Exactly. I don't mind horrible science in movies or shows where the science isn't supposed to make sense (e.g. Star Trek) or where the show doesn't take itself very seriously. "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" allows for a lot of suspension of disbelief.
I do mind horrible science in a series happening here and now, using supposed real-world science. Fringe falls into the same category as CSI: They just use science as a canvas for the equivalent of the pointless explosions in an action movie. That's nice if you don't mind mindless entertainment* but it's not so nice if the show in question was marketed (and presented itself in the first season) as being about science.
In the end Fringe shows that you can't write Star Trek-style dialogues ("Quickly! Tech the tech with the tech and then tech or we're all doomed!" - replace each instance of "tech" with something vaguely sciency) in a show set on contemporary Earth. All that does is to scare anyone away who does know that ammonium nitrate is not a neurotransmitter.
* Yes, I know that it's an Abrams series and thus has a metaplot that would make White Wolf envious. Still doesn't change the fact that the actual plot of each episode makes little to no sense as far as the science is concerned. And the first season was mostly mindless entertainment.
No, with Microsoft it's "INCOMPETENT". I won't assume that Microsoft built a mobile OS that secretly and constantly siphons data off your smartphone. I do, however, find it credible that Microsoft built a mobile OS without considering that not everyone has an unlimited data plan.
Hey, they've been dropping WinFS since what, Windows 98? It had a different name but the promised featureset was similar. And let's not forget that WinFS was also promised for Vista back when it was still called Longhorn. I seriously doubt that Windows 8 will have it. Or Windows 9.
Vista was mainly hurt by a disastrous launch. The driver issues were one problem, "Vista Capable" was another and the fact that nobody had yet figured out which parts of their applications weren't compatible between XP and Vista was a third. Plus, of course, everyone expected it to feel like five years of polish while Microsoft had restarted the whole thing from scratch halfway through. By the time SP1 rolled around Vista had a horrible reputation it could never live down.
No, it's solar and solar is automatically good. Hmm. With "solar" being automaticaly good and "reactor" being automatically bad, what would this be? Gad? Bood? Aneurysm-inducingly mind-boggling?
Yes, but do most people know that this particular subsidiary of BAE happens to be what was formerly known as Vickers? After all, I saw someone declare DEC dead even though it's just a part of Hewlett-Packard now and HP hasn't gone out of business.
Whooosh. The GP's point is based on that: Nobody who isn't interested in IT far enough to learn the history of once-important but now-dead companies knows who DEC or Wang are. DEC might have created some of the most important computer models ever but nowadays they are of no greater importance to the average person than Kreidler or Vickers-Armstrongs, two similarly once-important but now obscure companies.
If a company is not in business, expect people not to know about it. Basic history is something many people even in the field are completely unacquainted with - and many people don't think it's worth their time to learn about it because hey, those things happened in the past so they're obviously irrelevant today. It's sad that many people think like that but I don't see a way of changing it.
Unfortunately the content lobby is somehow successfully making the case that the content industry is generating more money than all other industries combined, is absolutely indispensable for modern civilization and will immediately and completely fail if copyright terms and/or punitive measures aren't immediately expanded. And this happens every couple years.
Society doesn't factor in because society doesn't have an effective lobby. No, elections don't count; those aren't short-term enough and any elected officials will see the money the make through their job as regular payment (something they're entitled to) as opposed to kickbacks (something that grabs their attention). Unless we as a society are capable of shoving a couple million $CURRENCY to the right people, few things will ever change in ways beneficial primarily to us.
Yes, I do think most developed countries are at least partial plutocracies.
From what I've read the basic idea is that wingtips create an awful lot of drag so if you don't have any wingtips you can greatly reduce drag, making the plane more efficient. The interesting thing is that this concept has held up in wind tunnel tests in the 70s and there are known flying airplanes using it but apparently nobody has been adventurous enough to implement it in a commercial aircraft and bring it to market.
A SolaGen MkI should provide enough power for all resources-related operations although I'd think they'd build better replacements as soon as possible in order to build Carracks to get the material back to Earth.
