Quote from: The_Shadow;706983Tabletop RPGs is perfectly fine. So our little hobby got overtaken by technology and video games appropriated its name as well as many gameplay concepts. Boo hoo.

Look upon the comedic disaster that was Leeroy Jenkins and tell me that you have not seen that kind of behavior in a Tabletop RPG. Quite the theft of gameplay concepts there.

Quote from: Arduin;706872I went flower picking today and shot 6 quail.  Flower picking also means hunting with shot guns.  

Every other week I log onto BGG/RPGG I bump into this.

Some of these are of course not directly related to the current argument.

"I can play pretend with Arkham Horror. That makes it an RPG!"
"Dungeon! Has a... a dungeon and...characters, and you kill stuff! It is an RPG!"
"In Sorcery! you play a character and go on an adventure by reading paragraphs. It is an RPG!" (And they moved it to the RPG section.)

or

This game has expansion books. It is collectible!
Or my personal favorite. "I added this new game to my collection. It is therefore a collectible game!"

etc ad nausium. Except in some cases it devolves into. "I went shooting quail but imagined it was about flower picking. Shooting quail IS flower picking!"

eh. Such is. Terms and even interest groups get co-opted regularly. People mis-use a term and if enough people misude it. It sticks.

We might as well keep with being referred to as RPGs as it still applies even if it has been massively co-opted.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;706893I'm pretty the answer would either be

a: something terrorists shoot at vehicles

or

b: something geeks do

hah! My dad was in the military and whenever he mentions an RPG (which is not often) I have to pause and then go... "oh... yeah... weapon..."
I am sure he does the same thing when I talk about RPG design... "oh... yeah... game..."

Same thing when hes talking about working on a chopper. He was a helicopter combat engineer AND he builds motorcycles. So I have to think of the context of the current conversation.

Quote from: The Traveller;706903Seriously though, this argument is long over. The world and its dog defines RPGs in terms of computer games. We need a better name for the hobby, and everyone will benefit by it. Nobody loses. It's not really a surprise to me that people might dispute the fact on the gin-soaked intarwebs, but equally it doesn't bother me in the same way that it didn't bother Galileo that people were arguing about heliocentrism.

This needs to happen.

Problem is. Unlike Galileo. A new term for TTRPGs will just get promptly co-opted by those wanting to cash in on product confusion. Within a year wed be right back to square one. Hence why I believe that the better option is to get a better term for the JRPGs CRPGs etc and get it to stick.

Not going to happen. But well. We can discuss ideas for changing them. Or your ideas for changing us. Both have valid approaches.

Quote from: Omega;707018hah! My dad was in the military and whenever he mentions an RPG (which is not often) I have to pause and then go... "oh... yeah... weapon..."
I am sure he does the same thing when I talk about RPG design... "oh... yeah... game..."

Same thing when hes talking about working on a chopper. He was a helicopter combat engineer AND he builds motorcycles. So I have to think of the context of the current conversation.

I was a Blackhawk crewchief.  A chopper is a motorcycle, not an aircraft

Quote from: Omega;707019Problem is. Unlike Galileo. A new term for TTRPGs will just get promptly co-opted by those wanting to cash in on product confusion. Within a year wed be right back to square one.

You know, I don't think so. Not any more. Back in the 70s, even into the early 80s, there wasn't much of a difference in size between the tabletop and computer games industries.

These days other industries just don't care. For example nobody has yet tried to co-opt "storygames".

Quote from: Sacrosanct;707020I was a Blackhawk crewchief.  A chopper is a motorcycle, not an aircraft

Whirlybird was so much cooler though... :cool:

Quote from: The Traveller;707026You know, I don't think so. Not any more. Back in the 70s, even into the early 80s, there wasn't much of a difference in size between the tabletop and computer games industries.

These days other industries just don't care. For example nobody has yet tried to co-opt "storygames".

Its not so much the big companies that one would have to worry about. Its the plethora of little ones. Square was small when they first started referring to their games as RPGs. So were others at the time and after. Same with the MMO term. Its not the big companies calling their MSO's MMOs. It is the little developers. (With one or two exceptions of course.) In fact MMO has been co-opted a fair bit if you travel the right circles.

If storygames/Storytelling get more popular then sooner or later we might see it. Depending on which you mean. Storygame is also used to refer to pick your path books. So is storytelling. And yes it can get a little confusing as to who means what.

Hilariously I've seen one or two refer to TTRPGs as MMOs... Though not yet on an actual product. Fans and players can slap the damnest tags on things.

Quote from: Omega;707029Its not so much the big companies that one would have to worry about. Its the plethora of little ones. Square was small when they first started referring to their games as RPGs. So were others at the time and after. Same with the MMO term. Its not the big companies calling their MSO's MMOs. It is the little developers. (With one or two exceptions of course.) In fact MMO has been co-opted a fair bit if you travel the right circles.

