Over in the Mongtrav2 thread, there was mention of adventure games and rpg's and some sort of difference between them.  What would people here consider to be an adventure game?  What would the difference be between an adventure game and an rpg?  Are they just the same thing with a different focus?

To me, the difference between RPGs and adventure games are best qualified by comparing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (a RPG) to Warhammer Quest (an adventure game).

Adventure games are hybrid board games with light RPG elements, adding random elements of danger to the game. An RPG, on the other hand, is the evolution beyond the board.

Shawn Driscoll is the one who was pushing this distinction in the MgT2 thread, though I confess I only have the haziest idea what he is talking about.

So far as I can tell, he believes that immersive roleplaying with the players making decisions from an in-character perspective based on what their characters would know and feel about a situation was basically not known in the early hobby - certainly it must be a post-1977 innovation, by his reckoning, since he classes Classic Traveller as an adventure game.

Presumably he sees adventure gaming as playing a tabletop RPG (or whatever you call the genre of games that includes adventure games and RPGs in Driscollworld) with no more identification with your PC than you'd have with a pawn in chess. I don't know anyone who takes that approach to RPGs who actually stuck with the hobby for long.

I don't know what Shawn Discroll is talking about in AG versus RPGs.

What I do know is that we have SPI's Freedom in the Galaxy on one hand and West End's Star Wars the RPG on the other. Both pretty much address the same type of setting yet Freedom is considered a wargame and Star Wars the RPG is considered of course an RPG.

Or better yet why is Melee and Wizards are wargames but Fantasy Trip is a RPG?

My opinion is that what makes an RPG an RPG is focus not mechanics. A game with individual characters with different levels of abilities is a wargame if it focuses on a competition between two or more sides.  That the game progresses to some type of definite end.

RPGs in contrast are focused on players interacting with a setting as their characters with the action adjudicated by a human referee. It typically but not always organized as a campaign with interlinked session with some type of character progression.

So you can't look at a rulebook and just say it is a wargame, RPGs, (storygame, etc). You have to look at what you are meant to do with it. What does the author say the ultimate purpose of this set of rules.

People make arbitrary bullshit distinctions all the time.

"Role playing game" is a term somebody pulled out of his ass in 1976 and we all said "sounds good."

There never was a precise taxonomic analysis.

I see "Adventure Game" mostly used to sell an RPG to a wider non-RPG audience, given that the term "Roleplaying Game" is often associated with computer games these days. Its purely for marketing and there is no real distinction.

Examples include Mistborn, Lone Wolf and Pokémon Jr.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;875560People make arbitrary bullshit distinctions all the time.

"Role playing game" is a term somebody pulled out of his ass in 1976 and we all said "sounds good."

There never was a precise taxonomic analysis.

Which is funny - because it might also be a sub-culture reference based on where you're from. In the 70's and even today, when I was living in LA, if you said "role-playing" it meant kinky role-play... I still get that occasionally when adults ask me "what is roleplaying - is it that stuff where your wife pretends to be a cop or a nurse or something?"

Next time that happens, I'm going say "No, that's Adventure Gaming."

And of course in a videogame context just about anything with a plot and an identifiable main character is referred to as an adventure game these days, regardless of how unlike the old text adventures or point-and-click adventures it is.

It's a near-meaningless term by this point, applied to so many things that have nothing in common beyond being games with which some manner of adventure is associated.

In board gaming circles an Adventure game usually has a board of some sort and usually more rigid and focused rules and scope. Dungeoncrawling devoid, or darn close to, of role playing would be the best example. Melee/Wizard, Warhammer Quest, HeroQuest, Arkham Horror and Descent come to mind. Solo Gamebooks fall into this as well.

But there are board games that drift more and more into actual RPGs.

And some publishers will of course label something as an RPG when it obviously is not. Looking at you Games Workshop!

Quote from: Warthur;875569And of course in a videogame context just about anything with a plot and an identifiable main character is referred to as an adventure game these days, regardless of how unlike the old text adventures or point-and-click adventures it is.

I'm out of the loop. I thought they were still calling them 'RPGs'.

Quote from: Omega;875575And some publishers will of course label something as an RPG when it obviously is not. Looking at you Games Workshop!

Just curious, which game(s) did they do that with?

Quote from: Simlasa;875577Just curious, which game(s) did they do that with?

Space Hulk the board game. Says RPG on the original version. Reprints dropped it.

Divisive bullshit. Nerds trying to pass themselves off as smarter than other nerds by dint of their superior taste in elfgames. No difference from Pundit's anti-storygame tirades, or John Wick's Tomb of Horrors screed.

There might be something to the distinction, but it's up to SD to define his terms. Note there's a difference between whether a distinction is conceptually meaningful or rigorous, and whether it uses accessible terminology. Or here, "not an RPG" can be perfectly meaningful and useful if you define your terms, but still piss people off. Sometimes that's the point--but sometimes not.

Anyway, IIRC "adventure gaming" is what Weseley wanted to call the hobby such as it was in the Braunstein/Ananab/Blackmoor/Greyhawk days, but RPG is what stuck.

Also, as suggested by some of the comments above, Adventure was an early text-based computer game that spawned a genre, which cross-pollinated with TTRPGs. Not sure when "RPG" or "CRPG" started being used for some computer games--was Apshai called that?

I reiterate what I said before on the matter, having been the initial person in conflict with Shawn: this was a straw man argument with no root to it beyond condescension.

The point being initially argued against was the introduction of boon/bane dice in the Traveller 2nd edition, which I suggested was a vague ruling. His response was then to suggest, in a convoluted and condescending fashion, that I didn't understand what 'real' roleplaying was.

Figure that one out for yourselves.

For me, the only real distinction between RPGs, outside of obvious things like genre and system, is between immersive games (where long term campaigns become possible) and novelty games (essentially, one shots). However, I'm not trying to be an authority on these matters.

Quote from: Arminius;875596Also, as suggested by some of the comments above, Adventure was an early text-based computer game that spawned a genre, which cross-pollinated with TTRPGs. Not sure when "RPG" or "CRPG" started being used for some computer games--was Apshai called that?

Chris Crawford in The Art of Computer Game Design (1982) gave a taxonomy of computer games, distinguishing "adventure games" (descended from the text based games you mention) and "D&D games" (more combat oriented and inspired by D&D) and then describes the "merging of these two genres into a new class of games, the fantasy role-playing ("FRP") games". (He mentions Temple of Apshai as a "D&D game".)

:confused: