I'm glad that I have a fellow believer... :foodndrink:

I thik Dragon Agess lore is pretty underrated, but it's nowhere near the sheer originality of TES.

I still think DA is pretty original (with the Templars and what-not), but still not the ES level.

I've said it several times before, but i'll say it again: Stats and character progression are the only vital features of an RPG. A lot of people think storyline, NPC interactions, etc. are vital features, but they're really not. You can have an RPG without a storyline, and you can also have an RPG without NPCs. You cannot have an RPG without stats. That's not to say things like storyline and NPC interactions don't contribute to the overall experience however.

Considering how vital stats are, a good RPG really needs a great system in place to represent the character's ability and how they progress and develop in the game. Without that, it pretty much fails as an RPG regardless of how good everything else is.


Feeling a part of the world has more to do with the open-world aspect than the RPG aspect. Bethesda have always been amazing at creating open worlds in my opinion.

I agree... Especially with the whole "Templars" and "Chantry" aspect. But, back to my original point, the Elder Scrolls universe rivals many of the fantasy universes that exist in our literature and in many cases, it may even go beyond. I think with the lore, that is a major seperation factor among the Elder Scrolls fans... Sure, any gamer can go out and pick up the game and have some fun... But the true fan understands the lore, the motives, the richness that the Elder Scrolls has to offer, and its yet-to-be-tapped potential...

The series has always been a sandbox game. To place "roleplaying" restrictions so that you can be A or B but not C unless you are also E or F is complicated.

Adding to the fact that half of the Fallout NV complains are to the effect "why I can't complete all the quests in one play though".

I will say it is not worth the effort.

I have played many pen-and-paper RPGs and it is always the open-world aspect that has been the most essential part of it. Even as the GM, for me a huge part of the fun has been not having any clue what the players are going to try to do next and trying to weave my planned adventure into the narrative of the the player actions.

You can play a pen-and-paper game without rolling any dice, without having any stats at all.

But if you take away the choices of the player to play the role of their character, going where they want and doing what they want, then you are no longer playing a role-playing game, but instead a battle simulation tabletop game with miniatures.

No video game can come close to this aspect of roleplaying, but out of all the videogames I've played, the Bethesda open world sandbox games come the closest to pen-and-paper RPGs.

I agree with this... :shrug:

I disagree. There are plenty of linear RPGs that lead you down set paths and don't allow you to go where you want or do what you want. Having such freedom is only really essential to open-world RPGs, not RPGs as a whole.

Without stats however, everything is pretty much determined by your own skill rather than your character's... so you're effectively playing as yourself rather than roleplaying as another character.

great thread and it has it all from bioware makes good games to oblivion was a great rpg
but was it as hardcoe as COD ?

As the OP pointed out role playing is mostly about character rather than skills , skills are supplementary . Your character can be evil, insane, disloyal , violent , alcohol addict or anything else but not all at the same time . Doing DB quest line and then joining the paladins is never role play IMO

Triple epic combo headshot kill! Holy [censored]! bliviongate:

I am of the belief that the term "COD" should never be mentioned on these forums... :shakehead:

Tamriel isn't a game location, it's somewhere you live



Well said

If you are talking about Action RPG videogames, yes, of course, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, there have been some rigidly structured, but very well-done games by developers like Bioware that allow the player to experience an epic story that is fully fleshed out, where the PC has a predefined role to play with some smaller choices that affect the final outcome. Neither this type of rigidly structured game, nor the more open world videogame RPGs are necessarily better than the other from an empirical perspective, but on a subjective level, some fans prefer one or the other, and some enjoy both types of games.

If you are talking about pen-and-paper RPGs, I have never heard of any linear games like what you are describing. If they do exist, personally, I don't think I would enjoy playing them. Over the past 20 years, I have played a lot of games like AD&D, GURPS, OSRIC, C.H.I.L.L., Call of Cthulu, Shadowrun, Gamma World, Doctor Who, Star Wars D20, etc., and whether playing as GM or player, there was always been that freedom to roleplay your character, going where you want and doing what you want.

Exactly... Well put... :foodndrink:

Well... yes and no. Yes - you're ultimately right, but not in the way that you appear to think you are.

Even in this, you make stats subsidiary to "the character's ability and how they progress and develop in the game." And that's as it should be, because that's really the heart of roleplaying. You're right that stats are generally necessary, but they're necessary only insofar as they serve the purpose of defining the character and representing the character's abilities and relationships with the rest of the game world. That those things exist, and more that they be variable and, to whatever degree is necessary and proper, unique, is really the key. That they generally must be represented statistically is secondary.

It's not essential to a video game, role playing requires interaction and things to flesh out the character.

i like the fact that the elder scrolls games are like sand box games. sure it might seem a little odd that im the arch mage and the grey fox at the same time but i dont want half assed artificial restrictions on what i can do.
to enforce your decisions in a meaningful way would be to drastically alter the design philosophy of these games and i wouldnt want that because i love the direction these games are going in

with pen-and-paper games, just as you can roleplay a character who has a speech impediment, or a mental disorder, even if there is no stat for that, you can roleplay a character who is mentally deficient, strong, craven, etc., even if your character sheet has none of these stats listed. I haven't played this type of game very often, but we did have a lot of fun with it. What matters is that you have a GM, some kind of a planned adventure and some characters making choices and a narrative that develops out of those choices. A GM can decide the outcomes of battles and attempted actions just as easily as a dice roll, often resulting in a more dramatic outcome.

if you take all of that away and keep only the stats and dice rolls, you are playing a tabletop battle simulator game - which could be fun; however, it's not a role-playing game.

That's kind've what I meant. Stats are necessary for defining the character, and representing their abilities and progression (how else would you achieve this without stats?). Whether the stats are visible to the player or in the background is somewhat less important.


Interaction is not required. You could have an RPG set inside a small, featureless room where you don't encounter anyone or anything. It wouldn't be much of an RPG, but it would still be one.


Pen-and-paper roleplaying is very different. If you applied that logic to video-games, you could argue that any action-adventure game can be considered an RPG.

I actually did this, I made a Bosmer thief who went through the DB and then went on the pilgramidge as an act of redemption for his past sins.

so what is the essential quality of a role playing game if it is not stats, not dice rolls and not the freedom to role play a character, "going where you want" and "doing what you want"?

Stats are essential for a roleplaying video game. Being able to go where you want and do what you want is not.

Maybe we should just agree to disagree. It's 9:20am here and I haven't slept all night, so i'm really in no mood for having a proper argument about this (as you can probably tell from my half-assed responses).

I agree!! That's what single player roleplaying games should be about. But when I accept that the devs have trouble with things like spears, I dont expect them to implement such level of complexity, yet. But your philosophy is true. Games should be like that some day.

For now I'm satisfied if Skyrim ends up to be just a little less static than it's predessecors.

Oh, and btw, going from paladin to assassin is one of the natural courses in Obl.

Do the main quest and become a paladin. Enjoy your triumph a little too much (drinking and skoomaing) until you loose all morale and discipline. You will end up in SI eventually, and the plotline here provides enough madness to erase whatever is left of your former personality and ethics. Back in Tamriel you'll be ready for the Dark Brotherhood.

This 'play' could easily happen in the first playtrough, accidentially, and if you get sick of being an assassin you may end up with the knights of the nine and save the world again. It's the old rise-fall-ressurection-drama, and Bethesda made it possible to 'experience' better than any dungeonmaster I ever knew.

LULZ, the sign of a well-considered argument.


Just like in Oblivion.

By definition, the character is the role. In any RPG, you do simply create a charater at the start, and you can start out ruthless or noble.