Random element can be fun, however. When playing Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, on one playthrough, I had the idea of killing the Ghost Ship early, making use of the fact that it is not immune to paralysis.

What actually happened, however, was the following:
1. Ghost Ship kills everyone except Claudia, who doesn't have the paralyze spell and only has a bow.
2. Claudia's turn comes, and she is attacking.
3. Light bulb above Claudia's head. (This is called a "Glimmer" in this game, and is the means by which you learn new weapon techniques.)
4. Claudia uses Shadow Shot. (A move she just learned because that's how glimmer's work; this bow technique has a chance of causing instant death.)
5. The instant death effect of Shadow Shot worked, killing the boss (who evidently was not immune to instant death)!

That's not the only interesting random event I have seen in a cRPG; here are a few more.

SaGa 2 remake: Final battle, only one character survives, but then a muse appears and revives everyone.

Dragon Quest 5 (SFC version): In this game, there is a spell that produces random effects (called Chance in older Dragon Warrior translations and Hocus Pocus in modern Dragon Quest translations). One of the possible effects is to paralyze all battle participants, which is not something that will recover over time and is therefore a game over if the whole party is paralyzed. (Note that paralyzed characters still get experience if you win the battle, however.) It turns out that enemies can cast the spell, and that particular effect happened to be twice on my first playthrough.

1. In a dungeon where the wagon was not present, a Moon Eye cast the spell, Result was a rather annoying party wipe.

2. In the final dungeon, a Metal King Slime cast the spell. However, the wagon was present, so the characters in the wagon jumped out, and I could then easily kill the Metal King Slime without any chance of it running away. (Anyone familiar with the DQ series knows why this is a good thing.)

I also had Final Fantasy 6 softlock on me once without any bugs or glitches involved.

Role Playing Game

Awright, you just won the debate!

In a game setting an RPG is any game that allows you to take part in a story and make choices... even if they are completely for naught, and purely illusionary you can choose your response to a conversation/quest/battle. To me an RPG is a game that is focused on one person. Maybe a sidekick but this Sidekick is not a necessity, though they would enhance the story if incorperated into the game.

In that sense Dishonored is an RPG in the same way Planescape Torment is... but something like Soul Reaper would not be an RPG, even though it has elements of such the choices inherent in an RPG don't not exist. a Grey area game would be like Zelda or Darksiders... its an "Onrails RPG" with deep unchanging structure.

RPG is purly you agaisnt the world, otherwise it becomes a stratagy game.... Im going to fan some rage fire by saying this but, Final Fantasy is not and RPG to me, it has all elements described but its more of a strategic management game. Its not you against the world its your team that you have crafted in a very specific way against the world.

You ninja'd me, but this.

What kind of choices? Is it enough that you can choose what class you can play and which skills to develop, or do you mean some kind of branching story with many endings?

Do you consider e.g. Betrayal at Krondor a RPG? It has been years since I played it, but I think the story was quite linear (e.g. you got to the next chapter of the game after reaching certain objectives), and I think you didn't have much choices with the characters either, they were pretty much preset IIRC.

You could roam around though finding those locked chests with word puzzle locks, or perform subquests given you by different people etc.

Stats and horrible jrpg story.. still good music. =)

Because all games are Role Playing Game

In a Racing game you role play as the driver

In a sports game you role play as a team of sports player

In a simulation game you role play as a governor / business head / gardener......

In a adventure game you role play as the the adventurer

In a chess game you role play as the chess player

In Space Sim games you role player as the pilot / galactic governor

In War games you role play as the commander / emperor

In Hunting games you role play as the hunter

In action games you role play as the action hero

In Character progression games you also role play as the hero / heroes

Platformers also role play as the hero

Fighting game you role play as the fighter

First person shooter you role play as the shooter

Animal games like shelter lets you role play as the badger and other animals

Dating games lets you role play as a idol / student / teacher etc

Horror games lets you role play as the victim

Pets games like Pokemon let your role play as the pet's master

Music games let you role play as the DJ / musician

Bullet hell games let you role play as the pilot

Puzzle games like Pac man let you role play as a alien victim

Puzzle games like terris let you Role play as the god of different type of blocks

God games let you role play as a God / Devil

Educational games like book worms let you role play as a scrabble player

Chess games let you role play as a chess player

Stealth games let you role play as a thief / assassin / hit-man

Pin Ball games let you role play as a gambler with infinite money

MOBA let you role play as a hero

Tower Defense let you role play as a tower builder

Hack and Slash let you role play as a FedEx postman

Looking back how long this list it, I am sure you realize Role Playing Games mean almost nothing.

Actually, the way I see it, most RPGs (the way I define RPG, anyway) are the reverse; an RPG focuses on an adventuring party, rather than a single character. Even tabletop RPGs have multiple Player Characters (though they are typically played by separate characters.)

Thing is, Action games focus on one character because you can't realistically control an entire party in real time. In a turn-based RPG, on the other hand, you can easily control an entire party of adventurers without any issues.

Good. Someone else pointed it out so I don't have to.

I would define RPG the way I remember it best. Which was old school table top dice pen and paper. As GM I would setup my story maps and lead pieces. For my players I would stock up on soda and fast foods in reserve for those long adventures. A weekend for the journey to free ones wild imaginations.

I still am being accused 25 years later of having magically enchanted 6 sided dices hehehe. Not my fault they always role 6's :P

Good times. Best way to RPGs.

I need a new tabletop crew/friends in general lol

You pretty much got the core of it.

But since there are less than 10 video-games in the entire game history that cover all the RPG aspects the industry went on and gave everything with a level up system the RPG stamp.

The "problem" here is the writing & scripting. To make it good it requires massively more amount of text; writing all the quests & dialogues (i.e.) 5x instead of only once to address the player character variants properly. Also one solution to a quest might have completely different direct consequences then another solution which results in even more writing of all the possibilitys & sub-possibilitys how world & NPCs handle that.

Its like at least 10x more story writing than any other type of game, already knowing that only a very small amount of players reading all of it; add the higher requirement of QA/Bug hunting to it makes these, sadly, economically questionable.

edit: even more so since almost everything is voice acted these days.

Thats the ancient question in computer gaming. People have been fighting about it as long as i can remember. It was especially reached its peak when Diablo 2 came out. Was Diablo 2 a RPG? So what is RPG?

Well, I can only write my humble opinion about this subject and cant claim it is the absolute one. For me a RPG has to..

1. Have a character or characters that you develop as the game progress.
2. There need to be a decent leveling system where you usually start as level 1.
3. You should be able to gather loot and treasures along the way which gets better and better.
4. There should be choices in the game where you decide the fate of an event, a person or even a town.
5. There should be plenty of conversations where you can choose your own reaction.

So for me saying "RPG is where you play as a character" is not enough. That would mean Sonic the hedgehod or Super Mario are RPGs too. That is also the reason why I believe Diablo (and its clones) are half RPG since there is absolutely no conversation or choice in such games.

Dont hate me :)
Engin.

Diablo-likes are "half-RPGs" because if you play as ranged character, there is little pressure on you and you can win any fight by using only "player's skills". That's why they are called "Action/RPGs". However, when you play as melee character, gameplay becomes much more stat-oriented. Hence why I prefer to play as melee in these games.

Diablo I/II offers conversations (even with voice-overs!).

What concerns "choice", it is weak mechanic, which usually promotes replaying the game and making different choice, which is bad kind of replayability (taken up to eleven in games like Final Fantasy Type-0), and is often used to artificially prolong short games.