Jim Leonard schrieb: > > The party aspect is indeed a strong element of RPGs. I neglected to say this > in our RPG genre description, so I'll add it now. I won't limit RPGs to > party-based games, but it should indeed be noted that *most* RPGs are > party-based. See, discussion does bring about change :-)
Well, yes ;-) I'd also like to point out that I didn't mean to criticize your system, I was originally only contemplating the general changes genres went through in the course of time. > But since all RPGs are adventures, it remains a subgenre in our system. I would still have to disagree, mostly for the same reasons as stated by Hugh and Edward. I found these two snippets at http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/a_history.html "Unfortunately, it was during this period that Crowther's marriage ended. Feeling estranged from his two daughters and wanting to be closer to them, he decided to write a program that they might enjoy: a simulation of his cave explorations that also contained elements of his fantasy roleplaying. He was intrigued by the idea of trying a computer-mediated version of the game." "Influenced by Tolkien's writing, Woods added touches such as a troll, elves, and a volcano." So yes, true, Adventure had a fantasy background and still wasn't a RPG in the sense we define them now, meaning character development and having a party. But those most likely were missing because they were too complicated for Crowther and Woods to make them work at the time. You could now argue that the adventure genre predated the RPG genre because of the limitations set by early computers, but IMHO it wouldn't do the original intentions of Adventures's creators justice. And you should also take into account that although Lebling and Blank used Adventure and D&D as inspiration for Zork, they quickly spread the themes of their adventure games to Science-Fiction and Mystery, while RPGs just about always stayed with fantasy as their home harbor. > > Moby categorizes Bard's Tale as "Adventure, 1st-Person Perspective, > > Medieval Fantasy, Role-Playing (RPG)," and Ultima IV as "Adventure, > > Top-Down, Medieval Fantasy, Role-Playing (RPG)" but IMHO both are just > > RPGs. > > But both are also adventures with a medieval fantasy theme, so I don't see > your point...? Maybe the medieval fantasy theme is integral to an RPG but not to an adventure? As I said above, there are exceptions, like Wasteland and Fallout, but give people a dragon and some castles, a party and character development and they say, it's an RPG. I think these are pretty distinctive features, even if RPGs had evolved from adventures. > So what is relevant today (as opposed to two decades ago) should influence our > system? We created the system to categorize all games from all time periods. I think that is where a problem might be. It could be next to impossible to categorize every game from 30 years of development in a way that does it justice, without losing track in a plethora of subgenres. I just clicked my way through to "A Final Unity" and came up with "Adventure, Simulation, 3rd-Person Perspective, Puzzle-Solving, Sci-Fi / Futuristic, Licensed Title" as genres. That is pretty confusing, isn't it? Perhaps it would suffice to state a title's main genres under genre (in this case Adventure and Simulation) and the rest as keywords. It would give your main genres a much more distinctive notion. Yould could then also set up a search engine for the site/the main genres that lets users choose what keywords they want to use in a search. The results could list the titles that apply to the chosen keywords. As you see, I don't really have to criticize the system you set up, anyway, ecxepting the lack of RPGs as a main genre, but only its organization. > Also, "1st-person perspective" definitely serves as a distinction -- take > Wizardry (1st) verses Fallout (3rd). Some people prefer 1st to feel more > immersed in their surroundings. I think your scope isn't big enough. The perspective might be a point of personal preference and should therefore be mentioned, but perhaps not as a subgenre. The first person perspective games that came out after the initial wave of shooters that created the FPS genre had the problem of being understood as shooters, just because of the perspective. I remember discussions about Deus Ex where people complained the lack of action "for a FPS," not recognizing the game was not meant as one. Players just took the perspective as denominator for a genre, where in reality the perspective had much earlier started to become independent from a certain style of game. Taking into account what I above said about keywords, you might include first and third person perspective as keywords, so people who do make this a decisive factor for the games they want to play can still find them. Marco ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
