My reflection will be concerned with the four definitions for RPG that were required reading and can be found: here, here, here, and here. I will synthesize these definitions to create a more encompassing, and I feel more correct, definition.
The definitions can be split into two categories: general and very, very, very specific. The last three fall into the general category and just say that an RPG is a game that allows a player to completely assume the role of a character, complete with freedom to play the game how the character would. Essentially, this is saying that a RPG is a game that has no fixed progression path, but gives the player the ability to decide how he or she wants to play. The first one, however, is oddly specific and says that for a (computer/video) game to be an RPG, there must be a statistical setup for character skills, some method of increasing character statistics, and a menu-driven content and combat system. To be fair, the author of this did seem to be trying to distinguish genres for video games in the 90s. The second one also agrees with this first somewhat, as it holds that skills are necessary for a RPG.
The general category seems to be to capture the essence of the RPG, the role playing itself. The ability to lose oneself completely in a role is the purpose of the RPG, and it is not specifically hindered or helped by the presence of all the needs of the second category. Traditional RPGs exist the way they do because of the technological limits at the time of their creation.
Games are a reflection of the technical abilities of the designers at the time of creation. Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) was not computer-based because computers in 1974 did not have the capabilities to easily keep track of the players, rules, and settle discrepancies in adventures unforeseen by the architects of the game, but that’s not to say that games could not be created nowadays that capture the magic and essence of D&D, nor that they have not already been created. I would like to propose a new definition that the only requirement for an RPG is that the game allows the player to become anything that he or she wants, within the reasonable limitations of the game world, and allows him or her to be completely engrossed in the act of becoming another person. There is no need anymore for a RPG to only have a “menu-driven” content and combat system.
As technology improves, as it will, RPGs will allow people to create whole fantastical lives that allow for anything and everything that both normal life and fantastical life include. Games have been becoming less genre-specific, and more and more games blur the lines between genres. I feel genres exist because limitations of the designers caused them to focus on only one or few types to completely flesh out and create a game. But I see the future of RPGs, and game sin general, being alternate lives for people, merging elements of traditional RPGs, simulation, adventure, and action games.
Everything will be a crossover and it will be perfect.
patakygn 