RPGs Were Never About Roleplaying

about two million years ago a flock of migratory finches traveled hundreds of miles across the Pacific Ocean to settle a volcanic archipelago that we would eventually come to know as the Galapagos Islands for the vast majority of their history these islands and their inhabitants were completely unexamined and it wasn't until 1835 that the Galapagos were visited by a guy called Charles Darwin who you may be familiar with and who noticed that something strange had happened to that original population of what he called Darwin's finches each group of birds had gradually evolved to fill particular ecological niches in accordance with the environment they inhabited drastically diverging in the process the large ground finch had a big strong beat for cracking nuts and shells the Woodpecker Finch had evolved a small Beacon simple tool used to get bugs out of trees and the vegetarian Finch stopped eating meat altogether because there are loads of plants where it lives there's even the vampire Finch which goes through occasional famines requiring it to drink the blood of other birds the question I want to ask though is that of all these different birds that Darwin discovered all descended from the same source which one is the real Galapagos Finch which one of these birds is the true inheritor to the genetic Legacy of the Island's original visitors and which ones are just imitators incidentally you might also be wondering what any of this has to do with video games and I'll be honest it's a fair point see I want to talk about RPGs RPGs or role-playing games are as you are no doubt aware one of the biggest and most enduringly popular genres of game out there and have been a part of the medium since before video games even existed before Mario jumped over his first Turtle before the first tektronomos were cleared and before grizzled much shoot man blasted his first demon RPGs were already taking the video gaming World by storm and they haven't stopped since the issue is though is an RPG's arm in many ways a victim of their own success the genre has been so consistently popular and so consistently widespread that you could argue that it's begun to have yeah a bit of an identity crisis because let's be honest what does role-playing game even mean look at Final Fantasy once a venerable series of intellectual tactical turn-based games has slowly metamorphosed into an almost purely action series with what would seem like only a surface level connection to its roots Final Fantasy 16's combat system was even designed by the same guy who did Devil May Cry and the Final Fantasy 7 remakes combat system has basically nothing in common mechanically with the game that it's supposed to be remaking over in the west so many games have started bolting RPG systems onto themselves with zero regard for the design tradition and expectations they're associated with that the line between what is and is not a proper RPG has become incredibly blurred sure the new Assassin's Creed games and Call of Duty and even Duolingo have gear and stats and experience points but does that make them RPGs you'll get a different answer from basically everyone and in the world of indie games there are loads of different revivals and remakes and reboots coming out every single day all of which are claiming to rekindle the golden age of the RPG and none of which have much in common at all roguelikes immersive Sims tactics games and whatever's going on here have very few shared similarities same for the fact that they all claim to be RPGs and they all claim to be recapturing a golden age that is mutually incompatible with all the other Golden Ages the longer the RPG seems to exist and the more iterations and mutations it undergoes the harder and harder it seems to be for fans of the genre and for the gaming public at large to agree on what exactly a true pure RPG is supposed to look like or even what elements that hypothetical game make in time when we hear about a racing game or a strategy game we more or less know what to expect but the phrase RPG seems to occupy some insane Quantum superposition that defies easy categorization and makes everyone very upset indeed that's where I come in let's see for a few weeks now I've been trying to solve the problem once and for all of what RPGs are all about what single underlying Factor ties this disparate grip games together into a group that we all feel like ought to exist but that we can't quite pin down unfortunately this is something that's easier said than done because a lot of our core assumptions about the nature of the RPG are to put it lightly not the full picture and nowhere is this more clear than in the case of the name there are no doubt plenty of people in the comments who've already told me that I'm being silly and that RPGs already have a fixed definition they're role-playing games they're games about role-playing right well yes kind of but also it's not quite that simple role-playing as we tend to Define it that being free form improvisational storytelling where you can do whatever you want and where the world and the other characters are expected to react around you can be a lot of fun but very few RPGs actually provide this experience and most don't do it very well for example several core canonical RPGs offer very little in the way of immersive customization or narrative agency you can't make peach anything other than a Healer in Mario RPG and good luck affecting the plot of World of Warcraft something like Bioshock wouldn't be any less of an RPG if you stripped out its lame child murder morality system and doom wouldn't suddenly become an RPG if you tagged on a Choose Your Own Ending bit thinking RPGs are all about role-playing is let's be honest pretty logical but sadly it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny so if RPGs aren't defined by role-playing then what are they about well I think in order to find