Deep Look: Comparing and Contrasting the Western and Eastern Schools of RPGs

Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for video games. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!

In this episode, the Deep Listens crew discuss their experiences with role-playing games and how the two central schools of video game roleplaying, Western RPGs and Japanese RPGs, differ. We discuss the various games we've played from each RPG school and try to extrapolate out what makes those two styles of RPG feel so different. We discuss differences in the position of the player, ensemble casts, open narrative vs. authored narrative, and the different gameplay experiences that have come to define both sub-genres.

Comparing and Contrasting the Western and Eastern Schools of RPGs