The 5th edition has its fans and critics, but the common consensus is that 5e is the most-RP focused of the latest editions; for many good reasons.
Sorry I don't see that. But then again, maybe the very definition and understanding of what constitutes RP has been subverted nowadays. I mean, we have people on this forum saying that in an RPG the story and the characters and the lore don't matter and it's the rules and mechanics that are central to the game. When presented with that as the argument for what is an RPG, what's there for me say to that?
That isn’t what I said. I said the core that defined a BG game and differentiated it from many other RPGs was how faithfully it interpreted D&D mechanics.
I didn’t say any of those things don’t matter. Though in the first BG, there are very few choices to make role playing wise, the story is quite straight forward, and there is almost no character development, so I guess by your own definition we have to declare Baldur’s Gate 1 is not an RPG?
There's plenty of both story and character development in BG1. The choices you make about how you will react to being a bhalspawn happen pretty early in BG1. And to the extent that character development is limited in the original games (both of them), it is entirely because 2e rules were very limiting. So no. I completely and totally reject the notion that the original BG games were all about faithfully interpreting D&D rules. They both deviated from 2e D&D rules often, and if anything *that* is what makes them so D&D. The FIRST rule of D&D (in every edition) is that the rules are yours to do with as you please. Use them; don't use them; change them; create your own. This is what D&D itself encourages the players to do. That is the very essence of D&D: the rules are not written in stone, and you the player can play the game however you want to play it. So the very notion of "faithfully interpreting D&D mechanics" is both un-D&D and un-RPG.
