D&D Killed CRPGs

Thinking about the whole CRPG genre and reading some of the retarded stuff people come up with to defend bad games (The Elder Scrolls, the Forgotten Realms and various shitty Ultima-type 80's games) I noticed that many people talk about role-playing and a 'fantasy' setting as if they're one and the same.

Eg roleplaying means you have about six 'stats', strength, charisma, dexterity, wisdom etc and that these and a different set of 'proficiencies' that are 'rolled against' to determine success at whatever in the game. You choose from a large number of 'races' (usually with kind of orc/goblin people, 'nords'/barbarians, and pointy eared 'ancient'/'magical'/'agile' race) and characters have a 'class' - all of which leads to a relatively small set of stereotypes or 'archetypes'. Most of the gameplay is to go on 'quests' (the bulk involve going into some kind of ridiculous 'loot' filled 'dungeon') etc.

So what I think is that many of these so-called CRP gamers don't know what they're talking about. They are more obsessed with nostalgia and have no real imagination except reliving their past 'experiences'.

Of course I'm generalizing but if you take a look most games that have been made and are being made (Gothic, Witcher, NWN etc) are like this with just a few twists for marketting purposes. Extremely few games are set in the modern age and few are believable/realistic or original (Prelude to Darkness which I just played is an exception).

The question is simple: is the problem with CRPGs the association with fantasy?

Or does the fact that so many CRPGs are imaginatively dead tell us something about the people who make them and the reason why the genre has almost gone extinct?

Example: a random review for a game at Abandonia.com (a website which scores very highly on the unhealthy nostalgia factor I mentioned)

Just like its predecessor, this is meant to be an introductory game for the RPG genre. You will once again meet the three brothers Julian, Phillip and Kevin. The biggest difference between the two games is the graphics. As you can see from the screenshots, the game uses pixel graphics. The designers have followed every rule regarding pixel art and they were all masters. The result is extraordinary.

As with so many RPG's you begin inside a city. Here you will walk into every house, steal everything that isn't nailed down and then sell it to the local pawnshop. With the money you receive you will buy better weapons and armor. (I always find RPG heroes to be kleptomaniacs... but none of the NPC's seems to mind. Maybe it is because they just saw you slay a dragon with a single blow of your warhammer. If you want to steal their pillows, pots and flowers, they are NOT going to stand in your way. I know I wouldn't... ) After you are finished with the theft, you venture outside the city walls, to kill yourself a Goblin, an Orc, a Troll... and so on. Only to loot them afterwards, and leave them to rot on the ground. Niiice.

The game is also filled with mini-quests, so try to talk to everyone you meet. There might be a fair maiden needing three young men to rescue her, an Ogre to kill, or apples to be collected... Some quests will also be written down in books and tomes, so read these as well. They may contain valuable clues.

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Well, no matter how I hate Tokien for making fantasy a bipolar 'Dark&Light' struggle (including 'evil' races, etc) - unfotunately, if the world didn't WANT such writing, he'd never get popular.

Like, we have games like PST and KOTOR2, with complex philosophy, moral relativism, etc ... but they don't sell welll, cause 'general croud' is too dumb to understand such vague concepts.

If they could, religions would go out of business... but it seems like it's not going anywhere for a while. *sigh*

As for goblins and trolls - he didn't invent EVERY race. He just compiled and interpreted a lot of already existed myths and fairy tales.
But for every game/book copying this setting from now on - again, blame the readers. They WANT this stuff - they get this stuff.

I don't think the general crowd is "too dumb" to understand the concepts, I just don't think it appeals as much. Besides, complex morality and interesting situations are hard to think of, and a lot of developers like to take the lazy route.

It's not really that hard. I mean, with Fallout, you can say, hey, post-apocalyptic world, what might that entail? Radiation? Mutants? Leftover stockpiles of weapons or something? How about mutants with those leftover stockpiles of weapons? Or how about mutants with who aren't mutants because of radiation, like most people would think, but because of those leftover superweapons, like a biological warfare virus or something. Hey that sounds good, we could probably write a plot based around that.

