The CRPG Book Project - Expanded Edition released

[HiddenX]

Felipe Pepe released an expanded digital version of the CRPG Book:

IT IS DONE! The Expanded Edition of The CRPG Book is here, with 680 pages & over 400 RPGs!

This is a FREE ebook created by 145 volunteers over the last 8 years, expanded with new sections on MUDs, MMORPGs, Korean, Chinese and French RPGs! Grab it here.

More information.

 

[Redglyph]

Oh that's nice! Thanks for the info.

Apparently a printed version should eventually be available too.

Btw. will printed copy get an update as well?

Yes, but only in 2023 or later.

 

[Carnifex]

That's truly nice of him, thanks Felipe and thanks for letting us know, Watch!

 

[skally_wag]

Tried to order the printed copy last time, but my order got cancelled? Hopefully I will get it when it goes to print this time.

 

[KaosWarMonk]

A lot of nostalgia paging through it. Thank you for sharing.

 

[purpleblob]

I just read through the section on Korean 'packaging' RPGs - this topic fascinates me because I'm of Korean ancestry.

I feel like I should feel ashamed of not experiencing any of Korean RPGs but I don't - reading about how buggy these RPGs are makes me hesitant already + I'd have difficulty understanding Korean.

I tried playing Total War: Three Kingdoms in Korean and didn't understand a thing the game was explaining so I gave up - I'm much more comfortable with English now.

Of all the "Package RPGs" listed in the book, I know War of Genesis 2 was by far the most popular game in Korea and I look forward to hearing impression on its remake (The War of Genesis: Remnants of Gray) when (if) it releases.

 

[Redglyph]

I just read through the section on Korean 'packaging' RPGs - this topic fascinates me because I'm of Korean ancestry.

I feel like I should feel ashamed of not experiencing any of Korean RPGs but I don't - reading about how buggy these RPGs are makes me hesitant already + I'd have difficulty understanding Korean.

I tried playing Total War: Three Kingdoms in Korean and didn't understand a thing the game was explaining so I gave up - I'm much more comfortable with English now.

Of all the "Package RPGs" listed in the book, I know War of Genesis 2 was by far the most popular game in Korea and I look forward to hearing impression on its remake (The War of Genesis: Remnants of Gray) when (if) it releases.

Yes, I saw there were a few extras at the end on several country specificities, that seems an interesting part and I'll certainly dig into it. And a section with all the game covers, fancy.

Maybe you can use it as a motivation to be reacquainted with the language.
Is it complex to learn? Of course there's always the question of re-/learning the vocabulary... and not forgetting it when it's not used very often (what little knowledge of Dutch I had completely evaporated after a few years).

 

[Moorkh]

Nice, but:
This new "books as a service" concept means I can never be sure to own the finished product. Do I even still own my book? Not sure. It's now clear to me that the book I bought last year was just an early access beta and I seem to be asked to pay again to get an update. What's next? Day one patches for books? NFT covers? I smell a scam.

 

[Stingray]

Nice, but:
This new "books as a service" concept means I can never be sure to own the finished product. Do I even still own my book? Not sure. It's now clear to me that the book I bought last year was just an early access beta and I seem to be asked to pay again to get an update. What's next? Day one patches for books? NFT covers? I smell a scam.

You gotta wait 4 years after a book is released before reading it nowadays, to make sure all the patches and expansions are out.

And by the way, there IS actually a Day 1 patch for this book:
https://twitter.com/felipepepe/status/1490643051433259009

 

[purpleblob]

Maybe you can use it as a motivation to be reacquainted with the language.
Is it complex to learn? Of course there's always the question of re-/learning the vocabulary… and not forgetting it when it's not used very often (what little knowledge of Dutch I had completely evaporated after a few years).

I can actually read and understand spoken Korean very well but its the "gamer" language in Korean I don't understand. If I take time and look up what each gamer language word mean, I would be able to play in Korean but I can't find motivation atm - I already don't have enough time to play games as it is

I'm hoping War of Genesis remake or another Korean game would grab my interest enough to have a go at learning Korean gamer langauge at some point

 

[Morrandir]

I've been learning some Italian for the past months and decided that Expeditions: Rome would be a very fitting game for a first try playing in Italian. Alas it hasn't Italian language support.

 

[Redglyph]

I've been learning some Italian for the past months and decided that Expeditions: Rome would be a very fitting game for a first try playing in Italian. Alas it hasn't Italian language support.

Yes, it's somewhat ironic but it must be very costly to translate and get a good voice actor for 300k words of dialogue. You'll get a few words of Latin though, and a nice load screen reminding what the vocative case is for.

I suppose the Latin declensions are more natural to German-speaking people than English or French?

 

[Carnifex]

Hic sunt leones and omnis vir lupus have been some of my fondest latin phrases for years. Those folk knew how to pack much meaning in few words!

 

[HiddenX]

My dog is a Wolfspitz, so I can say:

"Lupus non timet canem latrantem."

 

[Redglyph]

I didn't know these, I suppose our teacher didn't like animals.

We started with JC in Gaul, "Caesar ubi rem esse in angusto uidit, scutum militi detraxit, ...". Can't easily place that in everyday's conversation

Ancient Greek is so much better, great philosophers.

 

[Jaguar]

I love this book so much. Is there a summary of the changes/additions somewhere, in case I wanted to just focus on those for the moment?

In the legal world in the old days, many of the books used to be binders where you would get monthly or annual supplements, complete with instructions from the publisher on how to insert the pages into the binder so that you would have an up-to-date book of the necessary statutes etc. I think that's what we need to do with this book - it will soon be too big to be contained in a conventional binding, and things will always be changing...

 

[bjon045]

Truely an outstanding piece of work. I wish I could get a copy but also failed the first time around.

It still has an incorrect piece of adive in regards to Dark Sun:

"You can transfer your party from Shattered Lands to Wake of the Ravager. This, however, will cause all enemies to have twice the HP, which will make the game really hard"

What the game actually does it set the difficulty rating to the maximum. You just need to change it back to the default and it will be exactly the same as a fresh start. Likewise with a fresh start you can set the difficulty to the maximum setting to get the same effect.

I'll have to send another message to Felipepe I am such a nit picker…

 

[Arkadia7]

Long ago, book sellers/publishers already beat the gaming industry to the punch, and they just call them second edition, third edition, etc. instead of patches. :lol:

 

[Redglyph]

Yeah, spotted a few things like missing author references that I had already mentioned for the previous books (who's PS for example?), and something I debated with Felipe - the side note for Expeditions: Viking says that Exp: Rome was released and since then Logic Artists had been restructured to work on NFT-based games, which is mostly wrong. L.A. actually created another company, Dynasty Studios, and many of its employees would eventually leave L.A. to work for D.S.

Minor stuff that doesn't lessen the pleasure of reading it, and the PDF can be updated any time. I appreciate these side notes that give additional and more recent news, it's really a great work.

15 months ago I bought the physical book from Amazon, it's still available there for the previous edition. More comfortable to read from a nice, true book.

I love this book so much. Is there a summary of the changes/additions somewhere, in case I wanted to just focus on those for the moment?

If you follow the link to download it, the last update summarizes what has changed. It's easy to compare the two documents if you want to see the details. It has gained some weight - 150 additional pages.!

Mainly, it adds the 2015-2019 years, a few extra older titles, expands / adds info & games on a few specific genres / categories (indie, JRPG, Korean, French, Chinese) in separate chapters. Oh, and a lot of game covers at the end, which is pretty nice.

 

[groundhog]

I received my physical copy in December and I absolutely love it. Massive thank you to felipe pepe, all the reviewers and Bitmap Books for a top quality product.