the core identity of the RPG we need to first look at their original ancestor species that migrated to the land of video games decades ago and by that I mean Dungeons and Dragons d d is the original RPG basically every single one video game or otherwise can trace its Origins back to this single ER game devised by Gary gygax and Dave Anderson back in the 70s and a lot of its elements can still be seen in RPGs today from character classes to equipment to dungeons to you know you know one of those things that live in the dungeons uh oh duraco yeah them the thing is though is that while it would be very convenient for Dungeons and Dragons to be a complete blueprint for all subsequent RPGs DND particularly early d d was kind of a mess and made up of a bunch of different conflicting ideas all pulling in different directions that makes it impossible to use as a template for the whole genre on one hand its rules were based on the tabletop war game chainmail and as such was all about tactical battles and rolling dice but on the other Dungeons and Dragons emphasized much smaller scale gameplay and so opened up the opportunity for more emergent use of abilities and items as well as non-combat solutions to problems disrupting a pure focus on combat equally the referee later called the dungeon Masters increased power seemed to shunt the game in the direction of more authored linear narratives but the inclusion of primitive storytelling systems like alignment and Paladin Oaths were players to deal with gave them a large degree of control over the narrative as well far from being just a make-believe game focused on role-playing or a purely combat focused game with a distinct style of play in mind Dungeons and Dragons was this roiling primordial soup of influences and ideas and its successors pulled from a variety of them as they split off and involved including the ones that confusingly decided to keep the name even if they decided not to have anything to do with role-playing I know it's confusing with that said though while early Dungeons and Dragons might have had no cohesive vision and frankly may not have been that fun it's weird combination of ideas still managed to create a spark of Genius that went on to guarantee not just its success but the success of every game that followed in D D's footsteps something that was an equal parts strategy and storytelling mechanical yet personal and I think the best way to illustrate what that is is to check out some of dnd's Major Video Game descendants to see if we can spot one element is still common among all of them the earliest iteration of digital Dungeons and Dragons can be founded in Mainframe RPGs like the dungeon Warrior or simply DND most of which were designed to facilitate online play of Dungeons and Dragons however no matter how hard the developers tried and no matter how fun their Creations were they could never quite replicate the same experience of playing in person with the real dungeon master early computers were great at handling the minutiae of DnD dice rolling but they weren't so good at creating rich and lifelike environments or a sense of adventure so that's why the earliest dungeon craws as I'm going to call them like Wizardry Ultima and Rogue all deemed heavily into combat and external rewards issuing a lot of narrative baggage that no longer fit their design Vision since then dungeon crawls have been all about the fun of fighting ever bigger and tougher baddies and being rewarded with ever better Loot and abilities leveraging of Masters in technology in order to increase the depth of their combat systems and the scope of their dungeons either literal ones or merely dungeon shaped areas all kinds of Dungeon Crawlers from loot acquisition simulators to more classic party-based Labyrinth games use techniques like random item drops a drip feed of no abilities and a constant arm race of enemy complexity to force players to be constantly re-analyzing their character build and to really get stuck in coming up with cool new strategies and unconventional synergies in order to stand a chance against whatever the next big challenge is hell even most modern MMOs have their roots in Dungeon Crawlers thanks to World of Warcraft which took many design cues from Diablo and has always been pretty much purely focused on combat and progression you can make the argument World of Warcraft also puts a fair bit of effort into its story but I think we can all agree it's a secondary concern for blizzard and that's putting it lightly everything from the gear system to the big complicated talent trees exist to keep you constantly making interesting decisions and then paying them off with a tangible increase in power dungeon crawler's Excel are making every low level decision and every progression Milestone feel meaningful because everything is oriented around combat and often very punitive combat Advance Souls like games for example which were inspired by kingsfield which was in turn inspired by Ultima or darkest dungeon which borrows a lot of roguelike DNA wouldn't be anywhere near as compelling if you didn't have to scratch and Claw for every tiny combat advantage and really think about every action in a way that a greater emphasis on freeform gameplay or narrative would only dilute speaking of which Dungeon Crawlers weren't the only kind of RPG that spun off of text-based d d implementations as graphical power increased and as PC Hardware Advanced to the point where actual game worlds could be simulated another branch of games started to emerge that attempted to recapture some of the player-driven emergent gameplay The Dungeon Crawlers left behind but was still an important element of physical Dungeons and Dragons these games typically get called crpgs or computer RPGs and that's because the technological advantages they were based on mostly started on PC and only ever really trickled into less powerful less flexible consoles