If your not improving, then there's no variables. Never played an RPG where all you did was regress. Conversely, never played an RPG where you didn't progress in some way. Not sure how that would even work. Not very many RPGs have regression, but all have progression. Therefore regression isn't needed to "Make a true RPG" as the title asks. In conclusion, you can have an RPG without regression, you cant however have one without progression. So I stand by my:



Stats, representation, progression, customization, and the ability to role play.

You can take any mechanic and use it in any game. There's nothing to prevent me from taking the avatar skill > player skill mechanic and using it in a game that has nothing to do with RPGs. If I can do that, it's not unique to RPGs and therefore you can't use it to define the genre. Or, rather, you can use it, but then every game that uses that mechanic is automatically an RPG. Let's say you have a game that randomly assigns you one of 4 different base characters: a frog-man, a dog-man, a fish-man, and a hippopotaman . Each of these characters has three attributes: Speed, Jump Height, and Hold Breath. The game is a side-scrolling platformer. My abilities are rigidly determined by my character's attributes, but I doubt you'll find too many people calling it an RPG. (I'm sure it will go on your shelf beside Robot Boxer. ) Incidentally, creating a stronger connection to one of these characters isn't important. The only thing people are going to care about is whether or not it is fun to run, hop, and swim.

For starters, 'hard character distinctions' contains a lot of assumptions about specific game mechanics. For another, it's not sufficient or necessary. It is obviously a very common paradigm, of course.

Yes, it was meant to illustrate an example of a system that was based on strict character mechanics. I merely offered it as an alternative to the rotating wheel game, which is universally acknowledged to be awful. It's obviously much better because I came up with it. Despite what you might think, I place a high value on character > player; I just don't consider it the only alternative. In the case of dialogue, it's an area that ES games haven't explored with any depth. Dynamically generated responses like these do a better job enforcing playing in character because you have no choice but to sound like a [censored] if you have a low skill. The only problem with the mechanic that I described is that you already know before you even select the option that you've failed. That's why I equated it to a screen prompt. It promotes RP at the expense of gameplay.

And as I've said on numerous occasions in other threads, I'd love it if all these factors came back into play. I just don't see how a RT lockpicking mini-game is any different than RT combat. They are equivalent. You can make a mini-game that allows me to interact with a lock and still make my character's skill vastly more important than the player's skill. It's not even a particularly difficult design challenge. If the mini-game was more difficult, you wouldn't have people saying "anybody can beat it" because not anybody could. Who wants to reload a game 100 times to beat a mini-game? Sure it's possible, but those same people are doing the same thing all over the place so why pick on lockpicking? TBH I don't see why people have such a hard time with this concept since it's so obviously fixable by designing a better mini-game. I understand if people don't want to go through the process every time they pick a lock (though I personally enjoy playing thieves and picking locks) but those people can use an auto-pick. Player subversion is only a problem if it actually is a problem. If someone wants to sit down and play the mini-game over and over again with a Master lock at a skill level of 15 just to prove that with enough repetitions it can be done I think the problem is with the player, not the mechanic. With a well-designed system the player wouldn't be able to do it in under a thousand attempts.

Combat isn't 'clicking to hit someone'. It wasn't even that bad in Morrowind where character skill was more obviously a factor. I can beat enemies in Morrowind by predicting their moves and timing my movements and jumps so that they hit me much less often than they would if I just stood still clicking a button. Your comparison doesn't do justice to the facts.

As character > player and character progression exist in games that are not RPGs. And I've heard plenty of people say Diablo is not an RPG. In fact, I read your reply moments after reading another post that said exactly this. I hardly consider it one myself.

And here's where we part ways. What matters to me is my experience that I am playing a role, not what particular mechanics make that possible. If the game allows me to assume a role and make decisions that affect my character and the game world and give me the freedom to participate in that world in a way that supports that character's narrative, that's a RPG. Obviously this is where people have different opinions. In my opinion, it's not enough for a game to offer me classes and attributes and character progression. If there's no attempt to offer me the freedom to explore, the freedom to choose one course of action over another, the freedom to experience the consequences of my decisions, the freedom to try different strategies for resolving problems, it's not an RPG. It's a tactical fantasy dungeon-crawler simulation.

