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[woodelf]

Originally Posted by Scribble

So I was playing Dead Space last night for a bit, and I died. (Booo.)

The game as lots of (all?) computer games do started from the last point I saved at. It wasn't a far point behind where I died, so I liked my ego wounds and moved on...

But then it made me think...

I'm pretty used to that idea in computer games. If I die, I don't end up having to restart from the very begining, or make a new guy, or choose some other path in the adventure. I just restart from the last save point and move on. I don't think twice about it. I don't think I ever really thought twice about it in the very first few computer games that had save points in them. I just restarted, this time with a renewed energy to beat the jerk that killed me...

But in a Pen and Paper game, this idea just seems wrong. I died... There's no restarting the adventure from the last "save" point... You make a new guy, or you end up "failing" at the adventure and suffering the consequences.

What is it about P&P games that causes this difference?

is it the DM aspect?

Do you accept the "save point" more in a computer game because the computer can't come up with "consequences" on the fly? Or because the computer can't handle another adventurer joining the game, and taking on a "new" adventure based on the old?

Or is it something else??

I suspect the difference is that, for many, RPGs are essentially a highly-structured storytelling activity. The game-like aspects may be more important than the story-like aspects but, ultimately, the appeal is the story--the opportunity to inhabit an alternative person and live an alternative life. If it wasn't, they wouldn't be playing an RPG. Because that's the one thing that an RPG brings to the table (no pun intended) that no other sort of game does: the freedom to tell that story and live out that other life.

Computer games, no matter how good, so far can't provide the freedom to make storytelling a viable part of their experience. You can experience a story that someone else has crafted--they might've even crafted multiple stories and you can choose amongst them. But you can't tell your own. And stories (barring a few more fantastical ones) have a causal narrative that involves consequences--"do overs" violate that causality. So, when you play a computer game, the appeal is that of either a very complex game with really nifty visuals, or of experiencing an existing story, not of creating your own story.

In short, they're really two different activities that have converged to a certain degree on the surface. But their fundamental appeals are very different. This has been masked not only by their surface similarities, but also by the crossover appeal--a lot of people that like one like the other, perhaps because of the surface similarities, perhaps for different reasons--differences that they might not even themselves be aware of, depending largely on whether or not they've ever bothered to think about why they like them. But, IMHO, they're no more alike than orcas and sharks.

Though the fact that there are other people involved who'd have to replay, rather than just computer-controlled NPCs (there's a computer-game-specific term for this, isn't there?), may also contribute--i hadn't thought of that part, specifically, before.