ah yes, well you do "kind of" choose who you are in planescape, it's kind of like skyrim, he's a blank slate (almost), and then who you are is governed by your actions. It's be backwards version of choosing character and choosing path based on character. It's more like you choose your path, which then chooses your character.



Stats are there to simulate what you can't do yourself, like your example of being an stronger character, it is also there to simulate growth. Anyways, roleplaying does not depend on stats, but of course your gonna be hardpressed roleplaying something supernatural, without them. The closest thing to a no stat roleplay of a super strong man, would be with the traits that aren't quantified, like instead of saying strength (0-100) you just have the tag of "Strong", and then this singular tag effects something. Think of it like the cards in magic the gathering, some have Reach, and it can block creatures with flying. Of course any videogame needs stats. In most LARPs there also is gamemasters, who make sure people are governed by the rules, it's pretty much like being in a fluid theatrical play, people have only been given their character an a mission, and they must make up the lines themselves. If someone has a special property, he must have it communicated to other he meet, before they can act accordingly, like a sign or something.



True, without stats, or at least, without traits and stats, your characters abilities are dependent on the player, and therefore also limited by the player. This is why you probably wont see that many fantasy roleplays without some form of tags or stats. Of course, I know that some people play Werewolf, on this forum, probably in the community section, which is a roleplaying game of finding out which of the character who is a werewolf, while the werewolf must try to lead them astray long enough to kill them all one by one. There isn't much stat involved in this, because all of the acting is done through speech, when they kill someone, it's just the majority vote, and he is executed, but I guess the "vote" is a kind of stat.

Anyways, Roleplaying can be done without stats, but it's not necessarily better without.

this topic really shouldnt have made it past the first, TES is pretty much both an AA and RPG

Warning. Big, boring, self-promoting old-geezer post follows...


First off you should probably show some respect to a related form of roleplaying. At least they are players who interact with other human beings rather than spend hundreds of hours playing 'make-believe' by themselves in front of a screen. We are all nerds in our own sweet way.

Secondly in the English language a game is "a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance against an opponent or opponents who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusemant or for that of spectators." By that definition what I described previously is perfectly valid to be described as a game, even if many or all of the rules are hidden from player awareness. Since the activity also demands roleplaying it certainly fulfils the technical requirements of a roleplaying game, which is why we have so many different forms of RPG today.

I've played RPGs for well over 30 years now and I've been lucky enough to have been present at the birth of our hobby in all its variant manifestations. I started out with D&D in the late 70's and quickly diversified into many other P&P rpgs as they were published. I was able to attend Essix Uni in the early eighties as a work experience placement and got to play this incredibly wonderful game called MUD, personally taught and guided by its developers. This totally spoiled me, at least at first, to the eventual emergence of computer gaming, which didn't even exist at that time as I'd only just gotten one of the first available zx81 self assembly kits through the post.

When the Fighting Fantasy books came out I snapped them up too. By 83 I was LARPing, as Treasure Trap had started up at Peckforton Castle, a mind-blowing experience at the time. Once enrolled at City of London Poly my larping continued down at Chislehurst Caves and also with a great group in the west of England called Mythlore. Meanwhile I clogged up the mainframes playing Nethack, although on quiet weekends I continued playing P&P RPGs, a pastime I never gave up.

Once I began work my tastes continued to diversify. I have indeed attended story-telling conventions and was once well regarded for spinning a tale or two myself. At RPG cons I even participated in free-forms despite their lack of mechanics, enjoying the range of competitiveness to method acting they drew from the participants. I still didn't stop P&P and cRPGs however. So more than 3 decades later I write RPGs for a living and was once even offered a job with BGS by Ken Rolston, because of my roleplaying ability.

Thus I think I have an in-depth view of the entire hobby, with firm knowledge of what an RPG is and what it requires.

During my life I have seen a great number of changes. Foremost amongst them is a move from the original mathematical complexity of glorified Wargame rules to the very streamlined and easy to use systems that an increasing number of people use today. This is true across all versions of the hobby. P&P reached its stat/mechanics complexity peak with FGU's Aftermath and today we have games such as Savage Worlds. LARPS began with trying to emulate D&D, requiring Refs to travel about with the party to keep note of hit points and potions, whereas nowadays we have one-hit-and-you're-down combat systems or paper-scissor-stone resolution mechanics which need no 3rd party to supervise. cRPGs have followed the same trends, with literal ports of D&D or RQ into the game code requiring the player to micromanage his characters... but now we have a more hands-off naturalistic approach, even to the point of how the player is informed about his declining health with visual signals rather than numbers.