All this tells me is that, according to your definition, I've created an action/adventure game that offers a better RPG experience than most RPGs.

Your mistake is assuming they have to be specific mechanics. You can define a role as easily through race, gender, faction allegiance, political leanings, social status, legal status, wealth, occupation, personal history and appearance as you can through attributes. That is how we define our roles in the real world, after all.

And that's your, subjective opinion.

Agreed, and defining RPG is a subjective endeavor.

That ... doesn't even make sense. You can have a variable (say, "strength"), and then the character has an accident, and that variable gets worse. It isn't improving, but it's still a variable.


So the core of your argument is, "because I didn't expirience it, it doesn't exist"?

a game that you play a role.

The reason people hate on the newer games isn't because they are bad games, or even because they are dumbed down. It's because TES started out as something completely out of left field. It was unique, original and unlike anything on the market at the time. Daggerfall capitalised on the niche that Arena carved and Morrowind used the new technology to it's advantage.

Oblivion was a great game, better than most, but it moved closer to everything else on the market and Skyrim in some ways also lost some of the uniqueness of TES games. Think of how you would feel if Grand Theft Auto added in depth stories or micromanaged progression, or if Age of Empires added perks or open world questing.
It just wouldn't feel right, Tes started out as something so unique that the fact it was an Elder Scrolls game was description enough, now instead of attempting to capitalise on the audience it reached with Morrowind and Oblivion and make it's own market (which I believe it could have) TES is trying to become more like every other game to reach a larger audience.

You're suggesting that an RPG platformer is not possible?

You've just set up a game with different classes that determine your success in traversing the environment. Level design is branching, with multiple paths towards completing your objective. You can leap from structure to structure, outrun enemies, swim past obstacles, etc with greater or lesser degrees of efficacy depending on the class you've chosen. Fundamentally, how this any different than Deus Ex? I mean, there's some obvious perspective differences, but that's not what made Deus Ex an RPG. The stat system made Deus Ex an RPG.

I can't look at what you've written and interpret it as anything more than, "This game can't be an RPG because of technological limitations."

Also, when did I say character identification is unimportant? It's absolutely important if you're trying to create a believable world and narrative that's interactive and has meaningful choices and consequences. Of course, those things are entirely separate from what constitutes an RPG.
Not really. It assumes there are different types of characters. It assumes that each type can do something another can't. I don't see how that's assuming much.
I think framing this argument in this way is also missing the point. People aren't upset with the lockpicking minigame because it's a minigame, they're upset precisely because it removes character skill from the equation. Saying, "Well, it doesn't have to," is irrelevant because it does. And Beth didn't just invalidate character skill once, they did it multiple times. Oblivion and Skyrim being the most apparent, but even Fallout 3 leaves a lot to be desired (mostly due to hard lock tiers instead of a full spectrum of difficulty).

If there was truly a system implemented where character skill was important, you'd have no where near the level of complaints that exist now.
Right, and infiltrating secure areas isn't just picking a lock. It's sneaking up to a door, making sure any hostiles in the area are unaware, picking the lock, removing the contents of the container or entering the newly unlocked zone, and finally extricating yourself. It's silly to compare all of combat (from dodges, to quick strikes, to power strikes, to blocks, to debuff spells, to buff spells, to summons, etc) to a singular action like lockpicking that is itself one step in a grander feat.

That's my point. It isn't lockpicking versus combat, it's lockpicking versus sword swinging. They are both singular tools that only serve to realize a broader action (that being infiltration or combat).
Name some of these non-RPGs that have clearly defined character distinctions. Progression alone is not enough. There need to be distinctions. If the character simply gets better at everything over time then there's no difference between characters, only a difference in progress.

