What RPGs are best for actually playing a role?

[J T]

When I think of what "role playing" actually means, I don't believe that a lot of RPGs actually invoke your imagination and agency enough to actually feel like you are role playing, and if they do, they sometimes lack the structure of a "role" to play.

What games have most given you the experience of role playing?

[CFFJR]

Well, I apologize for picking something that is so well known, but the only time I've ever experienced this is with the Elder Scrolls games.

You never get a sense of your character's motives or anything else of the sort, because outside of journal entries (which are free of emotion and serve only to keep you, the player, informed) they have no input on anything. Nothing you experience in the game will be colored by anything except the rules of the world. Its all about your actions and how the world adapts to you.

The problem of course, is that its not real strong on structure. The main quest lines give you a role to play (Nerevarine, Champion, Dragonborn, etc...) and you can approach those in a variety of ways while still following the story. But typically if you follow other sets of quests (guilds), or one of the independent quests, you're just some guy/girl that happened to get involved in this or that. Its more up to you to plug in any details you might think are relevant.

But I guess it also depends on what you're looking for in a role. I know when I play these kinds of games, I never think up any kind of history or base personality for a character I'm creating. I simply go to it and make my choices as they come depending on how I feel personally. I've known plenty of people though who will go into a character with a set of rules that will govern how they must respond to different situations. Its two different ways to approach role playing, and I think different games might be more suited to each style.

I'm sorry I kind of meandered about there. I'm not sure if I said anything useful.

[mobiusclimber]

I guess it really depends on whether you want to play a role that you create, or one the game creates. A lot of early console RPGs kept the main character silent so you could provide your own dialogue according to how you felt the character would react. As games got more sophisticated they started telling more precise stories, so the main character couldn't be silent. Some games did keep this tho and expanded to include ways to let your actions shape what happens in the game. Breath of Fire 2 and the Suikoden games are good examples of this (the first three Suiko games anyway, dunno about the rest).

[MrPopo]

The Elder Scrolls games (especially the last three) give you the freedom to faff about however you want. The world is expansive and detailed enough that you can play a night bandit who robs people blind and gives money to orphans if you want. The guilds can be considered to be Bethesda included questlines for fleshing out your character. You can decide to only join the guilds that make sense for the character you are playing. You can even attach yourself to the main quest fairly easily, as they tend to be presented as your bystander of a character stepping up to the challenge that destiny is presenting him.

On the flipside you have games like Deus Ex and Alpha Protocol which constrain your gross actions but give you the ability to fine tune how you proceed; both how you perform missions and how you engage in dialogue.

[isiolia]

While it doesn't offer the overall freedom that I consider the Holy Grail for the genre (and that basically nothing actually does offer), I think Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines has an approach that would be nice to see more often.

If you aren't familiar, the game in general is fairly similar to the Deus Ex model - you're going to do the same basic stuff, but it's more the details. Exactly how things play out varies on your choices.
Unlike those games though, you have a choice of which clan your character is part of - basically, race, with different perks, skills, and weaknesses. While most of them are mostly what you'd expect, a couple of them stand out more as changing the entire flavor of the game. Nosferatu get a Masquerade violation if a normal human sees them, meaning they need to stick to the shadows and have to use the sewers to move around. Malkavians are batshit insane, albeit with insight that other clans lack. Their dialogue options are all modified, and there are some other random stuff (voices, get in a conversation with a street sign, etc).
In effect, maybe just makes for a more interesting second+ play of the game, but maybe does give more options for choosing how your character will be - or perhaps in turn a feeling of not being able to overcome some aspect of your character.

[Nemoide]

I'd say that pretty much every Ultima game after III has a strong element of role-playing.

