Author, autist, apostate. Trans man, queer, and proud. Thrives in an environment of G-rated villainy. // An elegant, but slightly disgruntled, person drinking tea. // Internet oddity + friendly neighbourhood vampire. // Professional of pain.
about the earl:
Hi! I’m earlgraytay. You can call me Malcolm, Mal, Earl, Gray– whatever. I’m a writer, a Twitch streamer, and a proud queer. He/him pronouns, please.
You can buy my queer fic on Amazon and Smashwords– want a hopeful queer retelling of Kafka’s Metamorphosis? How about a trans lady airship captain who hunts angels and fights restrictive Victorian gender roles, or a grumpy enby veterinarian who has to heal @historieofbeafts-style goat-unicorns?
You can follow my Twitch streams on twitch.tv/earlgraytay. This post will be updated as I figure out a good stream schedule, but RN I stream on Mondays and Fridays (though I’m not very consistent).
I write fanfic sometimes - I’m on AO3 as scribblingTiresias- but it’s mostly one-shots, with a few ambitious weird longfics that are never updated.
honestly i might lay out my Grand Unified Theory Of RPGs if anyone’s curious
the TLDR is that there’s about four genres of game being lumped into the “RPG” genre, and people who like one are not necessarily going to like any of the others.
post the essay, OP!
I’ll take some crackshot guesses right here:
>tactical board game,
>deckbuilder (as character customization),
>visual novel (genre and subform left COMPLETELY ambiguous),
>uhhhhhhhhhhh….. fishing sim
Heh! So I’m a narrative designer, and when I’m analyzing game genres, I tend to look at how story works in each genre, rather than how mechanics or visual aesthetics work. My grand theory of RPGs is that they come in basically five flavours…. at least from a storytelling perspective…. with some Special Cases thrown in the mix just to piss everyone off.
You could call the main Five Flavours the CRPG, the JRPG, the Baby’s First RPG, the Immersive Sim, and the Plot-Lite– but there’s baggage to most of those terms, especially when you’re talking about mechanics. I need to come up with better ones.
A CRPG is a game where you are building a brand new character from scratch and deciding what kind of person they become.
Many (but not all) of these games feature a class system, that lets you make different mechanical choices based on what class you choose at the start of the game. Most (but not all) of these games have a skill system that locks you out of some narrative options if you don’t have the skills to perform them.
Many (but not all) of these games also feature a dialogue tree or Morality Options, which give you more options to decide what kind of person your character is on a narrative level.
The story often has many branching paths and often comes with multiple endings, depending on what kind of person you’ve become. There are good and bad endings; often, these endings are gated behind skill checks or moral choices.
The narrative goal of the game is to let the player define a character from the ground up and then to Put That Guy In Situations to see what they’re made of. You can play as yourself, as your favourite fantasy hero, or as a whole new OC– but you’re deciding what kind of person they are.
Note well: a CRPG does not have to be made in “The West” as opposed to “in Japan”. Japanese devs are perfectly capable of making CRPGs, and American devs are perfectly capable of making JRPGs.
Examples of this genre include: Ultima; the OG Fallout duology; Baldur’s Gate; Dragon Age (especially Origins), and arguably the Soulsborne games.
A JRPG is a game where you are following a clearly defined character along a clearly defined story route. You are not making this guy; you are the angel (or devil) on his shoulder, helping him grow.
In a JRPG, you’re a pre-determined character, usually with a canonical name (though you may be able to choose your own) and personality. The main characters’ classes are generally decided for you from the outset, giving them different roles in the party (though you may be able to respec them later).
Most of the choices you make are mechanical, rather than narrative. They’re the moment-to-moment tactics, gear, and stat boosts. You may be able to choose how to build your characters in a way more like a CRPG– change their class, allocate stats, and so on– but you may not have any control over their build at all. In a lot of JRPGs, stat increases are random.