Please explain how Diablo is not an RPG. Preferably without using the same arguments you're apparently disputing in regard to TES.
A game allowing you to assume a role is not an RPG. You can "assume a role" in anything. An RPG forces you to choose a role and it compels you to abide by that role. If you attempt to play outside of that role you are penalized. If you are not penalized through failure when you act outside your role, you aren't playing one. You're simply playing some dude who arbitrarily decides to do/not do things. That's your character's personality (something that is rarely ever stat driven and almost always up to the player).

For example, let's say you're playing a character who's deathly afraid of iron. He hates it's sheen, the texture, it's weight. You can say that since this character has an iron-phobia you'll never use iron weapons. But that's only pretend. You could play the same role in a first person shooter and make up some reason for your character hating pistols. If at any time you decided to equip your character with an iron weapon, nothing would happen. He'd be just as effective as if he were using an elven weapon (barring any obvious stat differences between the weapons). Now, if the game actually recognized this phobia, say as a selectable trait at character creation, it could then impose a penalty on the character when using iron weapons. This could range from drastically lowered effectiveness (less damage, slower, more easily staggered, etc) to outright inability to equip.

If you have total freedom in how your character plays at all times, then your role is meaningless. Or to be more accurate, your role does not actually exist.
No, it simply offers a better gaming experience. This seems to speak more to your idea that other genres can never offer depth surpassing that of an RPG. If one does, you simply reclassify that game as an RPG despite there existing none of the mechanics required. Is Farcry 2 an RPG? Is STALKER? You're conflating depth and choice and engaging narrative with the essential structure of an RPG, but they aren't. Certainly they go hand in hand with the experience most RPGs are aiming for, but it is hardly a requirement.
Um, you just described classes. Attributes are just one way of defining character distinctions. I've never claimed it's the only way, or that other methods necessarily result in a shallower RPG.

I'm putting my definition here and I am not going to extend/change my definition just because someone's beloved game doesn't fit in it, even if that someone is me and the game is my beloved game. And my definition is not narrow, it supports your CoD game.

And I agree with you, maybe I looked like I didn't. I share your views on the apparent system influence which I think it is not needed for a definition. I even recursively proved it with the forum game bit! Yes, there are no sacred cow mechanics. But there are some sacred cows to RP and any RP game should show respect to those, player agency and character/setting interaction.

Hey, I remember that from somewhere! Hi, Gizmo!

I came up with a new pickpocketing mini-game because I read the role of dice is not welcomed by players in a thread. And I agreed with them! The problem is you can just try again and again to win and you can even win in your first attempt, this is true for any degree of luck. Here is my pickpocketing minigame:

Why is skill designed as a mechanic of luck? This is not right. Luck should be separate. Skill should be about efficiency. That's why I use time.

---

http://i.imgur.com/j1yTn.png

I argue that any game that the player is on the right side, in any way but consistently and throughly, is an RPG. Author and actor are excluded.

Author is excluded because then it would be the writer. You gotta share some of it. Actor is excluded because he shares too much and loses all agency. This can work the other way too. A GM can robe you from your agency. It is called: Railroading. The funky thing is almost all computer games do this. At least a GM would do it briefly, out of necessity and before the players can understand.

Even open world games see railroading. You go that way and disproportionately harder enemies guard all the roads. And sometimes that game would have level scaling and you would be railroaded through content instead of space. Equally bad.

Pfft... Hates iron? What if I roleplay someone who is afraid of spiders but then he comes over his fear.

There is something called character development. I don't understand this as progression of my strength but actual character development: turning from a jerk to a good guy. From a Stormcloak to a Forsworn.

http://i.imgur.com/j1yTn.png

You start as an author(character creation), then go on as an actor/audience... Then you demand the director to punish you for improve-ing. But I would still call it RP. I personally would never drop my authorship because I want to experience the character development part, the improvisation is the most important part for me. I would not want it to be consequence free but I would not give away my freedom either.

Role playing, not role playing game. This is the distinction that you're not making. The former is pretend and is possible in anything. The latter is only possible through the mechanics compelling certain behavior. If you want the option to overcome certain fears, then implement it as a mechanic. Things like an adrenalin rush that temporarily subdues the ill effect of your character's fear. Through a specific quest or through frequent contact with your character's phobia may alleviate some of your problems. In game psychologists, functioning much like a trainer or blessing, might be contacted for services.

