/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4276980
It is an age-old RPG debate from the pen and paper days between role playing and gaming. Larper Dramaqueen vs stat nazi.

The JRPG genre is based on old school D&D, when the modules in the 1970s offered pre-made characters to use for that adventure (or you could roll your own but the level range had to match). Most were straightforward adventures with a dungeon to grind and maybe a local town to buy supplies (iron rations, rope and oil for those who cared). There was very little opportunity for roleplay in those early days and RPGs were really just an expansion from tabeltop miniature games. JRPGs are not technically true RPGs in the same way that early D&D wasn't either.

In the 80s D&D community there was a push for more roleplay and even larping and much less emphasis on combat and more on problem solving through social interaction over dice rolls. True role playing had emerged. Eventually WRPGs started to integrate these aspects by offering players decision making and dialog opportunities or even the chance to play an evil character. This eventually lead to more sandbox elements and a focus on lone protagonists.

Japan puts a lot of emphasis on story telling and character design and it would be "out of character" to give the player the good/evil/nice/asshole dialog options. Giving the player the option to kill every NPC in a town would break the game. JRPGs at most included some dating sim dialog choices and maybe alternate endings.

tl;dr

People have debating this since the dawn of the internet. Do you emphasize the "RP" or the "G"? in RPG?