There may be moral choices over the course of the story, or even different endings, but generally, you’re seeing one story with a predetermined conclusion. The story generally doesn’t have branching paths; you can choose what order to experience things in, but ultimately, the characters are the ones making the choices, not the player.
The narrative goal of this kind of game is to tell a clear, focused, character-driven story. The player is along for the ride.
Note that a JRPG doesn’t have to be made in Japan, despite the name– Japanese devs are perfectly capable of making CRPGs, and American devs are perfectly capable of making JRPGs.
Examples of this genre include most Final Fantasy games, Octopath Traveler, Chrono Trigger, most Fire Emblem games, NieR.
The Baby’s First RPG is an unfairly pejorative name, but a lot of games in this genre are intended to be “beginner RPGs”. Narratively, the thing that sets this genre apart is that they’re right in the middle between a CRPG and a JRPG with how they characterize their protagonists. (A lot of these games were made in Japan during the RPG boom and thus tend to get called JRPGs, but I think they’re their own special thing.)
In a Baby’s First RPG, you are playing as a pre-defined character. But unlike in a JRPG, you are playing as a silent protagonist. You do not ever hear what this character has to say, and they’re often intended to be a blank slate for the player to insert themself into the world. Sometimes, you may get hints of what the player character is saying– and they’re often implied to be quite snarky!– but generally, they’re an empty vessel.
The stories often are fairly simple– they give the main character an objective, which they pursue with determination until the end of the game. They’re not prone to have branching paths or moral choices; you are simply playing as the kind of guy who would want to do this thing. Save the princess. Become the champion. Fix up the farm. That kind of thing.
A Baby’s First RPG often (but not always) includes the same kind of stat progression you’d get in a JRPG- you have some build choices, but your stats may be random. Party composition is often (but not always) the most interesting choice you get to make, mechanically- which Pokemon are you adopting? Which buddy are you taking along?
Examples of this genre include Pokemon, Earthbound (and many of its imitators), the first two Paper Mario games, most Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley farming RPGs, arguably Yume Nikki (and many of its imitators). They’re not RPGs, but the Zelda games are also a great example of this kind of writing.
Immersive sims, like JRPGs, put you in the position of a specific character with a specific skillset, and ask you to think like that character. But in CRPG-style, over the course of the game, you get to shape your character into a person you’d like to be.
Mechanically, immersive sims are very different from most “traditional” RPGs. Immersive sims are usually about gunplay (or swordplay), problem solving, and CRPG-style skill checks, rather than random battles and map exploration. They’re almost always in first person, rather than in the JRPG’s third person. You are absolutely playing a role, but the way you play that role is more visceral and moment-to-moment than it is in either a CRPG or a JRPG.
Immersive sims also run the gamut in how they choose to characterize their protagonists. There are some immersive sim protagonists that are essentially blank slates (System Shock’s Hacker and Bioshock 1’s Jack come to mind), but there are others who are quite well-characterized (Deus Ex’s protagonists, Garrett of Thief fame).
But in the moment, you are likely to feel like you are the person in the world, rather than any particular character. You’re not watching Garrett steal; you are stealing. You’re not watching Jack club sploicers; you are clubbing sploicers. The character is a vessel to inhabit, a mindset to get into.
Moral choices are a pivotal part of the writing in most immersive sims– they’re the way you choose to define who your character becomes. Save or kill the Little Sisters? Vanish like a thief in the night, or cut down all the guards?
And yes: I think the Bethesda RPG formula is actually closer to an immersive sim than anything else. Especially Fallout 3 and 4, but the more recent Elder Scrolls games fall into that category, too. They’re focused on moral choices, in first person, designed to get you to get into the head of your protagonist rather than watch them do things.
So examples of the immersive sim include System Shock/Bioshock, Thief, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and 4, arguably Deadly Premonition.
The Plot-Lite RPG is a genre that’s mostly focused on the game mechanics, with story taking a back seat, mostly used to provide ambiance or an excuse for what you’re doing.
