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RPGs are for story? Since when?

Across the Internet and even in person, I find a lot of people claiming that RPGs are meant to be story-heavy and that's the main draw. Part of me wonders where that idea came from.

The original RPG could be considered Dungeons & Dragons or any similar paper-and-pencil games where you adopt a persona and go on an adventure, with a DM at the reins to guide you and your friends along. The core of those games is not story, however; it's about interacting with your friends in a made-up world. The story, while being in the lime-light, is nothing compared to the feeling of cooperating with your friends and vanquishing foes or telling ridiculous stories because your bard is drunk as shit.

D&D and other paper-and-pencil RPGs have a huge focus on the battle system. Each race has strengths and weaknesses. Ditto for classes. Each class has skills, which have use inside and outside of battle. There are feats. If the game was not meant to have a deep level of combat or world interaction, none of that would be there! You'd just toss a few dice to decide damage and trade blows with no-name mooks.

Even the original RPGs had battle systems, with depth and intrigue.

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Can Digital Distribution and Game Ownership Coexist?

In the past decade, the video game industry has introduced three things that change the way consumers interact with publishers and distributors to get access to the content they consume. Each of these brings with them a wave of change that, to many people that are part of the "old school" generation, encroach on various aspects of consumer rights and are turning games into services instead of objects that you can buy copies of. The three things that have brought this change are downloadable content, digital distribution, and DRM.

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Y u hate me, RNG?

I recently finished acquiring all of the ship parts in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Getting the Power, Courage, and Wisdom Gems was no big deal. Look around, try new things, and you'll find them. Ship parts? They're randomly acquired. You get them from shops (whose stock changes every day), treasure maps (which can be scummed to get the same type of part), treasure chests, and minigames. The problem is that it's controlled by the RNG. There are 64 parts to collect, but thanks to our friend Mr. Statistics and Probability, you will likely acquire over 200 ship parts before you get all 64 unique ship parts.

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Why Zelda is not an RPG

Over the past 15 years or so, the gaming industry has seen the decline of platforming games and the rise of RPGs and FPS games. Some gamers who grew up during this rise of the RPG genre began to identify themselves as "role playing gamers" as a quick way of summing up their taste in video games. This has sadly led to many people tacking the RPG genre onto any game that vaguely resembles an RPG. Such victims include Metroid, Castlevania, and -- you guessed it -- the Legend of Zelda series.

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