A lot of Planescape is the same way. So, the main character is immortal and has amnesia. So, what issues does that bring up? etc.

All you really need is a place to start brainstorming, but brainstorming is a lot more time-consuming (not really difficult, it's just that people don't like to spend time doing things they think they can do without, even if they are easy. Otherwise, a lot more people would exercise regularly.) than taking 15 or 20 minutes to write a fanfic-quality backstory and just making shit up instead of following your...um, idiom, or whatever. I just had a brain fart and can't remember any of the fun words I was intending to use.

Sheek said:

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What a load of crap.

The problems with rpgs currently have nothing to do with Tolkien-esque fantasy dominating the public imagination. If anything, Tolkien helped rpgs a shitload, by popularising a setting which allowed rpgs to be profitable - since, let's face it, that type of stuff has a kind of universal, timeless appeal.

Without the traditional fantasy 'stereotypes' having been established, you'd have zero rpgs at all today. They allowed a base of popularity to extend into sci-fi and non-fantasy. I would say it's highly likely that without Tolkien and D&D, we would not have had Fallout.

You'll still see KOTOR games, and Mass Effect doesn't look very Tolkienesque to me. Their problems are something other than their setting.

The problem with rpgs is the same affliction that popular music and film are experiencing - they have become merely 'products', made for minimum risk, with style over substance being the emphasis. Consoles haven't helped.

Sure, I'd love to see some real imagination in cRPG settings, but I'd also like to see some traditional fantasy done well - with depth, choices, consequences, good story etc.

BTW making dumb blanket statements like 'Elder Scrolls games are bad' won't make you look cool - since it's generally accepted Daggerfall was a superb rpg, unmatched in many regards today.

BTW making dumb blanket statements like 'Elder Scrolls games are bad' won't make you look cool

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Case in point: Volourine

Twinfalls said:

Sheek said:

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The problem with rpgs is the same affliction that popular music and film are experiencing - they have become merely 'products', made for minimum risk, with style over substance being the emphasis. Consoles haven't helped.

Sure, I'd love to see some real imagination in cRPG settings, but I'd also like to see some traditional fantasy done well - with depth, choices, consequences, good story etc.

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Maybe you have a point about commercialization. What I'm saying is a lot is that 'traditional fantasy' means pseudo-Tolkien D&D garbage - which plain sucks and there isn't a way to 'do it well'.

BTW making dumb blanket statements like 'Elder Scrolls games are bad' won't make you look cool - since it's generally accepted Daggerfall was a superb rpg, unmatched in many regards today.

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Like I've said before I think all the TES games suck because of a/ the pulpy bizarre game world they're set in and b/ the boring D&D-type game design ('save the world' / hundreds of class/race combos = FREEDOM!! / mini-quests drive game progress etc).

Maybe Daggerfall was a revolutionary RPG because it was the first to have really big 3D world or whatever... I don't care. Apart from nostalgia-value it is just not a good game.

Out of interest why do you think I post my opinions to 'look cool'? Is that what you do?

I don't remember tolkien ever telling the reader to roll a d20 dice to determine if the balrog was able to defeat gandalf.

There was someone called gygax who invented DnD. It had a lot of similarities to tolkien fantasy but was also very original.

The real problems are:

1. Very few people are as creative as gygax, let alone tolkien.

2. Corporate world taking over gaming world.

3. Moronic console brats being catered to because of 2.

Actually I think the reason RPG's aren't the most popular anymore is because the stats don't work and people get pissed because the character they rolled won't cut it ingame. If every combination of character creation cannot complete the game, thru' violence, diplomacy, sneakily or any combination thereof then can it even be called a role playing game anymore?

IMHO, Beth should have cut the speech, lock and mercantile skills out completely of their latest game, (since they nerfed them anyway), and refined the weapon/magic skills more (dagger and long blade).