rather than being focused on Raw tactics and Resource Management crpgs offered a much greater focus on problem solving and creatively empowering the player letting them do stuff like developing non-combat abilities explore the world in a non-linear fashion and see the actions reflected in the world Beyond heaps of dead goblins Ultima underworld Baldur's Gate and Elder Scrolls Arena some of the first crpgs all made heavy use of openwall gameplay and emergent mechanics like using torches to make popcorn in order to create not just a series of combat encounters but a living breathing world that could be approached in multiple ways and rewarded building a character with a unique set of skills that pursued a unique path through the game look at RuneScape for example it's entirely possible to play that game in a completely non-combat Manner and the game's questing is more or less completely open-ended rather than dictated primarily by combat level immersive Sims like Deus exonered and System Shock could also be said to fall into this group of computer RPGs with their Origins more or less lying in Ultimate underworld immersive Sims take the gameplay flexibility of their peers and add a more action spin-off to things maintaining the core player empowerment's angle but reducing the emphasis on numbers even more the focus on giving the player an ever-expanding systemic tool set and visible consequences to even the smallest of actions more modern crpgs really go all in on this angle of letting the player do whatever they want and feel like the world is their playground bethesda's usual fare is massive open world filled with cool little activities to do in every direction that make the player feel like the center of the universe and slightly more focused crpgs like say Divinity original sin allow you to feel like a total genius for solving puzzles and choosing combat Encounters in really clever ways the super seed a more rigid progression system and narrative structure of course that's not to say that RPG Innovation was only happening in the west far across the Pacific another letter was getting bolted onto the front of RPG to form an entirely new genre that still shared that same genetic background that being the jrpg better known as the Jamiroquai RPG jrpgs are characterized most distinctly but they're much stronger focus on a linear pull structure and limited player agency more often than not giving you a fixed character with a fixed role of the story and predetermined skills rather than letting you customize your own essentially rather than driving the story you'll just along for the ride with even jrpgs that have an open world being fairly heavily tied to an intended experience Final Fantasy 14 primary gameplay is it's mostly single player and completely linear main story quests and all of its classes have no room for individual variety being more focused on mechanical execution all black Mages have to balance ice and fire all sages deal damage and heal at the same time and all paladins struggle to stay awake this is in Stark opposition to Western RPGs which often doubt much more of an emphasis on customization and self-expression even in Dungeon Crawlers the reason for this is because jfpgs weren't directly inspired by Dungeons and Dragons which has never been very popular in Japan but by imported Dungeon Crawlers like Wizardry and also because all the big early jumpages dragon slayer Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest were made by companies that originally specialized in visual novels establishing a strong focus on both combat and Rich more traditional narratives right from the get-go because of this unique blend of story and combat Focus over time the jlpg evolved to be almost cinematic in nature with the ambition and scope of their narratives often far eclipsing that of Western RPGs because they rarely had to accommodate for players going to different areas in different orders or making their own decisions in Persona 5 for example you can choose whether to use yusuke in combat or hang out with him outside of it but you can't make him anything other than a melee damage dealer or alter his character's story in any meaningful way equally in octopath traveler sure you can do each of the character's stories in any order you like but they'll always unfold the same way and they'll always has come together for a big singular definitive conclusion in the modern day jrpgs are branched out maybe the most of all RPG varieties but still retain a much more firm directoral hand than many other RPGs this unconventional focus is why jrpgs can abandon their mechanical foundation and still retain the same feel it doesn't matter if a jlpg turns into an action game or a life Sim their biggest design Traditions are more structural than they are mechanical with narrative progression picking up the slack that would ordinarily were left to more organic means of player advancement of course jrpgs aren't the only kind of role-playing games the Pod story first narrative Adventure RPGs are just as focused on story but in a very different way see not all original annotations of DnD cut out the freeform story stuff to make room for the combat rules others went in the complete opposite direction and removed combat entirely because it only got in the way of player narrative agency these text-based games like Colossal Cave Adventure Zork and others were the very first narrative adventure games and are just as much a part of the d d lineage as Wizardry or Rogue these narrative RPGs sometimes get rolled in with crpgs and there's a fair degree of blur between them but I think there's Merit in highlighting them as a distinct entity especially given their unique design lineage and overall focus on story Freedom over mechanical Freedom narrative Adventure RPGs de-emphasize combat and while most mainstream ones still have it the focus is very much on the player's agency within the story