ass?
It’s too easy to make these types of events have imperceptible consequences, where right and wrong are definite outcomes, yet knowing which is which is entirely dependent on the values of the developer.
@RockoDyne I can see what you are saying about definite outcomes.
Movies have definite outcomes, you can interpret them how you wish.
But games, probably should leave things even more open and flexible, because you are supposed to play with them.
This is a writing problem, and it’s a solved problem too.
The way to handle this is to have a delay between when the dilemma is presented and asked and the moment of choosing consequences, in between you are presented with facts and evidence along with reasoning. Ie classic discursive structure of intro, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, conclusion. Choice is made at the conclusion when all evidence as been exhausted. On the spot dilemma is very bad!
Mass effect do it all the time, before deciding about the fate of the genophage virus (cure or not cure) you are walked through many mission that hint at the worst (they nuked their planet in a war, have warlike honor) and the best (under a strong female leader they might go back to the splendor and refinement of the artistic height they achieved prior to the war, when wisdom preveiled), said arc is also calling Mordin Solace in question in its implication in creating the virus and also show effect on turian. The geth and quarian is handle the same way, so was the space racist situation lol.
The thing is that it allows you to have surprising and unexpected consequences as long as they follow the logic of what was establish previously (ie meaningful plot twist). In fact when bioware floundered in the ending, the indoctrination theory stepped up to create an unexpected ending that was cliche but easier to accept because well documented on events (saren thought it was doing good but was indoctrinated, mass effect 2 toss into question shepard identity and force him into alliance with a shady organization thinking he is doing the right thing, mass effect 3 + protean dlc allude to the fact that mass effect 2 was effectively indoctrinating shepard using familiar setup (bringing old friend, remaking the ship, doing favor), the illusive man end up indoctrinated despite thinking he had the upper hand … organic vs synth was so baseless (see quarian vs geth good ending) and remove from other story arc that it felt flat and out of tone because unsupported, making the last choice meaningless even with the extended ending.
You can watch a talk about it from bioware here
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016328/Contrastive-Juxtaposition-Contrast-and-Context
@neoshaman Oh, wow, thanks for that and the homework. I think I’ll be digging through that for a while! 
I know that different people have a different view of Mass Effect, but I think they did a great job at telling their story.
There I didn’t talk from an audience perspective, Mickeal Bay movie are fine for what they are going to, but if you ask to rate it by writing it will be low lol, by image they are quite good.
In order to master an art (ie going beyond taste and looking at them objectively) you need to look at how thing works together in a way you can compare and explain them. I wasn’t passing a judgment on mass effect by pointing to its structural mismatch in the ending, I didn’t say it was good or bad.
If you handle it correctly plothole wouldn’t be a sin for example, in isolation it might be a structural fault (as in we only look at the perspective of structure) but in reality if it allow to get an emotional punch, and you edit the scene correctly, who cares (or why 2h chrono has all travel clocked at 5mn in NY and nothing happen if it’s not shown aka no traffic jam in NY!). Or else you would only enjoy
You must not confused analysis for judgement.
Now using analysis to support judgement is how you argue though lol Which I did for on the spot dilemma
Do I sound too preachy now? I’m slipping into teacher mode HELP!
I love RPG in all its forms, to me it really isnt a genre by itself as almost any game can be construed to be or at least developed as an RPG. Every genre with RPG is at most an interpretation of what is meant to “role play”. It is more like a “Story Game”, as not all games are story games but any game can be turned into a “Story Game”, look at NFS Franchise (lol), same with RPG.
I am particularly interested in emergent, procedural-generated storylines. I nerded out like crazy when i saw the Civ5- A.I only games become a thing, not because i am super keen on TBS A.I but the potential for Procedural World building mixed with A.I to create fully themed settings where the player can tell a tighter, more focused story. Imagine being in the same building as Ghandi when he decides to drop the nuke
@neoshaman I never realized that Michael Bay could make me so very dizzy lol.
I didn’t suppose that you passed any judgment at all on Mass Effect, just stated my own opinion.
Are you a teacher? Or do you just slide into teacher mode?
@dturtle1 I’m a bit leery of procedural story telling. It does make for some unexpected story arcs, but I would rather experience someone’s laboriously crafted story.
Procedural stories seem to degenerate into a flashy Skinner Box after a while. Although, I have spent quite a few hours playing procedural games, so I did get some enjoyment from them lol.
No I’m not a teacher but I get ask if I’m one often 
I tend to shift into a mode where I zone out doing big data dump of principle followed by practical example 
I’m also interested in procedural story, there is no really good procedural system actually, people don’t seem to care much and just expect simulation to create magically a solid story. I don’t believe it’s an AI problem.
There is definite unexplored techniques in this, mostly because there is a divide between writer and technical people so there was no real breakthrough made on informed practice.
There is also ideological barrier that shift the perception to a lower expectation therefore lower implementation ambition. You never see top down generator that work from theme to structure to prose. I’m working on that except prose.
The problem is that good story writing is often confused with good prose, they are part of the overall problem but actually cover separate sub problematic. And prose is what hinder progress in procedural story by stealing the focus 
@neoshaman I would take the suggestion that you are a teacher as flattery.
I think the best results from procedural generation still need an actual human to go through them and smooth things out.
At one time I was using perlin noise to make voxel maps. I eventually got to a point where it didn’t look like an alien landscape, but I always felt the need to go through and adjust things.
I don’t expect that you could plug in Aristotle’s principals into an algorithm and produce a flawless story. The future would be bleak for writers if AI advances that far lol.