(I''m sick and not thinking clearly so if this post seems a little random, bear with me please.)

I think an importan distinction that is often glossed over in the gamedev forums (and many other online sites) is the difference between RPG (Role-Playing-Game) and CRPG (Computer Role-Playing Game)

Last year when I was discussing with someone the way I spent my recess in elementary school, he said to me, "Oh you were into Role-Playing?" But I had never thought of it that way. You see everyday, I would pretend I was a space-pilot who went on various adventures; mostly involving space battles with pirates or escaping from large prison ships owned by the pirates. The thing is I never rolled a die, never collected stats, never looked up skill or item descriptions in a book or database... BUT I was Playing a Role: playing the role of a space fighter.

Now, I''m not a big player of table-top RPG''s, but it seems to me that there are two main attractions to playing them:
(1) the opportunity to "participate" (In your imagination of course) in fantastical worlds/experiences.
(2) the opportunity to pretend to be someone else: Like if you play an orc then you pretend you are real stupid or something...

If we use this loose definition of role-playing-game, then anything where you pretend to be someone else (including Doom and many other games not normally called RPG) would be an RPG. The thing is that most people when they play these games don''t consider the story line or the charecter: they just play the way they want to play. But role playing isn''t about just doing whatever you want its about doing stuff "in charecter."(i.e. something that would make sense for your charecter--if you are a deranged maniac then maybe you eat the cat you rescue from the tree, but if you are a normal person then you _dont_) The idea of stats (as far as I can tell) is to help a determine the capabilities of a person who is not real (i.e. If I am not tall enough, can''t climb, and don''t have a ladder or the ability to talk to animals then I can''t rescue the cat from the tree) and thus aid in the role-playing.

So: in my opinion stats are an aid to role-playing, not a necessity.
But: implementing a CRPG without stats would be too much work (unless it was moderated by humans like some MMORPG''s I''ve seen... well, I haven''t played them so I''m not sure they even do it, but I''ll give them the benefit of the dobt..like DarkAges by some N**** company of which I never can remember the name: nexxon? uh.. nexus? let me look just a sec... its at www1.darkages.com . I''ve never played it, maybe if one of you has you can correct me.)

There''s also the flip side: players should be able to choose any role to play (as long as they stick with it) but I''m tired of writing, so I''ll quit for now.

Fiar Truck