What's the Difference Between Adventure, Puzzle, and Role-Playing Games?
I finally got around to downloading and playing DGM's "The Dungeon" alpha (if you wanna give it a shot, check it out here). Keep in mind that it is still only in alpha. It bears many similarities to the in-development "Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD) RPG" I talked about a couple of weeks ago. It made me think about my defining characteristics of a role-playing game (RPG). One of my defining elements was that there should be an element of randomness (or, to use more college-sounding terms, "non-deterministic" or "stochastic" mechanics) in an RPG. The Dungeon and the DROD RPG do not have this. So are they still RPGs?

I'm actually gonna have to stick to my guns here. That's not a qualitative judgment at all - there's nothing inherently superior to being a role-playing game over an adventure game or ... well, whatever cool new label we can give to games like DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold and The Dungeon. While they are puzzle games, they are far, far removed from games like Bejeweled, Minesweeper, or Pathstorm. These games share some definite similarities to adventure games and RPGs, but they also provide a very different "feel" from either.

So here's how I'd tell them apart, both in pedantic prose and an example encounter:

Role-Playing Games (RPGs):
These have elements of resource management, avatar progression, avatar identification / customization, and risk management. Risk management comes from stochastic mechanics - you may able to predict the approximate outcome, but there are no guarantees.

Example Encounter: The player encounters a ferocious Grickle-Grak. He gets into a fight, which ends slightly differently from his previous one-hundred Grickle-Grak fights.

Adventure Games (Interactive Fiction, Graphic Adventures):
These have no resource management other than typically unique inventory items, rarely any avatar customization or progression, and primary mechanics are fully deterministic. These are normally identified by a series of unique puzzles wrapped tightly within the metaphors and context of the story.

Example Encounter: The player encounters a ferocious Grickle-Grak. He uses his can of "Anti-Grickle-Grak Spray" from his inventory, which he previously obtained through the creative use of a peanut-butter sandwich, a golf club, and a portable tape player in the library. The spray makes the Grickle-Grak flee the scene, never to be heard from again.

Adventure-Puzzle Games (for lack of a better name):
These have strong elements of resource management and avatar progression, but deterministic gameplay. The puzzles are generally non-unique, often presenting a challenge in combination with each other that require careful sequential ordering of actions to resolve.

Example Encounter: The player encounters a ferocious Grickle-Grak. Fighting the Grickle-Grak will cost you 100 hit points. Fighting the Tweeter-Bee and then going through the door behind it will only cost you 20 hitpoints and one red key. What will you need more in the next room: the key, or the 80 hit points?

Bonus Game Types
Just to make sure you aren't playing a totally different type of game altogether, here are some other examples:

First-Person Shooter (FPS): You encounter a ferocious Grickle-Grak. Two rockets to the face should do it.

Casual: You encounter a ferocious Grickle-Grak. Match three candies of the same type to satisfy his appetite and make him your friend.

Real-Time Strategy: An army of ferocious Grickle-Graks zerg your base five minutes into the game.

Platformer: You encounter a ferocious Grickle-Grak. You jump on his head three times.

Third-Person Shooter: Just like the first-person shooter, but the game helps you aim the rockets towards his face

Survival Horror: You encounter a ferocious Grickle-Grak. Unfortunately, he takes fifteen bullets to kill, and the game has you down to two. So he devours you in a an extended, gruesome death-scene.

Rhythm Game: You encounter a ferocious Grickle-Grak. Match his mad raps with the right beats to defeat him!


(Vaguely) related senseless expounding:
* But Is It An RPG?
* RPG Design: How Do I Get Past the Stupid Door?
* RPG Design: The "Brute Force" Problem.

UPDATE:
Due to popular demand, a forum thread devoted to this hot topic!

Labels: Adventure Games, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:07 AM (Permalink)