The real problem is that mining can't be done without at least fifty colonists so before we try to work out mining we'll first have to worry about building an S.I.O.S. and getting it up there.
Apple revealed its new iPhone 5 to the press. The iPhone 5 will feature two new A8 processors, unlike the iPhone 4, which used a single A4 processor. Basic understanding of the DIN A norm tells us that this means the iPhone 5's processors will be much smaller, at a mere 39 square centimeters each compared to the 625 square centimeter processor of its predecessor.
The iPhone 5 will also use sixteen Qualcomm SGX543 graphics cards, seamlessly converting all running applications to multithreads. With 35 million polygons times 1 billion pixels, the SGX543 can render video and games at resolutions of 40000x25000, upstaging current Motorola devices that merely support 1080x1728. This will allow the iPhone 5 to natively support HDMI, DisplayPort and SCART display technologies.
This is Bob Bobson for the Podunk Future Tech Gazette.
The player must be able to change the main quest while playing it not just choosing which cinematic plays at the end, but instead changing the way NPCs react to him and changing the way the world is presented (closing and opening levels). Skipping levels *only* does not qualify because you can't role play with this alone in a pratical way, you need NPCs.
All of this applies to Mass Effect.
The main quest is about the reapers, your only option is to fight them and receive orders from the Illusive Man, anything else is side quest. This is just like Mario's quest to save the princess. In Fallout, you have to choose who is going to rule The Strip and work with them, your decision will affect how NPCs will react to you, which quests you will be given and which areas you can explore freely until the end of the game many hours away.
So either the end of the game has absolutely nothing to do with the main quest (which is weird as usually the end of the main quest marks the end of the game even if you get to keep playing) or who rules the Strip is not the main quest and therefore irrelevant.
I'm going to stop responding in this subthread as it's obvious that you have your definition of what constitutes a CRPG, most other people have a different definition and neither are going to change their opinion.
Just because your options are limited doesn't mean it's not as RPG, it may be simpler but it's still an RPG.
The exact same thing can be said about whether and where your actions change the plot. It may be more or less linear but it's still an RPG as far as computer games can be.
No, this does not automatically qualify Mario as Mario games usually don't have both stats and dialogue. The only Mario game I can think of where you have stats which affect anything and where the personalities of the characters have any relevance (a criterion you didn't list but which I would at least recommend) would be Super Mario RPG.
By the way, in a Mario game you may not be able to change the plot dramatically but your actions can often greatly affect the main quest by skipping part of it. If affecting the main quest is your criterion then Mario qualifies. If affecting the story is your criterion then Mass Effect qualifies, even if all you affect is the outro; that's still part of the story. Of course you can construct criteria like "affecting the story except if it's very close to the end of the game" but that sounds rather constructed.
Those are two different games and the main quest about the reapers is not affected.
It depends on whether you see the games as atomic or as an ongoing story. In the former case, yes, the main quest is not affected. In the latter case, no, the narrative is affected, even though you still end up doing the same things.
If the game designer gives enough reasonable choices to the player, then it's possible to role play. It's not like you can do *anything* in pen and paper either, I know there are exceptions to the rule, but the usual way of role playing involves a set of mechanics that can be implemented in today's CRPGs, I think Fallout New Vegas is a step in the right direction.
The exceptions ARE the rule. The usual way of role playing involves a GM capable of responding to anything the players do, even if it involves completely abandoning the main quest. The players won't proceed to what the GM intended to be the main quest but that's because the group decided that the main quest wasn't interesting so now the GM will serve up a different main quest.
Also, CRPGs barely allow you to do anything. I can't climb up a building even though I have plenty of rope and there are many protrusions I could easily lasso. I can't dissuade an NPC from following his plan by kidnapping his children and threatening them. I can't even break down the old desks that stand around everywhere in order to turn their wood into improvised torches. Maybe I can do these things if the designers foresaw them but there are a myriad things I could potentially come up with and the game would have to support all of them. Yes, even ones that involve the use of a taxidermy skill on a dead party member.
