The cRPG Fallacy

Concerned with the overuse of the acronym “cRPG” along with a recent callout by PC Gamer that we are enjoying a “cRPG renaissance”, one of the editors at Melted Joystick has penned an editorial to analyze exactly where the “cRPG” acronym came from, what it stands for, and why it has led to various misconceptions before also diving into the WRPG vs. JRPG debate. An interesting read, regardless of where your allegiances lie:

The very idea of the role-playing game began with Gary Gygax the creator of the classic tabletop RPG, (Dungeons & Dragons) who endeavored to add more simulation, personality, continuity, and a more intimate environment to (what were at the time also quite new) tabletop strategy wargames. Strategic combat is in the very DNA of the RPG genre, but Gygax also mixed in persistent characters, extemporaneous acting, and improvisation, allowing his new breed of tabletop strategy game to follow a small group of persistent personalities as the group of players behind the personas worked together to craft an entertaining narrative.

But because tabletop RPGs quickly began to shake-out two conflicting sides of their own one interested in Simulationism and one interested in Narrativism a few people on the bleeding edge of technology at the time decided that unloading the pages and pages of charts, dice rolls, modifiers, and other complicated mathematical behind-the-scenes bits of tabletop role-playing onto a computer would be a great time saver. Thus was the cRPG born: The C doesn’t stand for computer, it stands for computerized!

Up until the contentious 7th Generation of Gaming, it was not uncommon to find PC and console games lumped together in lists of cRPGs. This is, of course, because the gamers of the time knew (and I still know) that there is ultimately little to no difference between them. They all have three key traits that appeal to tabletop RPG fans, while taking care of all the tedious number crunching and removing the need for more than one player via automated processes. In the process of automation, however, cRPGs sacrifice the improvisational quality of tabletop RPGs for preset lists of possibilities. Of course, the impact of sacrificing 100% freeform role-playing on the tabletop for ‘˜canned’ role-playing via computerization was greatly affected by the obsessiveness and dedication of a given player’s group. For tabletop players who regularly used pre-build adventure ‘˜modules’ instead of relying on their Dungeon Master to improvise everything, the loss was surprisingly minimal.