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.