You're also making the mistake of thinking there needs to be ultimate freedom. That may be the ultimate goal and logical evolution of the RPG genre, but it's wholly impractical and would mean that all RPGs currently available are not actually RPGs. If something like phobias were implemented and you were unable to overcome them, that's simply a limitation of the medium, not an indication that the game is not or less of an RPG. In the same sense, I cannot be a farmer or a king or a beggar in Skyrim. That doesn't mean Skyrim isn't an RPG. SImply that time/budget constraints will necessarily limit the player to a certain number of roles. Ideally, in a game like TES, there would be many character types. But it's still very possible to create an RPG with a small selection of classes.

Any game can be turned into an RPG by adding more RPG 'elements'. The more you have, the more likely people are going to classify it as an RPG. I never said that a platformer couldn't be an RPG. I said that a game that only has one or two of the elements that you consider essential to defining the genre wouldn't be considered an RPG just because it had those elements. If I bought Robot Boxer and Hippopotaman because the box said 'RPG' I'd be sorely disappointed. As would 95% of the other people who bought them. (Well, actually, they'd still be satisfied because I'm currently RPing an internet character with mad game design skillz. )

If you can design a game using those elements and it isn't an RPG, then you can't say that those elements define the genre. You can say that they are the most ubiquitous elements, but you can't claim that they are adequate for a definition. You might make a good case arguing that even if those elements aren't sufficient, and they can be found in other games, they're necessary for a game to be an RPG, and that any game that had those elements as well as several other supporting elements would be an RPG but I don't even buy that. I think you could design a game that most people would consider an RPG that didn't have those elements. It wouldn't be easy, but it could be done. My point is just that RPGs aren't defined by specific mechanics, but by how the mechanics that have been implemented support the player's intention to play a RPG.

I didn't say you did. I said in the case of a game like Hippopotaman it wasn't. Just as it isn't in Pacman. There's no essential connection between an avatar that has characteristics that overrule player input and a "character" in an RPG, which is a much more complex game entity.

The concept of an 'RPG character' is fairly complex. An avatar, like Pacman, isn't a character in the same way that an avatar in a RPG is a character. Even if there are different types of characters to choose from, as in a fighting game like Tekken, these characters are not RPG characters if the only other game mechanics are match fighting. Different units in RTS games each do something that other units can't, or have statistical variances. Team Fortress has classes, but that doesn't make them RPG characters. Having avatars with different strengths and weaknesses is common to many genres.

It doesn't remove character skill from the equation, it mutes it. I've already indicated that I think it's unsatisfactory and that it should be fixed. People who say that your skill and perks have no impact on your chance of success are ignoring facts in order to promote their preferences. The mini-game can easily be fixed to make character skill have a greater impact on your chance of success than player skill, or at least make it as important as it is in combat. Arguing otherwise is just being intentionally obtuse. That's not to say that people aren't allowed to have a preference, and prefer a strict character-based chance with no player input at all, only that the argument "it removes character skill from the equation" is patently false and indefensible as an argument.


Swinging a sword requires aim and does damage. One is player-controlled, the other character-controlled. Why should picking a lock be held accountable to a different standard? If your character's skill determined the size of the arc, the number of tumblers, the chance of your pick breaking, etc., I don't see how that is in any way being less determined by the character than combat. A successful RT lockpicking mini-game is just a feasible (and a lot easier to implement) than RT combat. Why are players who hate having a player element interfere with their chance of success playing the Elder Scrolls? They've always been action-RPG hybrids and reflexes have always been important to your chance of success. If the lockpicking mini-game was a lot more challenging, there'd be a lot fewer people complaining about it.

Diablo is not intended to be anything more than a dungeon-crawler. You pick a class, that class gains experience and progresses, you explore dungeons and collect loot, and that's where the relationship ends. It's just a really sophisticated version of Pacman. Aside from the RT action element, it's no different from a board game. If the only criteria you use to classify a game are mechanics, and you define genres by their most common elements, then, yes, it's an RPG. That doesn't mean it supports RP, which is a special kind of activity separate from game mechanics. All of these arguments are based on two different kinds of people: people who want to define a game based on its mechanics and people who want to define a game based on the kind of gameplay that those mechanics actually support.

