Turn-based CRPG Philosophy

Genres

These are the genres and subgenres I consider to be turn-based RPGs:

Crawlers: These games all involve wandering an area and fighting enemies. These areas are usually dungeons, but don't have to be. The main criteria is that the player moves around some sort of grid outside of combat and has a secondary screen in combat. Additionally, combat shouldn't contain movement in any significant fashion.

First person crawl [FPD]: You typically see the walls in front of you.
Second person crawl: This doesn't really exist, but most interactive fiction is in second person.
Third person crawl [JRPG]: These games have an overhead view (or, rarely, a side view). These are called JRPGs because they were popularized in Japan, but some people object to the name. These games are known for having more of a narrative, but that's only in comparison to FPD games. Most of these games have "short" character art.

Interactive Fiction: These are interactive stories. To be included in this list, the game must also have roleplaying elements. When it comes to gamebooks, Fighting Fantasy would be an RPG, but Choose Your Own Adventure would not.

Visual Novel: These are interactive fiction games with graphics that fill the screen.

Life Sim: Life simulators involve training to gain skills that can be used to perform in-game tasks. Some of these are RPGs. In general, I count life sims as RPGs when they have some sort of combat. It's a judgement call.

Linear Crawl: These games involve doing a series of encounters in a relatively linear order. These games don't necessarily involve dungeons.

One Axis Tactics: These are linear crawl games with tactical combat. In combat, party members and enemies have a position in one axis (usually the x-axis). They can move around within that axis, and their position affects who they can attack.

Puzzle RPG: These games involve solving puzzles either to win battles or navigate dungeons.

Fixed Value RPG: Combat contains no randomness, so you can calculate how much damage an enemy will do to you. The point of the genre is to optimize the order in which you pick up statistic boosts and fight enemies. These games typically involve gathering items to increase your statistics or open doors.

Tactics RPG: These games involve having characters move around a map during combat.

Rogue-like: The player moves around in a turn-based fashion, and the monsters move attack in between the player's movements. But the monsters will stand still and wait if the player just stops. They typically also have procedural generation.
Rogue-lite: A rogue-lite is like a rogue-like but doesn't match the definition as well. The most common difference in a rogue-lite is that repeated plays of the game provide some sort of advantage in future plays.
Strategy RPG: These games involve fighting a large scale war, rather than small scale skirmishes.

These mechanics are so important that I treat them as separate subgenres. They typically are also in another subgenre as well. Here they are:

ATB: Active Time Battles. The enemies will eventually attack you if you do nothing.
Crafting: In these games, the player can craft new items from old items or crafting materials.
Fast Travel Map: In these games, the player doesn't walk around a map. Instead, locations are selected from a map. Then the player does battles or interactive fiction segments in that location. This considerably streamlines these games.
PCG: Procedural Content Generation. These games use an algorithm to generate content for the game.
Real Time w/Pause: The battles in these games occur in real time, but you can pause to give orders.
Timed Attack: During an attack or defense, there's a specific time where you can press a button for more attack or defense power.
Worker Placement: These games involve placing workers so that they can do tasks. This is more common in strategy games and in board games.

There's also some secondary genres. These aren't RPG subgenres, but it's common for games to include multiple genres. Deckbuilders and Hidden Object games both occur on this list.

1980's Era Discussion

The 1980's were a decade of bad games. At the time, these games were amazing, but they're not competitive with modern games.

Games this old usually have the following problems: grinding, complex mechanics, horrible graphics, lack of automap, limited user interfaces, little customization, minimal or poorly translated stories, no quest/journal tracking, no voice acting, rolling ability scores, and slow pacing. It was common for them to require a manual, clue book, code wheel, or other paperwork to play the games.

Many of these games may be difficult to play on modern devices.

On the other hand these games weren't afraid to be original. Procedural content generation was invented. The games we play today were inspired by the games of the 1980's, but there were other games that didn't make it into the modern zeitgeist. I often ask: What has been forgotten?

1990's Era Discussion

Modern Era Discussion

A lot of big corporations are making shovelware these days, but those sort of games don't even count as games. Technology has moved forward alot, and older games aren't able to compete with more modern games. I attribute the retro game craze largely to the inability of consumers to find the real games in the pile of garbage.

Technology has become more accessible, and game designers have learned much from the previous eras. Independent game developers have made a variety of innovative games with every different set of mechanics imaginable.

It's great that people have a new outlet for their creativity, but most of these fan-made games are bad. In the past, the higher barriers to entry ensured that most games were made by people with a minimum level of competence.

There's more good games available than there have ever been. The problem is that it's hard to find these diamonds in the rough. There's a huge glut of corporate clicker garbage and low quality fan-made games. A lot of old games are very highly recommended by a handful of fans even if they're not good games. There's also a lot of unfinished or broken games that have been released despite their sorry state. It takes time to sort through all this if you want to enjoy yourself. Let's Play videos are the best way to determine how good a game is, but they're not always available.

Fixed Value RPG Discussion

This genre was relatively unknown for years, but has recently exploded in popularity. The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls originated this genre, but it's technically an action game. Tower of the Sorcerer is the game that created the formula for turn-based RPGs with Fixed Value combat.

In these games, it's usually best to avoid fighting as much as possible. The path to success is gathering items that increase your abilities. The better games tend to have a scoring mechanism, and it's intended that players replay the game repeatedly to get a better score. Unfortunately, this leads to excessive backtracking in almost all the games in this genre. Revisiting old areas typically provides better optimization opportunities.

The appeal of these games is solving a puzzle. Some of these games make the mistake of encouraging combat by providing experience point rewards. In general, the more a game in this genre requires the player to kill enemies, the worse it is.

The Question

Why are we still wandering around mazes?

First person dungeon crawls and JRPGs are basically the same genre, just with a different perspective. They have the same problems. Many people have criticized these games for their excessive grinding or repetitive gameplay. These people are not wrong, but they're missing the main problem.

Most of these are games about solving mazes.

I don't get it. What's the point? Why can't I just go from A to B instead of walking around in a square? A lot of this could be fixed just by having better level design.

I think the best a first person dungeon crawl can do is put a map of the dungeon on the screen as you navigate the world. Some, like Swords & Serpents, do so. I feel like this an adequate solution. JRPGs have more options. The overworld is usually not a maze. Minimaps help.

There are other games who streamline it further by having you select the loctation you want to go to without even navigating a map. Unfortunately, the maze style is prevalent in fan made games, especially those made with RPG Maker. I wish we could move on from this.