You could say that a well-written CRPG is like roleplaying with an extremely inflexible GM who is "gracious" enough to allow you to choose which railroad to go down but you still get to play his roles, not your own, and you're still extremely limited in what you can do. A CRPG that gets anywhere near what P&P offers you would need an order of magnitude more content than, say, Fallout. And even then it's railroaded.
CRPGs are always just a rough approximation of actual roleplaying. Someone else plays the role; I just have a more or less large degree of control over how they play the role at any given moment. Fallout offers a relatively large amount of control and Final Fantasy offers a fairly small amount but both are in the same league.
If we remove the player's ability to change the main story, then even Mario is an RPG. ME is just a Mario game with sophisticated graphics and poor gameplay.
As is Fallout NV. Unless it's VASTLY bigger than Fallout 3 with VASTLY bigger dialogue trees it's nowhere near P&P roleplaying and even with them it's just an approximation. Plus, my ability to affect the main story is still limited to the scenarios implemented by the designers.
Yeah, my actions allow me to choose between various pre-set ways the plot proceeds. We already had that in the Mass Effect series (one decision at the end of ME1 greatly affects the setting of ME2) and Mega Man X7 (where your actions decide whether or not a space colony dies, which is what the main plot revolves around). In fact, several Mega Man X games satisfy all of your requirements.
In the end your definition of what a CRPG is is "CRPGs are Fallout NV because I like how a certain aspect of the game was implemented". That definition may work well for you but it won't for others.
It's not really about games; the professor I write the thesis under is in the AI department and it's really about the application of various planning algorithms in novel ways in the domain of video games, which is averse to "real" AI for performance reasons.
Essentially the question I ask is "How can we make our field relevant to the gaming industry?". That is much more marketable than "How can we make cooler games?", even though the latter is what motivates me to write the paper.
Okay, in that case you might really have to change the group, sad as that is. Good luck.
(Oh, and I noticed that you distinguish between "Shadowrun" and "Shadowrun 4" instead of "Shadowrun 3 " and "Shadowrun 4". I don't know if that's intended but if it is I fully agree.)
Have you tried changing the system? Things can be a whole lot different when you're plaing something unusual. I usually play The Dark Eye (essentially the German D&D) but two completely different games I'm happy I picked up are Maid and the Sailor Moon RPG. Yes, seriously.
Maid is a Japanese RPG essentially built like a particularly weird anime series. Most characters are, well, maids, although there are limited slots for butlers and the master of the house. Instead of health you have stress, maxing that out means you have a Stress Explosion (essentially a limit break that forces you into compulsive, usually amusing behavior) and players can at any point spend points to cause a random event to happen. These can range from "it starts to rain heavily" to "nuclear war breaks out. Change the setting to 'post-apocalyptic'". Maid games tend to be fast-paced and completely insane. Plus, completely randomized character creation and a fast, fluid gameplay mean that it's a great timefiller when you just happen to have twenty minutes on your hand.
The Sailor Moon RPG is just an implementation of BESM (Big Eyes Small Mouth, an anime-themed generic system) tailored towards the series. The rules are so broad that you can build, for example, a Sailor Scout aspected towards gravity who lets her enemies implode. Or one aspected towards cancer. Or arguments. We gleefully run with this and play characters which would qualify as Chaotic Evil in D&D. And we're still the world's only hope. Poor world. Interestingly, we almost never play evil characters in "serious" RPGs but Sailor Moon just somehow dictates that we should play miscreants who completely fail at humanity. Which is exactly what the game designers didn't intend. Great for short psychotic romps if you feel like subverting the setting.
Those two should be fairly cheap, both just having a single book. Trying them out should be a rather low-risk proposition unless your group is averse to anything new. Plus, both require no dice beyond 2d6 so you don't even need to buy even more dice, unlike the next one.
Exalted. Things might also be different if you're a semi-immortal god-eating being of more power than most D&D munchkins dare to dream of. As a starting character. And every serious enemy you'll face is similarly powerful. Lots of supplements, though, since it's a White Wolf game. Then again, a well-written lore you could just eat up, since it's a White Wolf game. All subject to individual taste, of course.
