Quote Originally Posted by Gabriel View Post
So, let's say a football game came out which allowed you to talk to the coach for tips, or maybe talk with other players on the field or in the locker room (maybe Madden already does this, I don't know). Football games are already extremely statistic driven. It's not even a stretch to say the team you play in campaign mode is your player character avatar/group. Such a game would be an RPG by your definition.
Hmm. I would say that wouldn't qualify as an RPG under my definition. Who is the player character? Generally, in a football game, you have control over the entire team during the game. So what "other players" would you talk to? The opposing team? That wouldn't really work because it would have to be at very scripted opportunities, making it not player-initiated.

A football game would only qualify as an RPG under my definition if you controlled the whole team as a group (party) in between games, and were able to move the group around in some setting and initiate dialog with whoever. Alternatively, perhaps I could envision a football game in which the player controls the coach, picking plays and such in games but not controlling the players, and you have some sort of coaching "stats" that go up by winning games (and to clarify, "stats" in the sense I am talking about, means attribute stats that actually affect the player's ability/performance in 'battle', not "stats" as in statistical records of past performances), and the player also controls the coach in between games. In that scenario, one could conceivably create a football game that qualifies as an RPG under my definition.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It wouldn't cease to be a football game... it would just also be an RPG. A "football RPG" if you will. To me, World Court Tennis totally qualifies as an RPG (albeit an unconventional one).

Wizardry would not be a RPG by your definition. Because there is no direct interaction with NPCs. (Wizardry also has problems with my storyline criteria, so that needs work too.)
I don't think Wizardry "needs" to be included as an RPG. I think it's okay to say, maybe Wizardry isn't really an RPG. If you really have to bend over backwards with all sorts of qualifiers to include something, then maybe it's better to exclude it.

Although I have to say I'm not dead set on my definition of RPG either. It's just an idea. I think it's a pretty good starting point. I'm open to modifying it... but I'm also open to simply leaving Wizardry and similar games out of the definition.

One thing to think about... Symphony of the Night is very, very similar to a dungeon crawler in many aspects. The only two big differences are that SOTN is side-view and real-time. I think disqualifying side-view and/or real-time games from the RPG definition is very problematic. To include Wizardry in my definition, you have to remove the player-initiated dialog part. But doing so (absent additional qualifications) would also make SOTN, Guardian Heroes, and a whole host of games RPGs that are, in my view, games with RPG elements. I think you have to either include SOTN or exclude Wizardry (at least I don't see a reasonable alternative to these two options). I would prefer the latter.

And actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that dungeon crawlers aren't really RPGs to me. They share similarities, but I wouldn't put them under the RPG umbrella.