[J T]

Recently, I have completed Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I'm about 2/3 of the way through The Witcher 2, and I've played the first few hours of Skyrim. All three of these have been good for playing a role, at least for me. I related well with Adam Jensen (DE:HR) and Geralt of Rivia (Witcher 2), so both of these were roles that were easy to identify with and take on, then they both had a lot of interesting ways for allowing choice. Deus Ex allowed me to play the game my way, for the most part. I wanted to be primarily stealth with the occassional gunplay, though I stuck with tazers most of the time and opted to avoid kills unless necessary. I could see that the levels were designed in such a way that I could have played in a number of different ways, and I would occassionally break out of my stealth M.O. to experiment with that. To save Malik, I essentially had to break out of it and I realized that I my skills in combat were really weak until I finished off that battle, which required killing a huge group of people in a short amount of time while using different aggressive tactics. I also felt that the world of DE:HR was so rich and thought out, that it felt close to reality, so I was able to role play out of a combination of relatable character, dialogue and gameplay choice, and well detailed and realistic context for gameplay.

Like Deus Ex:HR, The Witcher 2 is also a heavily story driven game, and therefore is necessarily more linear than something as open-ended as an Elder Scrolls game. However, the game manages to give me a great sense of my choices actually having an impact on what happens. Granted, the only choice that will alter the entire plotline is choosing between Iorveth and Roche, but all of the smaller choices have consequences. You are free to make unwise decisions and the game will give you the natural consequences. I love this, because it really does put weight into your simple actions. As an example, I decided to go out drinking with some soldiers one night, which would be meaningless in your average game, but in the Witcher 2, this meant that I chose just how much I drank, I passed out, I woke up naked on the side of a river with all of my inventory stolen, and I suddenly had to find witnesses to my night of debauchery (which hilariously involved getting a piggyback ride from a prostitute) to figure out what had happened to all of my stuff so I could get it back and not be seriously handicapped for future battle. Even though this doesn't change the main quest line, it gives your choices some real gravity because there are tangible consequences, even to small dialogue tree options.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is something altogether different though. I have little attachment to the story, but I'm making my story up all the time. Right now, I steal horses for joyrides and take photos that I post on Racketboy haha. I love that the game has the flexibility for me to do that and that it will let me go into areas of the map I am completely underpowered for and will surely die if I don't run away from battles. It's not a game filled with arbitrary rules or boundaries. I feel that I have freedom and agency in how I choose to play the game. I don't feel like there is a clear role for me to play, like my other two examples, but I can imagine a role and then live it out how I want to because the game is incredibly flexible.

So, it seems there is something to be said for whether a game gives you a juicy role with gameplay options and dialogue choices that have actual consequence. But there is also something to be said for a game that has loosely structured activities and an immensely flexible world that you can act out however you see fit. I think both types can be good for role playing if they have just the right mix of gameplay elements.

[mobiusclimber]

You should check out Shadowrun for the Genesis if you want a big open-ended world where you can create a role of your choosing and play thru the game as a character of your own design.

[Erik_Twice]

I don't think any videogame I have played has any roleplaying elements in it, there's simply no way to act a personality, at most some games give you morality choices but that's it, there's no lovable rogue, you are just a rogue. That's what's missing here.

Mechanically you have crpgs like Wasteland with it's use of skills and being able to blow up doors or lockpick them but there's no personality, just mechanics.

At the end of the day, it's just better to play an actual roleplaying game with your friends. There are many accesible games out there that don't need a very involved group meeting every week, just people taking it seriously.

[J T]

Here's a few games that allow for some role playing, though they don't fit the traditional RPG mold.

Sleep is Death:
http://sleepisdeath.net/
In this game, one person is the director of a story for another person. That person enters the directors world and they interact in real time, typing whatever communication they want and both responding to one another. If both parties take the game seriously, it's ideal for roleplaying a co-created story together.

Improviso:
http://gambit.mit.edu/loadgame/improviso.php
Improviso is a game about an alien encounter. There is a cast of characters that multiple players can play the role of together online. There are three scenes and you all can play them out however you want. It's meant to be a game that plays like an improv acting session.