often taking place almost entirely through dialogue and description with a few bits of exploration puzzle solving and skill checks thrown in there for good measure a great example of this will be the games made by interplay black oil and later obsidian who just like many jlpg developers got their start making text-based story games and so carried that narrative focus and experience into stuff like Fallout and playscape torment as a smaller side this is also why the Fallout games made by Bethesda and the ones made by interplay and later obsidian have a totally different feel and gameplay style even if they were made using the same tools assets and intellectual property Naruto adventure games despite a fairly persistent lack of popularity are the RPGs that I think best embody the role-playing improv storytelling Spirit of DnD and this can to varying degrees of success be seen today in the works of CD projekt Red and BioWare both of whom initially got started working for interplay and have since thrived bringing narrative agency and strong stories back to mainstream Western RPGs after everybody else kind of went out of business equally that's not to Discount smaller Studios which don't have the budget for cinematic adventures or super deep combat simulations Studios like fail better or inkle have thrived in this particular Niche for years and without them we never would have gotten the recent Indie Revival of these kinds of games disco Elysium pentiment and suzurain which all put player narrative agency above all else are finally showing that they don't need combat and loads of maths to be great RPGs an idea that stymied even great narrative RPGs planescape torment where fighting stuff basically only got in the way RPGs are wildly varied they come in a million different forms with some of them having very little in common mechanically with Dungeons and Dragons but in spite of that they're all still RPGs the thing that links all of these very different tiles together isn't a single set of mechanics design goals or setting elements but the far more fundamental focus on the thing that made DND work in the first place and that is an emphasis on character RPGs more so than any other kind of game are all about getting you to care about your character or characters and the way that they can change or progress over time whether you care about their evolving combat power their ability to manipulate the world their personal Journey or the consequences of their actions this through line of being put in control of a little guy or sometimes several little guys and gradually nurturing them as you play is a common factor among all RPGs even the role-playing activity that gives the genre its name where you get to create a character from scratch and Define who they are R is just one of many ways to tap into this fundamental appeal the RPG as a genre has done nothing but evolve and Branch out ever since its creation almost 50 years ago but I believe this core element of character can be seen in all of them even in the ones that don't really fit into my weird little model bioware's stuff for example Treads the line between crpg and narrative RPG having gradually slid from one design school to the other over the years but even when they're making bad games and my God have they done a lot of that recently the studios focus on caring about characters is still a clear guiding design principle Pokemon the world's biggest RPG ever is a departure from many jlpg tropes but even though it offers the player much more freedom than in other Japanese RPGs you can still find the same fun of assembling and growing your little team of guys in both it and more traditional games like the trails series which can trace its development history all the way back to Dragon Slayer and Beyond single titles life Sim games like Harvest Moon Crusade Kings and the Sims which is a pretty eclectic makes to say the least are well on their way to forming an entirely unique branch of RPGs in of themselves that I will then have to add to my little graph hell even d d itself is still mutating and evolving over time the Third Edition was an open-ended systemic playground where actually fighting enemies was pretty pointless which a lot of people hated fourth edition stripped everything out that wasn't combat and turned itself back into a war game which a lot of people hated and fifth edition puts way more emphasis on character backstory and narrative elements than its peers at the expensive combat balance which guess what a lot of people hated but in spite of the fact that d d has always been pulled between several design influences the key to the game's endurance success is that its developers never lost sight of what makes the game work characters were invested in and care about developing equally when it comes to the recent Spate of other games that have lifted RPG mechanics the ones that successfully tap into the investment and depth the genre is known for are the ones that carry oven not just stats and gear but this focus on character as a core element looty shooty games like Destiny realize that getting to make choices about what your character does and constantly creating the feeling of getting stronger is a great way to foster a sense of long-term investment in an otherwise faceless shooter protagonist strategy games like Fire Emblem Final Fantasy Tactics or XCOM have enriched their tactical battling by adding long-term character Stakes that turn faceless suicide jumps into actual people who invested in keeping alive and even stuff like metroidvanias use RPG ideas in order to double down on vac genres focus on Mastery of a physical Space by manifesting that abstract feeling in the form of tangible character strength too just like how Darwin's finches started from a single common ancestor and branched out into an array of unpredictable new forms it can be hard to see from a surface level that some RPGs are related