There is a fair bit of serendipity involved, although it realy helps if you find the right people (which itself involves a fair bit of serendipity). One adventure I got involved in mid-game (because the party summoned a demon matching the description of an NPC character I wanted to build for something else) essentially was 8-bit Theater: The RPG. Our party's biggest asset was our brazenness, we usually solved problems by bickering in front of them and then doing something unlikely and we usually caused chaos wherever we went. At one point I won a battle by rickrolling my opponent's dance routine (combat between demons can take on weird forms). Still, that way we managed to confront several of the game universe's worst entities (think Cthulhu) and come out on top.
Awesome? Hell yeah. Just to top it off the final battle consisted of several consecutive Crowning Moments of Awesome interrupted by an improbable number of critical successes. Repeatable? I have no idea. But certainly worth the time I spend on the hobby.
Finding the right group isn't easy. The group I had that adventure with meets once or twice a year and my regular group meets once a week on IRC. Both are suboptimal but still worth it.
You might not have a role but you still have a character. Having them behave like they would behave given the situation is just the same with or without an actual story going on. Of course you could decide that "you sit in a bar, now interact a bit" constitutes a story but it's just a setting description that doesn't change what the players do other than defining their props.
Within the limitations of your character, otherwise there is no point in defining a character.
That really depends on the group. I know groups where even things like combat damage are completely roleplayed out while others are completely reliant on dice for everything. Fact is that many groups disregard skill limitations especially with the social skills, falling back on them only if the player can't deliver or if something especially difficult is attempted. Generally, those values should be important but often they're ignored if the player just delivered some damn good lines. Plus, skill values are rarely hard limits. Even someone with INT 7 can roll a critical success and come to a brilliant conclusion - even if the way he took there was probably rather unorthodox.
I agree that it's nice when the game actually makes your skills relevant to the plot but I wouldn't say that any game not doing that is not an RPG. It's indicative of a good RPG but not neccessary for RPGs in general.
Obviously, there isn't truly free roleplaying in computer games, but it's entirely possible to have a little in the form of pre-defined choices.
That's the point of contention: With predefined choices you don't play a role, you get to watch a role being played and occasionally nudge the actual player (the dialogue writer and/or game designer) in the one of several predefined directions you like most. It's the same difference as between an interactive movie and an action game: Both might involve player interaction and people getting shot at but they are very different experiences. You really have to loosen the definition of what a role playing game is in order to fit in CRPGs. Insisting on a strict set of rules after doing so does feel a bit hypocritical.
If KOTOR qualifies then ME1 qualifies as well. In KOTOR you make one decision at the end which changes how the ending looks (light side or dark side). In ME1 you make one decision at the end which changes how the ending goes (council lives or council dies). I haven't played ME2 yet but I hear it features a similar choice.
There are many definitions of what a role playing game is, ranging from the very permissive (even Legend of Zelda qualifies) to the very restrictive (no video game qualifies because I can't do everything I could do in a pen-and-paper RPG). Most people settle on a rather liberal definition that allows both eastern-style and western-style CRPGs. I'd go with this:
- Some or all characters are unique entities.
- Characters have stats (besides health) and/or skills which decide how they perform at various tasks.
- Character stats grow and/or characters can learn new skills as the character gains experience.
- Characters can have differing equipment, which affects their performance at various tasks.
- Unique characters are actively involved with the plot to a point where their differing personalities can be recognized.
- The plot of the game can be affected by the player's actions.
Choose five or more.
Technically this might allow Mega Man Zero to be classified as an RPG but any more premissive and I think I'd exclude things generally considered to be RPGs. Then again, the definition given by GGGP might allow in some modern shooters. Defining video game gernes through abstract rules is hard.
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Exactly. I don't mind horrible science in movies or shows where the science isn't supposed to make sense (e.g. Star Trek) or where the show doesn't take itself very seriously. "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" allows for a lot of suspension of disbelief.