Now throughout this gradual evolution, characteristics, skills and attributes have indeed been part of most games, primarily because they grew out of the Wargaming hobby and not Cop 'n' Robbers. It is also noticeable that generally (most) players have (slowly) evolved away from Gamers trying to manipulate their stats to tactically 'beat' the scenario to Roleplayers who try and adopt a different personality or mindset for the setting. The trouble is, is that the more stats and detail you have to handle as a player, the less immersed you normally get into the game. Some of the greatest in-game RPG experiences I've ever had the privilege to enjoy have been when I didn't whip out a card, roll a dice or refer to my skill menu for an entire session. I didn't need to, because I was roleplaying, caught up in the interaction and consequences of my deeds. Thus despite the persistence of some complex games like D&D/Pathfinder, most RPG systems out there are gradually simplifying to the level of games like HeroQuest or even more extreme, pure storytelling systems.

So from my grizzled perspective I understand why people cling to stats as being a fundamental part of RPGs. Some players dislike the concept that they are purely in the hands of the GM with no rules or quotable attributes to fall back on; even though in reality a good GM twists, bends or ignores rules if it makes the game more entertaining. I've played with GMs who didn't use dice, or rolled the dice for the PCs, ran games off the top of their heads with just a pack of cards, or even performed all the character progression themselves after consulting with the player. I've seen it all.

With a cRPG this is impossible of course, since the computer needs firm logic and rules to model the game world and its interactions. But playing a character inside such a game does not depend on manipulating those stats directly, or even being aware of what their values are. You don't need that knowledge to be able to roleplay.

Bethesda is obviously following the current trend of minimising stats and removing them from immediate perception. This improves immersion. They could have gone a step further and even removed a player's ability to increase Health/Stamina/Magicka directly, reducing all improvement in game to secondary aspects of pure skill use. To be honest even the ability to 'improve' within a game is not necessarily a mandatory RPG trait. Traveller, the most famous and best selling Sci-Fi P&P RPG began life with no way of improving your character after it have been generated, a restrictive tendency it still partially enshrines even in the latest version of the game.

So after much waffling do I think TES are roleplaying games? Well, sort of. Its not because it does or doesn't have visible/manipulatable stats, that is inconsequential since you can still roleplay without them. It comes down to how free you are to interact with your environment and whether your actions have consequences. Now TES games possess reasonably complex quest management, combined with a crude faction system which semi-responds to your decisions, but in the end the sense of freedom is somewhat illusionary. The main quest still requires you to be railroaded down a certain sequence of paths, which cannot be circumvented or pre-empted.

Indeed there are few quests with any significant form of multiple ending and those are mainly binary in nature, being more tactical combat solutions to achieve objective X rather than freedom to imaginatively use lies, trickery, stealth, intimidation, blackmail, hirelings, guilt and so on. In its own way Skyrim and its predecessors are no better then very cleverly disguised Fighting Fantasy books with stunning visuals. Its an RPG with restrictive boundaries of action. Yet as time goes on we'll get a little more depth to AI and cascading consequences of action, but that'll require more sophisticated scenario and NPC relationship design. Ultimately there's a computational limit, but in the meantime most people will happily trundle along between the invisible walls of quest design... as of course I shall too!

I would think your experiences with RPG's garner the most weight given your history which is more than most. I have seen a D&D session or two and played MUD extensively and those relied heavily on stats. I also developed for a MUD before. You would say its an RPG with restrictive boundaries of action and I would say its an AA with elements of RPG. I respect your opinion. I think immersion can also come from being invested on the decisions you make from your stat increases. And since those are obfuscated in Skyrim, some immersion is lost IMO and hince this is where I run my prior opinion. It would be nice if we as a community can mainstream define different RPGs. Not like LARP or cRPG etc. But two general categories that define Statistical RPGs or non-statistical RPGs (in lieu of a better name). Because I know which one I would rather play....