Let me fix that for you: "An action game forces you to choose a role and compels you to abide by that role. If you attempt to play outside of that role you are penalized. If you are not penalized through failure when you act outside your role, you aren't playing one." Congratulations, you've just described characters in an action game. Role-playing is only possible if its possible to act in different ways. If your 'role' forces you to act the same way every time, it's not a RPG because there's no choice involved.

Your example is just another caricature. The fact that you can RP in any game is irrelevant. I don't recall making any elaborate arguments in favor of games that don't have consequences. RPGs are games designed specifically to support RP. If you RP a character that has an iron-phobia in a shooter, your intention is not going to be supported by the gameplay. That's why you don't call it an RPG. That's pretty much my definition: if the game doesn't support RP by providing consequences for your decisions, then it's not a RPG. An RPG is a game that supports your intentions. Support means that those decisions have consequence. That's what makes them real and maintains the illusion that you are, indeed, playing a role.

That's why, if you're playing a game and choosing one faction over another causes the other faction to retaliate, you've used a RP mechanic to support your intention to RP. Your decision had consequences. If you just make up a faction in your head and pretend that it exists, that doesn't have any consequences. Because it has no consequences, it will not support your intention. These 'pretendings' can be useful supplements to RP (for example, by allowing you to create a back-story for your character), but they will never serve as a substitute for real mechanics. People don't RP in action games because those games don't have any mechanics in place to support their decisions.

Incidentally, freedom and consequence are not opposing forces. They are complementary. If you don't have any freedom to choose a course of action, there are no consequences. Consequences arise from player choice. Having total freedom over how your character acts is the only way to implement total consequence. No freedom = no consequence. In action games, you don't have any choices. Consequently, none of your actions have any consequence for your character. The only 'choice' you get to make is whether to shoot the bad guys.

Just as all you've done is reclassified games that are obviously not RPGs (Robot Boxer, Hippopotaman) to fit your theory. Only you've done it based on mechanics. In my opinion, character > player and character progression are not sufficient or necessary for defining an RPG. You need a lot of different elements to create a game that supports a player's intention to RP. Any game that imposes consequences for player choices does that regardless of whether or not the success of taking certain actions is player-based or character-based. If choosing to join a faction changes the options available to a player, the locations that they visit, the compensations that they receive, the NPCs that they form relationships with, and the outcome of the narrative, you have to do some pretty fancy rhetorical sleight of hand to reclassify that experience as a non-RP experience. You have to say ridiculous things like: "Role-playing games are not about role-playing." It's not hard to see why there's so much confusion on the subject.

So your political leanings are a class? How do they define your chance of succeeding at picking a lock? Do you get a bonus to your strength for choosing one over the other? That's just nonsense. You can change your political leanings at any time. It's nothing like an attribute or a class. In a game that has been designed to give that choice meaningful consequence, however, you've created a RP mechanic that has nothing to do with character skill or progression. It's entirely dependent on player choice. Who cares if my ability to hit a target is based on my manual dexterity as a player if by choosing to join the slymarians I end up being a freedom fighter on Globula 9? How is my running speed more important than my decision to hook up with a Globulan prosttute and get dragged into the middle of a gang war in the streets of slymaristan? Combat statistics are details that can be used to enhance or detract from the RPG experience, but they don't define it. All things being considered, I would rather have the attributes, skills, specializations, and all the other trappings of traditional RPGs because they enhance the experience. To argue that the enhancements are the core of the experience just seems like mistaking the means for the ends.

See. I don't have anything to argue about in this post. The mistake you're making is assuming that when people say role-playing they mean 'pretending'. That's not what I mean at all. A game that supports role-playing is a game that provides the player with a large number of mechanics that support a wide range of decisions. If I choose to join a faction, that decision should have consequences. If it doesn't, then the game hasn't supported my intention. That's a RP mechanic that has nothing to do with statistics and depends entirely on player choice.