I do mind horrible science in a series happening here and now, using supposed real-world science. Fringe falls into the same category as CSI: They just use science as a canvas for the equivalent of the pointless explosions in an action movie. That's nice if you don't mind mindless entertainment* but it's not so nice if the show in question was marketed (and presented itself in the first season) as being about science.
In the end Fringe shows that you can't write Star Trek-style dialogues ("Quickly! Tech the tech with the tech and then tech or we're all doomed!" - replace each instance of "tech" with something vaguely sciency) in a show set on contemporary Earth. All that does is to scare anyone away who does know that ammonium nitrate is not a neurotransmitter.
* Yes, I know that it's an Abrams series and thus has a metaplot that would make White Wolf envious. Still doesn't change the fact that the actual plot of each episode makes little to no sense as far as the science is concerned. And the first season was mostly mindless entertainment.
No, with Microsoft it's "INCOMPETENT". I won't assume that Microsoft built a mobile OS that secretly and constantly siphons data off your smartphone. I do, however, find it credible that Microsoft built a mobile OS without considering that not everyone has an unlimited data plan.
Hey, they've been dropping WinFS since what, Windows 98? It had a different name but the promised featureset was similar. And let's not forget that WinFS was also promised for Vista back when it was still called Longhorn. I seriously doubt that Windows 8 will have it. Or Windows 9.
Vista was mainly hurt by a disastrous launch. The driver issues were one problem, "Vista Capable" was another and the fact that nobody had yet figured out which parts of their applications weren't compatible between XP and Vista was a third. Plus, of course, everyone expected it to feel like five years of polish while Microsoft had restarted the whole thing from scratch halfway through. By the time SP1 rolled around Vista had a horrible reputation it could never live down.
I propose .scum.
I think NASA would reject you on grounds of being Al Bundy.
No, it's solar and solar is automatically good. Hmm. With "solar" being automaticaly good and "reactor" being automatically bad, what would this be? Gad? Bood? Aneurysm-inducingly mind-boggling?
No way! I once tried to get some acetylcholine from all.com and they sent me asparagine! Never again!
Yes, but do most people know that this particular subsidiary of BAE happens to be what was formerly known as Vickers? After all, I saw someone declare DEC dead even though it's just a part of Hewlett-Packard now and HP hasn't gone out of business.
Whooosh. The GP's point is based on that: Nobody who isn't interested in IT far enough to learn the history of once-important but now-dead companies knows who DEC or Wang are. DEC might have created some of the most important computer models ever but nowadays they are of no greater importance to the average person than Kreidler or Vickers-Armstrongs, two similarly once-important but now obscure companies.
If a company is not in business, expect people not to know about it. Basic history is something many people even in the field are completely unacquainted with - and many people don't think it's worth their time to learn about it because hey, those things happened in the past so they're obviously irrelevant today. It's sad that many people think like that but I don't see a way of changing it.
Unfortunately the content lobby is somehow successfully making the case that the content industry is generating more money than all other industries combined, is absolutely indispensable for modern civilization and will immediately and completely fail if copyright terms and/or punitive measures aren't immediately expanded. And this happens every couple years.
Society doesn't factor in because society doesn't have an effective lobby. No, elections don't count; those aren't short-term enough and any elected officials will see the money the make through their job as regular payment (something they're entitled to) as opposed to kickbacks (something that grabs their attention). Unless we as a society are capable of shoving a couple million $CURRENCY to the right people, few things will ever change in ways beneficial primarily to us.
Yes, I do think most developed countries are at least partial plutocracies.
From what I've read the basic idea is that wingtips create an awful lot of drag so if you don't have any wingtips you can greatly reduce drag, making the plane more efficient. The interesting thing is that this concept has held up in wind tunnel tests in the 70s and there are known flying airplanes using it but apparently nobody has been adventurous enough to implement it in a commercial aircraft and bring it to market.
A SolaGen MkI should provide enough power for all resources-related operations although I'd think they'd build better replacements as soon as possible in order to build Carracks to get the material back to Earth.
The real problem is that mining can't be done without at least fifty colonists so before we try to work out mining we'll first have to worry about building an S.I.O.S. and getting it up there.
