Hi. As lately a lot of games have some RPG element but don't feel like RPGs (Mass Effect 2 for example), there are quite some discussions going on about what is a RPG and role-playing. And I am a little bit confused, because people define role-playing in two different ways. There is the opinion that role-play means that you play as yourself, meaning that you identify the avatar you create in game as yourself, in the range of the given choices of course. The character you decide to play doesn't have to act like you'd do in real life or be of the same gender, even if you are a "good" person, you can decide to play as a "evil" assassin or as the opposite gender, but you decide when you roll your character what you'll be to some degree, or as many people do, just play as yourself. Personally my natural inclination is as "good magic-user", and I cannot role-play anything evil for example, tried it a couple of times in Baldur's Gate without success. Games that work this way are Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, DAO...
On the other hand, and what most of the people seems to mean with role-playing are the games that make you play the role of someone else. For example in Planescape: Torment, you play as the Nameless One or in Mass Effect as Shepard. PS: T is a special game of course, and it makes you get into the role pf the PC quite easy, but Mass Effect 2 doesn't has that effect, constantly I had the feeling that there were 2 people in the game, me and Shepard. In my opinion this was because the PC is voiced in that game and his reaction to the wheel choices aren't obvious beforehand, so he has a personality of his own. Final Fantasy VII is also in this category, where you play as Cloud.
I would like to hear some opinions how do you define role-playing on a CRPG, and if you think that the terms traditionally means both above cases. Cheers