Back then maybe we didn't have the resources so we could only create RPG-likes. But it has been a very long time, we should move closer to our ideals. And no, I certainly can't roleplay in any game. And I don't think we need a rule for everything.

My character with arachnophobia is on an adventure with his new wife. We enter a cave and suddenly it is a dead-end. And what's that? There is a spider between us and exit. My wife rushes to the spider, she doesn't know and she can't win without my help.

No mechanics to regulate arachnophobia. "Hey, GM: Roll the dice, I am overcoming my arachnophobia." There is no GM. What now? The conflict is there. I can decide for my own character, this moment of truth is an opportunity for character development. He overcomes his fears to save his wife.

Well, I can't find many games that can support this act. See, not everything needs a mechanic or a label. But it would be nice to have it because then the wife could be the one with arachnophobia.

No, I am not saying that. I say if ultimate freedom is 100000000 and no freedom would be 0 then the game must support somewhere in between.

So I agree with you. You can still do it with minimal mechanics and limited settings... Hey?! You were the one saying otherwise!!! How did you turn it like that?

The act would not be possible if we were to go through unrealistic clunky mechanics. No mechanics actually worked for our favor here. The limitations aren't always good because they are often very unrealistic. And we need more freedom anyway. And I would give ultimate freedom of characterization to my players, I would only regulate the physical nature of things in my game. What's needed is the AI and world must reflect to the actions:

"Hey, why didn't you help me back there?" would be enough of a mechanic to support this act. And similar simple mechanisms which are open to interpretation. Interpretation is the key for improvisation. The fun is in the spontaneity.

With enough of these simple mechanics, the sequence of your actions would be different from someone else's because there would be consequences of your previous actions, not written but spontaneous...

Faction disposition mechanics. You can start a war between two factions by your actions outside of developer's intention. That's player agency. Not much, but it is still something.

Or sandbox mechanics like stealth or combat in an open world game.

Skyrim betrays its own once sandbox mechanics. Essentials and unpick-able locks...

Level scaling is not as bad but it is still there.

Quests often don't even bother with illusion of choice. My way or highway. Sandbox mechanics aren't applicable because quest items are not real and many other scripted events hinder the believability and limit the action window.

Quest and journal design cause roleplaying in this game to turn into a fight with a railroader GM. You lose or walk away most of the time. Sometimes you can't even lose or walk away.

The removal of disposition mechanics... The rare choice that is suppose to change the world doesn't have the consequences. Previously, every choice contributed and weighted cumulatively towards friends and foes.

My problem with Skyrim's RPGness has nothing to do with the removal of attributes or player skill based minigames/combat. It is about missed RP opportunities.

NPCs yield. That has tremendous RP potential. But Skyrim NPCs only say it, there is no mechanics to support it.

Sabotaging economy and maybe that affecting civil war indirectly... Amazing RP potential... It was supposed to be there but it is not. That could have been the redeeming quality.

So much wasted potential.

I understand this is because of the chaos. To prevent chaos, they cut freedom and mechanics. We are going backwards as a result.

I agree. Your definition would include my hypothetical game. But I don't think it's quite broad enough.

Imagine a game that offered the player a large number of choices but very little narrative structure. In Cave Man 3000 (more mad simulated game design skills ) you assume the role of a savage living in a post-apocalyptic world. You can choose to be either a hunter (who is stealthy and good with a bow), a warrior (who is big and brawny and good with a club), or a shaman (who knows how to heal any kind of wound and cure any sickness). Each of these characters has attributes and skills, levels, perks, etc. You can even choose to be from one of several different mutated races with different special abilities (infravision, water breathing, whatever). The graphics are on par with Crysis, and the world is as large as Skyrim. There are dozens of different kinds of mutated animals to fight and all kinds of items that can be crafted from materials. There is an endless series of randomly generated events like: Cattlesaurus attack! or Mysterious Nanotech Blob invasion! but there is no overarching quest/plot, no significant NPCs other than a few other cave men with limited dialogue. A player could RP in a game like this because there are enough elements to support the player's imagination and react to it over a long period of time. If he decides to go hunting, he can. If he just wants to wander aimlessly through the jungle fighting giant mutated pigeons (Wildebeaks) and waves of pre-apocalyptic Roomba hordes (Roombants), he can. If he wants to learn how to create poisons he can gather ingredients in the wilderness and brew them over a fire. He can harvest bone and sinew from animals and create new weapons and armor. As long as there are enough supported choices, the player can sustain the act of role-playing by providing his own narrative, even if there is no supplied narrative in the game and no significant characters to interact with. That's how people RP in Skyrim.