An eg, I was creating a new character for Bloodlines (a non medieval RPG), and I realised I couldn't remember the best skills to raise (That first demon in the art gallery is a bitch to kill if you haven't got the right skill, and near the end of downtown in the train yard... Argh!). What I wanted to create was a seductive, smooth talking Toreador with a high research skill but there's no way I could complete the game as that character.

What's the point of choice if they're not as valid as each other?

Even Planescape Torment had one optimum character build, an intelligent, charismatic talker, and I can't recall Ultima very well (too many drugs), but have the recollection it handled skills fairly well in how it let you complete questlines.

Tolkien didn't kill RPGs, he popularised medieval mythology in 1954 before CRPGs were created. I think lazy game development killed RPGs (oh, and a fixation on killing / taking things which, from the sound of things, predated CRPGs and was a problem with PnP RPGs).

I think people are starting to read Tolkien in light of conceptions they have inherited from their experience of D&D, which means they are reading into Tolkien concepts that do not exist in his works. Tolkien was a primary source for D&D's creators, but not the only one, perhaps not even the foremost one, depending on who you ask (including Gygax!)

Wizards as artillery, 'elves' as pointy-eared nature lovers; these are in the tradition of D&D, and the popular fantasy fiction that has come after it. This is not a genuine continuation of a 'Tolkienesque' tradition, but a deviation from it, a *new* tradition. I would argue that most of what people call 'Tolkienesque' is in fact, not at all. It certainly may be 'D&Desque', but the two are at odds with each other in many ways.

An article by one David Thornley discusses this, specifically the subject of wizards in modern fantasy post-D&D. It's fairly short; his conclusion is that D&D has fundamentally altered the the 'consensus' conception of what a 'wizard' is, but he leaves the wringing of hands over this to people like us. Here it is: D&D's Impact on Fantasy.

The, uh, point being that any problems with fantasy as such lie not with Tolkien, who can't be blamed for being popular, but rather the mediocre efforts of those working in the new tradition of Dungeons and Dragons.

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I would also posit that it's inaccurate to characterize Tolkien's world as 'dualistic'. This is a superficial interpretation of his work, one that he himself tried to refute when it came up in correspondance, and one that where, again, I believe people read into his writing concepts they have taken from later, inferior, works (in the tradition of D&D).

Even in Lord of the Rings, you cannot place everyone on a 'side'. Bombadil, for example, is not 'good'--he serves only himself. The willow trees and barrow wights are not 'evil'--they're territorial and bitter. Even orcs cannot really be called 'evil'. Terming them a 'race' is also not necessarily accurate; this was something Tolkien was never really sure of, something he wrote back and forth about over time. You can read a lot of that in Christopher's Histories. To sum his thoughts up, if orcs are a 'race', then they cannot be by nature 'evil', because that would deny them moral freedom. You would have noble orcs, totally depraved orcs, whatever sort of orcs you pleased. If they are not a race, but rather essentially genetically engineered automatons, vehicles for their master's thought and will, then they are not evil, because they do not make choices.

In either of these cases, hatred of orcs, has more to do with the intolerance of members of other races, and is not a commentary on orcs' 'evilness'. I don't think Tolkien would call any race 'good' either. That sort of distinction can only be made on an individual level. That people do not do that when they read his work, says more about them than it does about Tolkien and his writing. Popular interpretation rarely has much to do with authorial intent.

Ultimately, there is no 'war between Good and Evil' in his work, either. In Tolkien's cosmology, there is only one power, The One, the Source and Sustainer of All, to whom all things return. Opposition to The One, is opposition to Being Itself. Thus evil can be better termed 'nihilism', and the struggle between light and dark is between those who wish to Be and those who wish to negate. An act is evil only in that it occludes one further, plunging them into the void of non-being. Melkor/Morgoth, 'the adversary', becomes more and more impersonal over time, because he becomes less and less 'real' over time, because he does not want to exist, nor the world to exist. He is the first and foremost nihilist, and is largely incapable of action--he relies on Sauron to do his dirty work. Sauron is free to do so, to interact with the world directly, because he very much likes the world (he just wants to be Boss), as such he still very much wants to Be, making him not entirely 'evil'. In fact, nobody can be entirely evil, because by virtue of one's continued existence and action, one is declaring that one very much wants to Be, which means one is antithetical to 'pure evil', which is nonexistance.

