What Are Role-Playing Games?

Role-playing games allow players to interact with a game world in a wider variety of ways than most other genres do, and to play a richer role than many games allow. Many role-playing games also offer a sense of growing from an ordinary person into a superhero with amazing powers. Other genres usually provide players with these powers immediately, but in a role-playing game, the player earns them through successful play and gets to choose which particular abilities he wants to cultivate. This book first defines the role-playing genre and then describes the unique gameplay features, modes, and mechanics of this type of game. This book focuses on single-player role-playing games that use both avatar-based and party-based interaction models.

In addition, we’ll look at the world, story, and settings common to role-playing games, and delve into the attributes of the avatars and other characters involved in the game. We’ll also look at the various game modes and some special issues for designing the user interface of a role-playing game.

Unfortunately, there isn’t room for more than a general overview of role-playing games. They include more different types of gameplay than most other genres and have the second most complicated user interfaces. (Construction and simulation games have the dubious honor of the most complicated user interfaces.) For a more detailed discussion of the subject, read Neal and Jana Hallford’s Swords and Circuitry (Hallford and Hallford, 2001).

Computerized role-playing games are an outgrowth of the original noncomputerized, pencil-and-paper role-playing games, of which Dungeons & Dragons is by far the most famous example. (For simplicity’s sake, this book calls computerized role-playing games CRPGs and the noncomputerized kind tabletop RPGs to distinguish them from each other. Live-action role-playing, or LARP, is still another variant that we won’t deal with here. It has a lot of additional rules to deal with the physical activities of the players.) The object of both kinds of games, computerized and otherwise, is to experience a series of adventures in an imaginary world, through an avatar character or a small group of characters whose skills and powers grow as time goes on. A group of characters who go on these adventures together in an RPG is universally called a party.

In tabletop games, the adventures, usually characterized as quests to achieve some goal, are devised and staged by one player acting in a special role as the game master or dungeon master (this book uses the term game master or GM). The tabletop games’ rules are complex by comparison to other noncomputerized games. Almost all the game activity takes place in the players’ imaginations; only a few props or visual materials depict the game world. Consequently, the players may propose to take almost any action that they can think of, and the GM must decide whether the action is permitted within the rules and determine its consequences. In general, tabletop RPGs are permissive rather than restrictive, and any reasonable action is allowed—with the definition of reasonable being the privilege of the GM. The process involves a certain amount of ad-hoc rule making.

In CRPGs, the computer implements the rules, performs the activities of the game master, and presents the game world on the screen. Because the computer can offer the players only a fixed set of actions to take and can’t invent new rules on the fly, CRPGs aren’t as flexible as the tabletop games. However, because the players do not have to implement the rules and the graphics are often stunningly beautiful, CRPGs are somewhat more accessible and attractive to the novice player than tabletop RPGs.

Multiplayer online RPGs also sometimes include human GMs who have a limited ability to change or expand on the computer-controlled rules. The GM acts similarly to a GM for a board game, modifying situations and keeping the game fresh.

A key aspect of tabletop RPGs is, as the name suggests, role-playing—that is, improvisational drama in which each player plays the role of his avatar character and the GM plays the roles of any NPCs. Emotional relationships can arise and change among the characters as the players play their respective roles. A good role-playing experience depends on the imaginations and acting skills of the players. For the most part, however, CRPGs have only borrowed the general themes and core mechanics from the tabletop games and little of the role-playing activity itself. Single-player CRPGs don’t yet have the power to simulate NPCs with the acting skill of a human GM. Role-playing in single-player RPGs is therefore limited to holding conversations with NPCs by means of a dialogue tree.

In contrast, multiplayer online RPGs do allow real role-playing between characters because the players can type messages to each other on the computer’s keyboard and sometimes even talk to each other via a microphone and speakers. Comparatively few people play this way, but the option is available.

The essential parts of a computer role-playing game, then, are the quest or story of the game and character growth. The quests usually require combat, and the rules of the game are designed to support it. The rules also define how character growth occurs. Creating a successful CRPG depends on providing a captivating story and a rewarding character growth path.

CRPGs have elements in common with many other genres; it is the way in which they implement them, and the combinations in which they occur, that set them apart. Because CRPGs include so many types of challenges, it’s not unusual for people to make hybrids.

War Games

CRPGs and war games include combat and a set of rules for determining how it takes place. However, CRPGs differ from war games in that CRPGs are about a small group of heterogeneous characters (and sometimes only one), almost always implemented as living humanoids, rather than a large group of often identical units such as tanks or airplanes. Unlike CRPGs, war games seldom keep track of the growth of individual units, and role-playing games don’t normally have factories that can produce more units.

The Heroes of Might and Magic series crosses the CRPG and war game genres. The games include both individual heroes and troops who have to be managed in large battles.

Action Games

Action games frequently test the player’s physical skills; CRPGs never used to, but physical challenges are now commonplace in CRPGs. The Elder Scrolls games are action-CRPG hybrids. They feature a single avatar and a user interface much simplified from the older party-based model. CRPGs include a lot of non–action-related activities such as buying and selling, as well as conversations with other characters in which the player has a choice of dialogue. These activities are rare in action games.

Adventure Games

Like adventure games, CRPGs often have rich storylines with highly detailed characters. Both types of games also involve a lot of exploration. However, in modern adventure games the player’s avatar is a highly specific character provided by the game, whereas most CRPGs allow the player to define her own avatar or party of characters. Adventure games also tend to concentrate on one character, not a party of them. Adventure games traditionally offer puzzles rather than combat challenges, and their characters are seldom defined by numeric attributes as in CRPGs. If any character growth occurs in adventure games, it is of a personal or psychological nature rather than in numerically measured abilities such as strength, speed, and dexterity. CRPGs have a complex internal economy, and much of the growth that takes place consists of increasing these numbers.

The Final Fantasy games could be considered hybrids of CRPG and adventure. Battles are turn-based, requiring no action skills, and they have some of the most vivid stories and most beloved characters of any games made.