Apple revealed its new iPhone 5 to the press. The iPhone 5 will feature two new A8 processors, unlike the iPhone 4, which used a single A4 processor. Basic understanding of the DIN A norm tells us that this means the iPhone 5's processors will be much smaller, at a mere 39 square centimeters each compared to the 625 square centimeter processor of its predecessor.
The iPhone 5 will also use sixteen Qualcomm SGX543 graphics cards, seamlessly converting all running applications to multithreads. With 35 million polygons times 1 billion pixels, the SGX543 can render video and games at resolutions of 40000x25000, upstaging current Motorola devices that merely support 1080x1728. This will allow the iPhone 5 to natively support HDMI, DisplayPort and SCART display technologies.
This is Bob Bobson for the Podunk Future Tech Gazette.
The player must be able to change the main quest while playing it not just choosing which cinematic plays at the end, but instead changing the way NPCs react to him and changing the way the world is presented (closing and opening levels). Skipping levels *only* does not qualify because you can't role play with this alone in a pratical way, you need NPCs.
All of this applies to Mass Effect.
The main quest is about the reapers, your only option is to fight them and receive orders from the Illusive Man, anything else is side quest. This is just like Mario's quest to save the princess. In Fallout, you have to choose who is going to rule The Strip and work with them, your decision will affect how NPCs will react to you, which quests you will be given and which areas you can explore freely until the end of the game many hours away.
So either the end of the game has absolutely nothing to do with the main quest (which is weird as usually the end of the main quest marks the end of the game even if you get to keep playing) or who rules the Strip is not the main quest and therefore irrelevant.
I'm going to stop responding in this subthread as it's obvious that you have your definition of what constitutes a CRPG, most other people have a different definition and neither are going to change their opinion.
Just because your options are limited doesn't mean it's not as RPG, it may be simpler but it's still an RPG.
The exact same thing can be said about whether and where your actions change the plot. It may be more or less linear but it's still an RPG as far as computer games can be.
No, this does not automatically qualify Mario as Mario games usually don't have both stats and dialogue. The only Mario game I can think of where you have stats which affect anything and where the personalities of the characters have any relevance (a criterion you didn't list but which I would at least recommend) would be Super Mario RPG.
By the way, in a Mario game you may not be able to change the plot dramatically but your actions can often greatly affect the main quest by skipping part of it. If affecting the main quest is your criterion then Mario qualifies. If affecting the story is your criterion then Mass Effect qualifies, even if all you affect is the outro; that's still part of the story. Of course you can construct criteria like "affecting the story except if it's very close to the end of the game" but that sounds rather constructed.
Those are two different games and the main quest about the reapers is not affected.
It depends on whether you see the games as atomic or as an ongoing story. In the former case, yes, the main quest is not affected. In the latter case, no, the narrative is affected, even though you still end up doing the same things.
Yes. Since eradicating all life on Earth is more evil than killing children and torturing people, pedocide and torture are now A-okay.
If the game designer gives enough reasonable choices to the player, then it's possible to role play. It's not like you can do *anything* in pen and paper either, I know there are exceptions to the rule, but the usual way of role playing involves a set of mechanics that can be implemented in today's CRPGs, I think Fallout New Vegas is a step in the right direction.
The exceptions ARE the rule. The usual way of role playing involves a GM capable of responding to anything the players do, even if it involves completely abandoning the main quest. The players won't proceed to what the GM intended to be the main quest but that's because the group decided that the main quest wasn't interesting so now the GM will serve up a different main quest.
Also, CRPGs barely allow you to do anything. I can't climb up a building even though I have plenty of rope and there are many protrusions I could easily lasso. I can't dissuade an NPC from following his plan by kidnapping his children and threatening them. I can't even break down the old desks that stand around everywhere in order to turn their wood into improvised torches. Maybe I can do these things if the designers foresaw them but there are a myriad things I could potentially come up with and the game would have to support all of them. Yes, even ones that involve the use of a taxidermy skill on a dead party member.
