Sawyer - RPGs are interactive narratives

[Darklord Rooke]

JE Sawyer, renowned developer for Obsidian and formerly Black Isle, and also an opinionated dude on RPG systems, has held a discussion regarding what he considers to be the definition of an RPG. This is causing waves amongst RPG fans (or derision) but you have to admire a man who stands by what he thinks.

 

Even when he's wrong

 

So here's what he says - 

 

I think what Tabletop RPGs (D&Ds specifically) introduced that was revolutionary was the ability to make your own character. This does include "statty" stuff, but was building upon/expanding rules from Chainmail, a war game.

 

Tabletop RPGs allow you to make a character, define his/her personality, and express it during gameplay in whatever way you see fit. DMs adapt and change the story based on the outcome of player's actions. 

 

Through the 80s and early 90s, all CRPGs could do/did do was simulate the war game and character advancement aspects of their tabletop counterparts. Ultima games started to experiment with player choice and morality around Ultima IV. I may be forgetting some important precursor, but I believe the original Fallout was the first RPG that allowed the player a "judgement-free" way to play the game as anything ranging from a saint to a horrible monster - with appropriate reactions to that behaviour. I believe this was the point where RPGs started to emulate the underlying character/personality mechanics in addition to the stat/advancement/combat mechanics.

 

Moving out of the 90s and into the 00s, western RPGs focused increasingly on player personality, interactions with companions/NPCs, and ways in which the player can alter the outcome of the story based on those interactions and choices. Concurrently, other "non-RPG" games (e.g. Castlevania) started leaning more heavily on traditionally "RPG" character stat/advancement mechanics. By 2010, character stats/advancement are far from exclusive to the RPG genre, but companies like Bioware, Black Isle, Obsidian, Troika, and Bethesda, have put enormous amount of focus on making games where character choices have a directly supported/scripted effect on the story (in contrast to something that is more abstracted/systematic like the Sims or GTA.)

[SilverLi]

So he think The Sims is a RPG? Everything you do affects you in some way.

 

I don't fully agree with him. But he points out a couple of good points. But it is hard to argue about. I need to think about it for a while until I can give you a good answer.

[Darklord Rooke]

I should point out this discussion by Sawyer was held a few years ago but it has become relevant again for reasons. Specifically, Sawyer’s decision not to include combat exp in Pillars of Eternity has been causing a bit of angst. Which means previous interviews will get dug up etc.

[nohman]

What exactly constitutes an RPG is a discussion that seems to pop up often. A lot of people, who take a more loose view of the term, seem to primarily focus on the role-playing aspect. Which, from a semantic point of view, makes sense. If the player is able to assume agency of a role and meaningfully impact a game's narrative, then by that way of looking at it it would qualify as an RPG.

 

Personally, I think this way of looking at it is just too broad for categorization purposes. When you divorce the traditional mechanical aspects from the role playing side of the equation, depending on how one qualifies "assuming a role," you could very well say that ANY game falls under that umbrella - which would make the term itself basically meaningless. 

[SieghartXx]

Black Isle, that's a name I haven't heard in a while (or read?)

I can't really agree with him either, an RPG made the way he says wouldn't feel like a RPG at all, at least to me. Must be I'm already used to see exp/rank systems and the like in RPG's.

[Clephas]

Sawyer probably doesn't see jrps as rpgs at all.  In his view, the western version - and even there, only a small portion of what is generally considered to be an rpg - is the only legitimate rpg type.  I don't necessarily disagree with him, if I chose to nitpick.  However, in a general way, the concept of 'role-playing' is essential to most modern solo play games.  In a way, the frontiers he and his fellows developed are what shaped the current solo game market  (from the storytelling point of view)... but he wants to define rpgs more narrowly. 

 

Reminds me of racial purists, lol. 

[Okami]

I think that it's pretty hard to draw a line between an RPGs and other games as pretty much all modern games have some RPG elements. Original definition of RPG was a game in witch you play a role of a character, so pretty much as long as a character you play has a personality and there is a story in a game it was consider an RPG. But today most games have this so definition of an RPG needed to be changed so that only a games in witch you playing a role of character is more important to the game then other elements  are RPGs. That said there isn't any objective rule to what does playing a role mean witch is why there is so many different opinions on the meeter. Personally I consider that Boiware's games like DAO, ME, Jade empire are most true to RPG genre from a western games.

[arakura]

 

So, you consider a game an RPG if it lets you define your pc's personality in a way that "significantly alters the story". There must be very few games you call RPGs then, since most only offer the illusion of choice and the story stays the same.

I can taste the salt from here... whoa.

 

Anyway, on a scale from things that matter to things that dont matter, this is like a 47,000,000 in my book. As far as my initial impression goes, I've always considered the whole stats/gear/strategy thing to be what makes an RPG an RPG. But I've never really played any story-based video games, so whatever. I agree with him when he asks them why they are making such a big deal out of it.