I can see where you're going with this. Player agency is certainly a requirement, but it's a requirement of every game. It has to be a specific kind of player agency. God games give players lots of agency. It has to be a type of agency that supports the formation of a unique character that is sustained over time and changed by his or her decisions. Characters know that they have changed when the world reacts differently toward them. That's probably the biggest complaint you can make about Skyrim: the world isn't reactive enough. That's also how RP is supported: if the player makes a decision (iron-phobia) and the world doesn't react differently to the character based on that, that decision hasn't been supported. If too many of the player's decisions are unsupported, they won't be able to sustain RP and they won't call the game an RPG.

I suspect that's why so many people say that Skyrim is not an RPG and label it an action game. I would still classify it as an RPG, but it's a very shallow one. The classification hinges on an abstract quality: "enough". How much support is enough? This is also where a lot of the confusion regarding "pretending" comes from. Players are pretending all the time and hoping that a lot of their pretending will be supported by the game. Sometimes they know beforehand what will be supported and what won't (they know the rules already). Sometimes they don't know and they're happy when it is, and disappointed when it isn't. You don't really know whether your pretending is efficacious until the game reacts or it fails to react when it should have. I would argue that an RPG that supports undocumented pretending is a better RPG than one where all of the supported pretendings are known beforehand. I would also use that as a criteria for judging how 'deep' or 'complex' the game is.

The only problem I have with the Audience - Actor - Author model is that it implies that narrative is far more important than other elements...even if you're not saying that. Narrative is important. Even in Cave Man 3000 much of the RP value is derived from the character's improvised internal narrative. But the narrative is only as strong as the reactivity of the world. A narrative choice has to be matched with a mechanical consequence to have meaning. Your RP intention is supported when the game world reacts appropriately to your narrative choices. If it doesn't react, it won't add anything to the narrative.

Defining an RPG for myself would be coming as close to PnP RPG as possible. That means the more ways I can deal with a situation, the more realistically the world reacts to me the better it is. That's where Skyrim fails as an RPG for me. I wouldn't say it's not and RPG because too many things have been established as an RPG at this point. All we're really debating is what we enjoy in an RPG or what we expect from an RPG. For instance in Skyrim how exactly do you roleplay when nothing responds to you or important mechanics are missing? What if want to get mostly with my wits? The woeful dialog doesn't allow for that. What if I want to be a crass barbarian? The horrific dialog and NPC reactions don't allow for that. If I play a murderous thug or a noble knightly type everyone and everything treats me the same. How do I roleplay those characters? Am I supposed to pretend the guy whose wife I killed in front of him isn't suddenly fine with me again because I paid a bounty? Or worse I collect a gem for him and now he's my best friend? Am I supposed to pretend that most dialog doesn't become anachronistic to my character's personality? In fact, how can I even play a murderous thug when all the people that would piss off my character are immortal?

There's a decided lack of true freedom in Skyrim in that type of roleplaying sense. Everything ruins immersion. Yes, I can play Hagnor the Butterfly Catcher without some wacky anachronism ruining immersion but forgive me if I don't feel like running around in a fake world catching butterflies. So for me, I need a well realized world that offers me the freedom of different personality types and reacts to me.

Arguing about an undefined term is pretty dumb. I agree with the above post, it should have some similarities to DnD - the original RPG. Be it classes, quests, skills, etc., but the essential feature is that you create and define your character. This is what I believe a video game RPG should be defined as, so deal with it.