You could say that a well-written CRPG is like roleplaying with an extremely inflexible GM who is "gracious" enough to allow you to choose which railroad to go down but you still get to play his roles, not your own, and you're still extremely limited in what you can do. A CRPG that gets anywhere near what P&P offers you would need an order of magnitude more content than, say, Fallout. And even then it's railroaded.
CRPGs are always just a rough approximation of actual roleplaying. Someone else plays the role; I just have a more or less large degree of control over how they play the role at any given moment. Fallout offers a relatively large amount of control and Final Fantasy offers a fairly small amount but both are in the same league.
If we remove the player's ability to change the main story, then even Mario is an RPG. ME is just a Mario game with sophisticated graphics and poor gameplay.
As is Fallout NV. Unless it's VASTLY bigger than Fallout 3 with VASTLY bigger dialogue trees it's nowhere near P&P roleplaying and even with them it's just an approximation. Plus, my ability to affect the main story is still limited to the scenarios implemented by the designers.
Yeah, my actions allow me to choose between various pre-set ways the plot proceeds. We already had that in the Mass Effect series (one decision at the end of ME1 greatly affects the setting of ME2) and Mega Man X7 (where your actions decide whether or not a space colony dies, which is what the main plot revolves around). In fact, several Mega Man X games satisfy all of your requirements.
In the end your definition of what a CRPG is is "CRPGs are Fallout NV because I like how a certain aspect of the game was implemented". That definition may work well for you but it won't for others.
It's not really about games; the professor I write the thesis under is in the AI department and it's really about the application of various planning algorithms in novel ways in the domain of video games, which is averse to "real" AI for performance reasons.
Essentially the question I ask is "How can we make our field relevant to the gaming industry?". That is much more marketable than "How can we make cooler games?", even though the latter is what motivates me to write the paper.
Okay, in that case you might really have to change the group, sad as that is. Good luck.
(Oh, and I noticed that you distinguish between "Shadowrun" and "Shadowrun 4" instead of "Shadowrun 3 " and "Shadowrun 4". I don't know if that's intended but if it is I fully agree.)
They will say that two-thirds of Web videos are using H.264, with about another 25% using Flash VP6. And they will cite encoding.com on that...
Have you tried changing the system? Things can be a whole lot different when you're plaing something unusual. I usually play The Dark Eye (essentially the German D&D) but two completely different games I'm happy I picked up are Maid and the Sailor Moon RPG. Yes, seriously.
Maid is a Japanese RPG essentially built like a particularly weird anime series. Most characters are, well, maids, although there are limited slots for butlers and the master of the house. Instead of health you have stress, maxing that out means you have a Stress Explosion (essentially a limit break that forces you into compulsive, usually amusing behavior) and players can at any point spend points to cause a random event to happen. These can range from "it starts to rain heavily" to "nuclear war breaks out. Change the setting to 'post-apocalyptic'". Maid games tend to be fast-paced and completely insane. Plus, completely randomized character creation and a fast, fluid gameplay mean that it's a great timefiller when you just happen to have twenty minutes on your hand.
The Sailor Moon RPG is just an implementation of BESM (Big Eyes Small Mouth, an anime-themed generic system) tailored towards the series. The rules are so broad that you can build, for example, a Sailor Scout aspected towards gravity who lets her enemies implode. Or one aspected towards cancer. Or arguments. We gleefully run with this and play characters which would qualify as Chaotic Evil in D&D. And we're still the world's only hope. Poor world. Interestingly, we almost never play evil characters in "serious" RPGs but Sailor Moon just somehow dictates that we should play miscreants who completely fail at humanity. Which is exactly what the game designers didn't intend. Great for short psychotic romps if you feel like subverting the setting.
Those two should be fairly cheap, both just having a single book. Trying them out should be a rather low-risk proposition unless your group is averse to anything new. Plus, both require no dice beyond 2d6 so you don't even need to buy even more dice, unlike the next one.
