Can you really play any recent (homemade or professional) rpgs however you want and still get to the end or are they mostly games you can only finish by grinding grinding grinding and then buying better weapons for your character at the next town and that's it, without any role playing. Are you guilty of making your rpg games like that?

The word doesn't really mean what I thought it did so it turns out in most rpgs you roleplay someone grinding and buying better weapons

I kinda agree but you can't blame people for that. The engine they use is only capable of making games like those. Not to mention the fact that they only play jrpgs.

Wait Mince, don't you mean linear/nonlinear gameplay?

The word doesn't really mean what I thought it did so it turns out in most rpgs you roleplay someone grinding and buying better weapons

You didn't really answer the question though (you know, it would be the part of the post where you elaborate on the phrase "what I thought it means". I mean by virtue that it is a video game you are playing you have to expect number-based game play to be involved. Whether it's the number of currency pieces you need to buy a better weapon, or the number of battles you need to grind through before reaching that next level.

The way I see it, the difference lies in that role-playing works by giving the person playing the role power to shape the world around him as would the character he is playing the role as. And that element simply cannot be captured in a video game where the state the world is in is set absolutely by a computer algorithm. In most RPG's, the player's input is limited, and the control he has over the world only lies in what that player can do in direct relation to whatever task the machine has set in place (which as you so put, usually boils down to whatever the player can do to get his strength to the point needed to save the world or whatever final goal the game has established early on), the only power the developer has is to string together a story that the player has to follow along with using the character given to him. The way the character is already established when written is where the goals and motivation to achieve them come from, rather than by how the person playing the character develops that character and defines his motivations for him. Game developers can work harder to give the player more freedom in that front, and a few successful examples of this exist, but it still boils down to only so many options given for how the player can interact with a static, pre-compiled world through a character that only has the freedom defined only by what the video game developers manually work into him/her.

Wait Mince, don't you mean linear/nonlinear gameplay?

That's exactly what I mean

When the whole RP comes up I tend to go to the Choice & Consequence thing. Proper computer roleplaying is about making choices and those choices having a consequence. (and I mean proper choices and consequences. Not just "kicking will give x amount of damage and punching will give y amount of damage what do I choose?)

The engine they use is only capable of making games like those. Not to mention the fact that they only play jrpgs.

Plenty more can be done with this program. People just have to push their imaginations. The idea is use the same program but avoid making a game with common elements. A few ways you can do this.

Design a game that:
- doesn't use weapons.
- the main character is not human-like. Example: You are a cat.
- uses an unexpected character - instead of a warrior you could be an author.
- uses a different kind of collectible. Instead of weapons/armor/mana you can use coins (Mario) or any other object (sticking with your theme).
- doesn't use parties. You can be a lone character.
- is based around another genre. RPGMAKER could easily be used to make a mystery game, murder game, interactive story, etc. The only games it doesn't really tailor too are FPS, Platforms and 3D.

Everyone blames bad games on the programs used to make them. The truth is the programs are fine and the designers are flawed. Either they don't know HOW to make a fun game (most people), they have no imagination (many people), or they are lazy (most people).

That's my point! You are playing a role in HL2, not watching someone else play a role, as is the case with many games that fall into the "RPG" genre.

Role playing to me is the ability to play any (or at least more than one) role how you choose. Every game has you playing some role, but most of the time there is one only and there aren't decisions you can make to affect the world, ala half life 2. So trying to take the literal meaning of "role playing game" won't do any good because any game you would label an RPG is very much unlike something like hl2 (excluding a game that mixes genres).

But now rpgs are all stats.