Dualism is rarely dualism, it's usually a function of the limited interpretation of the individual railing against it, or the reliance on purely superficial/exoteric interpretations of philosophy/theology/morality.

and again, it's something that has less to do with Tolkien, and more to do with post-D&D fantasy. He cannot be blamed for works that came after, works that have little to do with what he did, nor will you accurately interpret him when your perceptions are informed only by what came after. That's eisegesis, and it leads only to delusion.

Shrug.

" In fact, nobody can be entirely evil, because by virtue of one's continued existence and action, one is declaring that one very much wants to Be, which means one is antithetical to 'pure evil', which is nonexistance."
Yea, that's rather obvious, whether in terms of evil being chaos or nihilism. And it makes 'pure EVIL!!1' antagonists in 'classical fantasy' all the more stupid.

Anyway, like I said myself, it's not exactly Tolkien's fault. He just started the trend - and later it was evolved (or, more, degraded) into what we see now in cheap fantasy and RPGs.

I enjoy people that try to talk about Tolkien and have only read Lord of the Rings or even worse, only seen the movie.

The big problem with pointing a finger at Tolkien as the source of the woes which afflict the RPG-Genre is that Tolkien himself was not overly original.

Middle-Earth is a Nordic concept (as are trolls and elves) that far pre-date Tolkien's works. Orcs originate from Dark-Ages Germanic folklore, dwarves are medieval English creations, the concept of a long 'quest' hails from Nordic sagas, halflings (or little folk) are straight out of Irish folk-tales...

Where Tolkien's creativity shines through is the way he synthesised these disparate threads together to make a whole story. But, as glasnost says, Tolkien's world was not simply black/white, good/evil -- there are various shades of grey in there.

The problem lies more with the cultural perception of what was, after all, a story created for Tolkien's children -- most specifically in the recent films where characters are portrayed in shades of black and white. This is even more noticible in the original Star Wars trilogy where villains are painted in stark shades of black and the heroes in pure white.

Where CRPGs fail is that they do not allow for subtle character shadings -- 99% of all CRPG avatars are little goody-two-shoes with the remaining 1% being black-hearted villains: there's no opportunity to be a 'light'-side hero who -- sometimes -- does evil things.

Dwarves are from norse mythology, jerk.

Wow.

Great post, Glasnost!

sheek said:

Out of interest why do you think I post my opinions to 'look cool'?

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Because you make blanket statements about Daggerfall having quite plainly not played it (you do not 'save the world' in that game) and you articulate your arguments in the manner of the type of idiot who would come on here and bag TES just to look cool, namely:

Maybe Daggerfall was a revolutionary RPG because it was the first to have really big 3D world or whatever... I don't care. Apart from nostalgia-value it is just not a good game.

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franc kaos said:

I can't recall Ultima very well (too many drugs)

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Signs of the geek times a go-go!

I didnt like Daggerfall because it was flat as fuck and very uninteresting. It was like playing with cardboard, rolling random dice and writing down all the numbers you get on the cardboard.

Just change the numbers to words and the cardboard to the gameworld and dungeons.. bam, DAGGERFALL.

Ultima was better in just about every single fucking way.

I'd agree the only reason anyone says anything good about Daggerfall is nostalgia or to avoid 'TES SK8R H8R' status because they happen to like 1 game in the series.

As a side note, everyone complains about combat in Arcanum but conviently forgets Daggerfall's 'run up and wave your mouse like a retard' combat system. I'd rather have Arcanum's combat any day.

I would like to see a hardcore middle-earth crpg, but we all know that will never happen.

LlamaGod said:

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Yes but Patrick we all know you're full of shit and a faggot.

