Tabletop-style RPGs

"Tabletop-style" is the term I have chosen to describe games which are either digital adaptations of tabletop roleplaying games or video games which are heavily inspired by tabletop RPGs. Crucially, to be a Tabletop-style RPG, a game must resemble the systems of tabletop RPGs, not merely take place in the same setting as a given Tabletop RPG. E.g. Cyberpunk 2077 would not meaningfully count as "tabletop-style" despite being an adaptation of the Cyberpunk tabletop RPG, while Pillars of Eternity does count despite not being an adaptation of anything. The deciding factor is how closely the game's systems resemble systems typically found in tabletop RPGs.

In Tabletop-style RPGs, outcomes of combat and skill checks are determined through, essentially, dice rolls with modifiers and the combat uses either Real Time with Pause where each "round" is a few seconds or directly adapts the turn-based nature of the typical tabletop experience. Character creation and leveling up similarly tend to resemble the process of flipping through a rulebook to check what's availbe to one's character and how it impacts different modifiers.

These games often employ an isometric camera angle, giving rise to the term "Isomtric RPG." Another associated term is "CRPG." I prefer to avoid terms that, like "Isometric RPG", define a genre based on a single superficial element or, like "Computer Roleplaying Game", are very non-indicative to those not in the know about the history of the term. That is why I've chosen the term "Tabletop-style" for my site, though I certainly consider it an imperfect one.

As many of the defining games of the roleplaying video game genre have been adaptations of tabletop RPGs (Dungeons and Dragons in particular), many RPGs that I have categorised in another subgenre also have significant Tabletop-style elements. Where I use most of these subgenres as exclusive categories, I see Tabletop-style as a spectrum that a given game falls somewhere on. E.g. Dragon Age: Origins (2009) and Mass Effect 2 (2010) are both Narrative RPGs by the same developer, but where Dragon Age: Origins has a fairly high amount of Tabletop-style elements, Mass Effect 2 has barely any. Similarly, the Sandbox RPG The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002) has far more Tabletop-style elements than later Elder Scrolls games.


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