A bunch of people playing make believe in the woods with no rules, or stats isn't a game. Its an improv play. Without stats you have no RPG, or RPG videogame. Ive been playing RPGs, before they were RPGs. They were just war games like Wooden Ships and Iron Men, Battle Of The Buldge, Waterloo, Gettysburg, etc.

If I'm in your little "larping" session and an enemy comes near me and I decide to throw a fireball, what determines if i miss, or hit, or how much damage it does, or if it even effects the enemy I launched it at? You just make all that stuff up in your head? That's not a an RPG. If you want to get into the semantics of what is and isn't an RPG, picking a number 1 through 10 is the loosest definition of a "game".

Plus I haven't made fun of anybody, I said if thats your thing, go for it. Not to mention you haven't even described larping yet, just playing with toys in the woods. If what you described was a game, it would be an action game not an RPG.

My apologies Xarnac if I misconstrued what appeared to me to be a belittling tone, but likening LARP to "Playing with toys in the woods like kids" didn't come across as particularly complementary. The irony is however, that if you take a step back and look at cRPGs in the same light, then objectively it is akin to playing with a complex toy in your bedroom like a kid. But please forgive my rather sardonic sense of humour.


So you want me to explain a type of larping which currently falls outside of your conception? Give me a moment and I'll try my best.

Set the scenario in the 1930's to give it a greater sense of verisimilitude and fidelity. It is easy (at least in the UK) to hire an old hall or manor house for the weekend, so the GM only needs to find one which is semi-isolated to give it an atmosphere of isolation. Players are expected to make or hire costume of the correct period. So far so good.

No rules are needed for the game. Why? Well, being set in Britain in the 1930's people are not armed and are expected to treat each other with a degree of courtesy. So there's no need for combat rules. Health and safety issues? Use common sense and be aware you are participating under the concept of self-responsibility. Freaky magic stuff? There will be only one 'spell' in the entire game, the ritual or counter ritual at the climix - and the instructions for that will be written down somewhere to be discovered at a convenient point. All other supernatural effects will be the 'smoke and mirrors' of good GM direction and a few prepared special effects - there to spook, but not harm, the players.

Where or what is the game? The objective of the game is to discover who or what is behind the mystery and prevent the big bad event from occurring. This can be done in a multitude of ways from piecing together clues in journals, historical events, etc; following a pseudo treasure hunt for necessary props; providing a fake telephone and directory which link to NPCs playing the switchboard operator and other reachable organisations; face to face roleplaying with NPCs present in, or arriving at the house; and so on. No GM needs to be visible as they can provide subtle guidance in the role of a major or authoritative NPC (a policeman for example) or be hidden within the party acting as if they were one of the player characters.

Where is the roleplaying? Well, each player will be portraying a persona from the 1930's, say for example a dodgy Freudian psychotherapist who froths about the ubiquitous application of electro-shock therapy, a poet survivor of WWI who keeps experiencing recurring bouts of shell-shock when he's stressed, a glamorous dilettante who's accent occasionally slips suspiciously into German, and so on. As well as being entertaining in their own right, the way these personalities interact within the context of 30's etiquette, both between themselves and with the staged NPCs, will slowly reveal elements of the mystery and lead them to further clues.

There you go. Its a game (it has an objective/opponents/challenges) and it requires roleplaying (to both participate and succeed), thus it is an RPG - quod erat demonstrandum; and not a single stat anywhere. Likewise I could run a more 'action' based conanesque S&S game with minimal rules, using a 'one-hit-and-you're-down' combat system, draw a random bead healing system, limit sorcery to indirect effects... and still not require any of the players to have any kind of stats.

Yes there are plenty of LARP and P&P systems which use stats, I don't deny it. Most of the stuff I write use them extensively. I am just trying to show that modelling or self knowledge of stats is not necessarily a fundamental requirement in any form of RPG, although it is often quite nice to have.

This is pretty much what i have have been trying to say

I have a weak anology that sums up my thought on this.

The game of basketball has been around for some time. As players have gotten better and the system proved vulnerable to exploits, some things have changed to fix it. Too many 3 pointers being made; move the line back some. Too easy to not execute offensive strategy because of ball hogging; institute a shot clock. But its still the game of basketball where you need to manipulate the ball by dribbling and shooting up in a hoop. Once you stop dribbling and lower the hoop, its not basketball anymore. Its another game. It could be a good game that I would play. I just wouldn't call it basketball.