Characters may be randomly generated, or may exist to fulfill a specific mechanical purpose, but are not mechanically deep. Many of them don’t have more than a few lines of dialogue over the entire game.
Exploration and character builds are the most important parts of this game. The places you’re exploring are usually also randomly generated.
The thing that most of the games higher up on this list have in common is that the reward for playing well is more story. In a plot-lite RPG, the reward for playing well is more game.
Examples of this game include Rogue, Pretty Much Anything Marketed As A Roguelike (though not necessarily a roguelite), Darkest Dungeon. Many older RPGs can feel like this to a modern audience- Final Fantasy 1 and Pokemon Red/Blue come to mind- but in their day, they weren’t intended to be plot-lite.
There’s a couple of special cases here- games that count as RPGs, but have unique writing challenges that make them Their Own Thing.
MMOs have the unique challenge of having to combine RPG mechanics with social interaction. Some MMOs choose to have a main questline that’s reminiscent of a CRPG or JRPG. Some completely forgo story beyond justifications for Kill Five Rat. MMO storytelling is thus kind of its own thing, and most MMOs aren’t going to neatly fit into any of these categories, just because they need to fit in social interaction and Events.
Similarly, visual novels are kinda wack in this department. I’d argue that some visual novels are RPGs and some aren’t, and that even most visual novels that are RPGs don’t neatly fit into any of these categories. They’ve got different storytelling conventions. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but maybe if I noodle on it a bit more that can be its own post.
But TBH? Most games don’t fit neatly into one of these categories; people blend genres all the time. I’d argue that a lot of modern games with RPG elements, in particular, mix and match genres.
Like, concrete example here is Undertale.
Undertale has all the trappings of a Baby’s First RPG. Silent protagonist who’s a player insert but not a total blank slate. Build that’s mostly determined by the game, with the mechanical choices being JRPG-style items. But Undertale is built around a CRPG-style moral choice, and the way you choose to handle it determines the outcome. From what I understand, Deltarune is a much more “classic” Baby’s First RPG, especially since it’s not going to have multiple endings like Undertale.
So yeah, that’s my Not Very Good Grand Theory Of RPGs.
honestly i might lay out my Grand Unified Theory Of RPGs if anyone’s curious
the TLDR is that there’s about four genres of game being lumped into the “RPG” genre, and people who like one are not necessarily going to like any of the others.
I have been sitting here for a day trying to figure out how Baldur's Gate is a card RPG. And if not, what on earth the C could stand for. It's computer isn't it? I feel very silly.
Yeah it’s computer, which is also really silly because it’s a holdover from the bad old days when there was a big gap between RPGs played on the computer and RPGs played on consoles. These days CRPG is more descriptive of, idk, old style computer RPGs? Like, Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a CRPG whereas Fallout 4 isn’t even though both are RPGs that you can play on the computer (or console)
No need to feel silly, these acronyms are quite silly
the other reason for “CRPG” as an acronym is to differentiate from “JRPG”.
a CRPG puts a big focus on character customization and growth– it’s about building your own little guy and having him explore a world. the hero of a CRPG is meant to be a blank slate that you can project on– in the story and gameplay alike. a lot of old-school RPGs, especially ones in the Divinity/Baldur’s Gate/Planescape:Torment tradition, have as much text as a long fantasy novel– because that lets the player make interesting story choices.
in contrast, a JRPG gives you a character that’s already predetermined. Cloud Strife is his own little guy; he’s not You. you can determine how to arrange his stats and help him grow, yeah, but your reaction to Cloud saying something boneheaded is not “I would not fucking say that”, it’s “look at this goober”. Cloud’s class and character are already set in stone; you’re along for the ride.
Also, not to swing my bat at a hornet’s nest, but I’d argue that Fallout 4 isn’t an RPG at all. It’s an immersive sim.