That doesn't make the actual products any less different, which is why adopting a new name is only the first step. As I've previously said, it needs to be aggressively marketed, we need to collectively own that space. After which it will be as laughable to try and shanghai the name as it is to call a TTRPG an MMO, like social trademarking.

This is marketing 101 folks. Clearly identify your product and its unique advantages.

Again, no contest. Even if videogames could run a "living world" as well as a live GM (in my experience, they can't), tabletop has the social angle going for it.

With regards to schedule drama, even those games that do avoid it (try scheduling a WoW raid) don't really make up for the lack of face-to-face human interaction, complete with alcohol and junk food.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;706893I'm pretty the answer would either be

a: something terrorists shoot at vehicles

When terror network first came out, folks who tried to google 'terror network rpg' or 'counter-terrorism rpg' would just get a bunch of newstories on terrorist groups and rocket propelled grenades.

Quote from: estar;706981The game that blurred the line the most was Neverwinter Nights by Bioware. It was fairly faithful to the 3.0 rules, sported a DM Mode, and extensive customization facilities.  

Nah, there's been better, for solo play. The "guns and conversation" games of the recent generation (Notably Alpha Protocol, but also Dragon Age, Mass Effect and modern Fallout) have pulled off the roleplaying aspect quite well; okay, so it's mainly evidenced through the talky sections (You could legitimately argue that their gameplay structure is choose-your-own-adventure with skill checks rather than SKILL checks), but it can be done very well.

Elona, an open-world sandbox roguelike, is also a bit of a favourite of mine. But it's one of those games where you go out and make your own fun.

There's plenty more to computer games beyond the megahits.

Quote from: Omega;707029Its not so much the big companies that one would have to worry about. Its the plethora of little ones. Square was small when they first started referring to their games as RPGs.

Square were dying at the time, and they weren't even the first in that particular subgenre (Dragon Quest / Warriors).

Quote from: The Traveller;707034This is marketing 101 folks. Clearly identify your product and its unique advantages.

Yeah, why aren't all RPG companies ran by billionaire marketing experts, who don't mind throwing it all into a bottomless money pit with no guarantee of return? Just not trying hard enough, if you ask me.

The more important question is why crpgs are more popular than ttrpgs, and I don’t think it is because of a failure to ‘aggressively market the advantages’ of a ttrpg over a crpg. Apart from anything else, such an approach has been tried, and failed. A secondary question is why have board games remained popular in the face of computer games, while ttrpgs have become marginalised.

I think the answer is that, bitter as the pill may be to swallow, crpgs and mmos offer most of what people are looking for in an rpg, in a more accessible and attractive package. You can play them from the get-go, don’t have to learn reams of rules, they look great, and (most importantly) they are immersive enough and have enough role-playing in them to satisfy most people. Now sure, there are differences, and there are things that ttrpgs do better than crpgs, it’s just that these differences are not enough of a pull, and so most people stick to playing crpgs because they prefer what they offer over the (minor) advantages in terms of flexibility, immersion and role-playing offered by a ttrpg.

Board games, have suffered much less to the rising popularity of computer games, imo, because they clearly offer something that computer games cannot. Board games are very collectible, they are a pleasure to own as objects in their own right, have lovely tactile components, are easy to play, easy to get other people to play (making them much more social), and they are not a time-sink in the way that computer games and ttrpgs tend to be. In other words, there are very real and very obvious differences between a board game and a computer game.

It’s hard to see how ttrpgs can replicate any of the success of board games - they are just not different enough to pull it off. Improving the quality of the books may help (so they become collectible things in their own right), but there will never be the same breadth and range of products as you get with board games. In any case, focusing on such things would probably just change the nature of the hobby in a way that would throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think it better to just to accept that ttrpging is an increasingly small niche of the larger role-playing hobby, and that no amount of name-changing or marketing is going to change that.

Quote from: Omega;707027Whirlybird was so much cooler though... :cool:

A whirlybird is what falls off of a maple tree in the Spring.

Quote from: estar;706979A CRPGs is a game where you play an individual character with your actions adjudicated by software.

A Tabletop RPG is a game where you play an individual character with your action adjudicated by a human referee.

A LARP is a game where you play live action as an individual character and your actions are adjudicated by a set of mutually agreed upon rules.

QFT.

Also, a "Role Playing Game" is something you do with a partner(s) involving sexual activity.  Or something Satanic.  Or maybe both.

But if we're going to distinguish whether you can or can't roleplay in a CRPG, we're going to have to also point out that there are plenty of people who don't roleplay in a TTRPG either.