Saturday, September 25, 2010

What is Roleplaying?

In its most common usage, the phrase 'Roleplaying Game' is so outdated. Most of the things that are labeled RPG require no roleplaying whatsoever. Take Final Fantasy in almost all of its variants. Let me get this straight... a computer solving doing simple math problems on a turn by turn basis is roleplaying? According to the word nazis.

Now let's take a game with some actual roleplaying. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's mask. Those same word nazis would correctly call this an adventure game. It definitely is, but it's also an adventure game with roleplaying elements. Depending on what you do in the game (e.g. The masks you wear, the items you use, whether you kill Sakon, etc.), the individual outcomes can vary a lot. You can be the Legendary Hero that saves everyone, or just save your own ass and head back to Hyrule. Nevertheless, because it doesn't have turn based dice damage, Majora's mask is not a roleplaying game.

Any reasonable person would call this insanity.

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