Exalted. Things might also be different if you're a semi-immortal god-eating being of more power than most D&D munchkins dare to dream of. As a starting character. And every serious enemy you'll face is similarly powerful. Lots of supplements, though, since it's a White Wolf game. Then again, a well-written lore you could just eat up, since it's a White Wolf game. All subject to individual taste, of course.
There is a fair bit of serendipity involved, although it realy helps if you find the right people (which itself involves a fair bit of serendipity). One adventure I got involved in mid-game (because the party summoned a demon matching the description of an NPC character I wanted to build for something else) essentially was 8-bit Theater: The RPG. Our party's biggest asset was our brazenness, we usually solved problems by bickering in front of them and then doing something unlikely and we usually caused chaos wherever we went. At one point I won a battle by rickrolling my opponent's dance routine (combat between demons can take on weird forms). Still, that way we managed to confront several of the game universe's worst entities (think Cthulhu) and come out on top.
Awesome? Hell yeah. Just to top it off the final battle consisted of several consecutive Crowning Moments of Awesome interrupted by an improbable number of critical successes. Repeatable? I have no idea. But certainly worth the time I spend on the hobby.
Finding the right group isn't easy. The group I had that adventure with meets once or twice a year and my regular group meets once a week on IRC. Both are suboptimal but still worth it.
Character customization is not a neccessary requirement of a role-playing game but it's generally liked and often considered a staple.
How do you play a role without a story?
You might not have a role but you still have a character. Having them behave like they would behave given the situation is just the same with or without an actual story going on. Of course you could decide that "you sit in a bar, now interact a bit" constitutes a story but it's just a setting description that doesn't change what the players do other than defining their props.
Within the limitations of your character, otherwise there is no point in defining a character.
That really depends on the group. I know groups where even things like combat damage are completely roleplayed out while others are completely reliant on dice for everything. Fact is that many groups disregard skill limitations especially with the social skills, falling back on them only if the player can't deliver or if something especially difficult is attempted. Generally, those values should be important but often they're ignored if the player just delivered some damn good lines. Plus, skill values are rarely hard limits. Even someone with INT 7 can roll a critical success and come to a brilliant conclusion - even if the way he took there was probably rather unorthodox.
I agree that it's nice when the game actually makes your skills relevant to the plot but I wouldn't say that any game not doing that is not an RPG. It's indicative of a good RPG but not neccessary for RPGs in general.
Obviously, there isn't truly free roleplaying in computer games, but it's entirely possible to have a little in the form of pre-defined choices.
That's the point of contention: With predefined choices you don't play a role, you get to watch a role being played and occasionally nudge the actual player (the dialogue writer and/or game designer) in the one of several predefined directions you like most. It's the same difference as between an interactive movie and an action game: Both might involve player interaction and people getting shot at but they are very different experiences. You really have to loosen the definition of what a role playing game is in order to fit in CRPGs. Insisting on a strict set of rules after doing so does feel a bit hypocritical.
If KOTOR qualifies then ME1 qualifies as well. In KOTOR you make one decision at the end which changes how the ending looks (light side or dark side). In ME1 you make one decision at the end which changes how the ending goes (council lives or council dies). I haven't played ME2 yet but I hear it features a similar choice.
There are many definitions of what a role playing game is, ranging from the very permissive (even Legend of Zelda qualifies) to the very restrictive (no video game qualifies because I can't do everything I could do in a pen-and-paper RPG). Most people settle on a rather liberal definition that allows both eastern-style and western-style CRPGs. I'd go with this:
- Some or all characters are unique entities.
- Characters have stats (besides health) and/or skills which decide how they perform at various tasks.
- Character stats grow and/or characters can learn new skills as the character gains experience.
- Characters can have differing equipment, which affects their performance at various tasks.
- Unique characters are actively involved with the plot to a point where their differing personalities can be recognized.
- The plot of the game can be affected by the player's actions.
Choose five or more.
Technically this might allow Mega Man Zero to be classified as an RPG but any more premissive and I think I'd exclude things generally considered to be RPGs. Then again, the definition given by GGGP might allow in some modern shooters. Defining video game gernes through abstract rules is hard.