at all but if you look a bit closer you can see that fundamentally the genetics are pretty damn similar and they all function in more or less the same way with each species just being a specialized manifestation of their shared original ancestor which was itself an adaptationary offshoot of another much older group there is no true Galapagos Finch or true RPG they all have equal claim and they always have done so what does this all mean if RPGs aren't role-playing games and never have been and are actually this weird Middle Ground between the expressive nature of Storytelling and the long-term investment of strategy are they doing fine after all and doesn't that mean we probably need to change the name well I'd certainly say yes to the first bit I think RPGs are healthier than ever just as the Galapagos finches change shape and diverged over time the adaptations and genetic history that brought them there never went away and the same goes for the RPG just because the genre is constantly adapting to no environments doesn't mean that it's dying and there's always room for Throwbacks and revivals to reassur themselves should a favorable Niche emerge and as for the name of the genre what if I told you that the so-called Galapagos finches one actually finches at all yep Darwin was wrong that ancient ancestor species was actually more closely related to the Tanager and don't have that much in common with finches at all but we still call them finches anyway because their name isn't much more than a description it represents a history and context that goes beyond mere definition just as the name role-playing game reflects an incredibly complicated cultural lineage and Decades of evolution even if it's not particularly accurate the real takeaway here isn't that I've solved the RPG forever or even that it's possible to do so merely the genre much like genetics is complicated and in constant motion we can't pin down and boxing the RPG any more than we can stop birds from evolving and it's only by understanding the messy indistinct primordial place they came from that we can truly understand where they're going well it's it's either that or the takeaway is that evolution is a lie and the Gary Garg ax created Dungeons and Dragons a perfect game fully formed in six glorious days and then on the seventh day he rested to get all of his spell slots back uh it's definitely one of those two things though hello hello and welcome to the after the video segment for this bumper length episode wow this was oh this was a long one wasn't it anyway this is part of every video where I sit down backwards of my chair like a cool youth pastor and talk to you about some cool stuff that you need to be made aware of but unlike a cool youth pastor I'm not talking about Jesus I'm actually talking about some cool people on the internet the first of which I'd like to mention is the Great Moon Channel a YouTuber with a unique specialization in both law and Japanese RPGs and this has led to the creation of some absolutely great and extremely detailed videos on topics that I didn't even realize I wanted to know more about Mooney has some great stuff on the wise and history of Nintendo being very aggressive with their copyrights all the way over to the unaccountably fascinating cultural context of why every single jrpg makes you kill god seriously that one's really worth a watch it's probably my favorite Moon channels videos strike a great balance between being sort of wholesome and relaxing without being too saccharine an intellectual without being overly dry and boring they're a great binge watch please check them out also that's not the only cool person I need to discuss far from it I also need to shout out my dedicated patrons who ensure that I can indulgently add an extra five minutes to this video because there was just so much to talk about they are absolutely great and every single penny they throw my way goes towards ensuring I don't have to make the videos worse for sponsorships or torpedo my credibility by talking about raid Shadow Legends in return they get early access to videos some special behind the scenes looks where I break down every single video and why I hate it bonus game design goodness and even special shout outs like you can see in the corner of your screen right there yep there they go and they're finished now or are they because ten dollar donors get the greatest privilege of all and that is to have their names read out by me at the very end as an extra special thank you and those people are Ali Wright Andrew labrano asaran Alto 94 Brennan Spalding Brian lotoriani buy more Skyrim for Todd Constantine amend cosmics 360 Daniel medges Das kangaroo David senser Dirk Jan karenbeld Diglett here ecton Edward Franklin Woods Eugene bulkin Gaskell iofer 93 isawano Jacob Dylan riddle [ __ ] Lloyd John garlier Jordan gear Kevin help us Luke kakoran mace under 54 manuki Marika vladalina Altair Mark valant Nate Graf nwdd Oliver mahofa Patrick Romberg Peter D tomasak redidex Regal regex Rey's dad Sheldon Hearn Simon Jacobson Steve Reilly Ty guren Tyler Duncan Uprising Whimsical wisp Zach brandtmeyer and ciao okay that's it that's that's all for me I won't keep you any further um bye

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 330,846

Keywords: Games, Video Games, Gaming, PC Gaming, Adam, Adam Millard, Architect, AoG, Architect of Games, Review, Analysis, Game Design, guide, New Games, Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Old games, world of warcraft, runescape, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy 16, Diablo 4, RPG, Role Playing Games, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D, Baldur's Gate 3, Baldur's Gate, Bioware, The Witcher, CRPG, Best RPGs, Best New RPGs, FF14, Borderlands, Xenoblade, Role Playing, Disco Elysium, Suzerain, Divinity Original Sin, Larien

Id: 1kNi3cLB0sI

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2023