Well, I have to say something about this:

I have been playing Live Action Roleplaying Games and "real" book roleplaying games, and I think that computer roleplaying games are pretty good already ! Ofcourse you can "always" complain about linear gaming and so on, but it''s stupid:

In real rpg''s, you get character, that gets background and ''mission''. You actually never play rpg with world where ''you just are'', but you always have some dramatic background etc. which causes you to do something (kill big bad guy or so).

Same rule occurs in Live Action RPG''s, you will get character, who is maybe "always drunken thief, who just heard that land lord has REALLY nice diamond in he''s room, and you "would like" to get it ". And then the game begins.

Baldurs Gate, and Fallout''s are REALLY CLOSE to real roleplaying by rule system, and interactive worlds. Ultima goes even deeper into rpg, but lacks with "do whatever you wanna do" system. See, that''s the good thing with CRPG''s, player actually cannot do something "really stupid" that doesn''t have anything to do with "mission", and well... this prevents frustrated situtations like "what the heck should I do now"... Well, this is just my opinion, but I have to say that it''s hard to be gamemaster and tell another players:
"I know that you have 300000 gold and you would like to get castle and get 10 kids, but it doesn''t have anything to do with what you SHOULD BE DOING ! You remember that you dad told that your mom was killed by..."

Technically, EVERY game is a role playing game.

except for maybe games like tetris...

Tetris is too an rpg! You play a big russian guy who fits the peices into the puzzle; he''s just off the screen. In 3d tetris, he''s a 4th dimensional russian guy.

On a slightly more serious note, An interesting RPG potential game on the way into the market is Neverwinter Nights. Sounds like an interesting meld between traditional CRPGs and pen-and-paper RPGs. You can completely modify the game to present a new storyline, world, etc. to players over a network.

Sounds pretty nifty. especially if you like designing game worlds, and enjoy paper-pen-and-caffeine rpgs



*oof*

Nah, the only way Tetris can be an RPG is if you play as the blocks.

But that probably wouldn''t be very much fun.

Mason McCuskey
Spin Studios - home of Quaternion, 2000 GDC Indie Games Fest Finalist!
www.spin-studios.com

The best RPG''s I have played were all made by SSI in the mid to late 1990''s. Ravenloft - Strahds Possesion, Stone Prophet, and the two DarkSun games. I did not finish all those games, but I really never lost interest in them. All four had a evolving story line that towards the ends you REALLY wanted to solve. One of the best features about these games is you could port your existing characters from saved games back and forth between the games (Ravenloft and Darksun).