PROOF:

LlamaGod said:

I havent played either game, I just like being argumentive with people who feel strongly about something.

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link

LlamaGod said:

I want to be a swordswallower

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link

LlamaGod said:

Dwarves are from norse mythology, jerk.

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Dvergar, the old Nordic 'dwarf' is not the dwarf of English/Germanic folklore -- which is clearly what 'dwarves' are in both Tolkien and modern CRPGs. Nordic dvergar are akin to to elves or trolls in the Fornaldarsagas and are not the short, dumpy, and hairy creatures with an axe fetish of later mythology.

Perhaps you should do a bit of basic research into the matter before you apply fingers to keyboard.

One big problem with CRPGs, and games in general, is that for the most part game designers are uncreative morons, plain and simple.

You have people who's greatest literary background consists of comic books and playing video games in the first place (and if you are lucky, fantasy), and then anybody wonders they can't write a decent story and developed characters worth a crap?

Game designers are a bunch of wannabes, as uneducated and ignorant as they were when they hit puberty, which pretty much sums up the majority of their player base as well, who, for the most part, rapresent those who will be game designers in the near future.

There may be some rare exception out there, but that's about it.

The only real creative minds in the gaming industry seem to be coders and programmers, apparently...

Lyric Suite has a point here.
The gaming industry has not enough serious, sophisticated and educated artists. Most people in the gaming industry are just little boys who want to programm their own "cool stuff". Prime example for this is surely Todd Howard. I mean honestly, from interviews the guys sound like a 5 year old (literary with his high voice) who has been given a shitload of cash to design his dream game. I wouldn't exclude coders and programmers from this.
Those people have knowledge, but only technical knowledge.
Wait, they have limited knowledge. The real bad ass programming/computer/phyisics experts dont work in the game industry - programming a game is no rocket science and i guess 90 % of coders/programmers working in the gaming industry are just mediacore in their metier, at best.

There are a few exceptions, some of those prominent game designers who are getting old these days and lack successors.
But even people like them pale in comparison to artists from cinema or literature.

LlamaGod said:

I didnt like Daggerfall because it was flat as fuck and very uninteresting. It was like playing with cardboard, rolling random dice and writing down all the numbers you get on the cardboard.

Just change the numbers to words and the cardboard to the gameworld and dungeons.. bam, DAGGERFALL.

Ultima was better in just about every single fucking way.

I'd agree the only reason anyone says anything good about Daggerfall is nostalgia or to avoid 'TES SK8R H8R' status because they happen to like 1 game in the series.

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Exactly.

Also, please re-read the thread title.

People like inovation, but they also like something familiar to hold on. It seems contraditory, but it's true.

Also, AD&D's world is completely different from Tolkien's, and most fantasy settings we see in cRPG get their inspiration in AD&D's fantasy vision than Tolkien's.

sheek said:

LlamaGod said:

You're a girly like me!

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Exactly.

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Slick edit, Sheek. Now all that Tolkien stuff up top doesn't make sense anymore.

Game designers are a bunch of wannabes, as uneducated and ignorant as they were when they hit puberty, which pretty much sums up the majority of their player base as well, who, for the most part, rapresent those who will be game designers in the near future.

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Wait, they have limited knowledge. The real bad ass programming/computer/phyisics experts dont work in the game industry - programming a game is no rocket science and i guess 90 % of coders/programmers working in the gaming industry are just mediacore in their metier, at best.

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etc.

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I'm sure I'll get called a pretentious commie fag for invoking the name, but it's a similar thing to what Chomsky says about the media in Manufacturing Consent.

It's gotten to the point where the games industry's very nature perpetuates the influx of those willing to churn out commercialised turds, and anyone with innovative ideals and a desire to break bold new ground either avoids the industry altogether, or eventually grows weary of seeing their ideas either ignored or turned to shit, and frustated, they bow out of their own accord.

It's not that the industry doesn't want those people, it's just that they don't fit it, and alienation drives them away. At least there are still developers out there with the chops and the balls to take on the indie scene.