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I really haven't had much time for anything lately other than work, and a very few other odds and ends like getting my daughter into the CAP. I haven't even had time to go back and respond to old threads here I've been meaning to respond to.

But this morning, after a somewhat grueling couple of weeks of work and physical training (100 degree heat takes a real toll on an old fart like me) I found in my in-box this morning, along with the usual assortment of requests for contract bids and analysis papers, work projects, and letters from old buddies and friends the first edition of the EN World D&D/RPG Newsletter. Wanting a few minutes of distraction from other concerns I read part of it (I liked it, thought it a little overdone and busy in some respects, namely layout - I think it could be a little better organized - then again it is the first edition and I'm still reorganizing my newsletters a decade or more later, but interesting, fun, and informative) and clicked on a link to an article.

After reading the article and one of the associated articles I had to admit I either agreed for the most part, or, almost completely agreed, with the conclusions of both writers.


Statements that struck me as interesting and worth considering in these articles were such as these:

(I agree with this to an extent, and for the most part, but not entirely.)

It certainly is. Measure twice, cut once.

and...

(I think it is about more than this, I think it is about encouraging real world heroism in real people through the game as just one example of how people can mentally and psychologically practice the ideals of heroism, after all you become in life what you train for, even if the training scenario is really just an imaginary exercise, but I thought that article line was a good, general statement about the role play game experience.)


Anywho I found both articles interesting.

I thought some of you guys might like to discuss some of the ideas presented in these articles.

I for one am glad to hear game designers and those working in the gaming industry once again talking about heroism, history, and wonder. As opposed to just mechanics and math.

Well, it's back to the mill.

Jack7

I've been doing some thinking about the real differences between the tabletop and the computer/console for a gaming experience, and I think I might be onto something.

First thing to start with is the idea that a medium affects the things you can do with it. This is assumed by pretty much any storyteller ever: the medium affects the story you can tell. The story you deliver in a book format is different than the story you can deliver in music, which is slightly orthogonal to the story you can tell in epic poetry, etc., etc. Creative types -- people with stories to tell -- find a medium that they can speak through and try to tell you stories through that medium.

That's basic fiction theory, of course.

The fact of the matter is that the tabletop and the computer are different mediums of game-playing as well (as are cards, or dice, or board games, or whatever). They affect the kinds of games you can play with them.

When you're playing a video game, your options are limited, but that doesn't matter to you. The "raw fun unit" of a videogame is control. It's like figuring out how to use a tool: your mind communicates something into the world, and as a result, things happen. Cause and effect, basic physics, the potential for you to advance (get a high score or approach the "complete" game) -- it's all based around "I tell you to do something, and you do it" kind of control. In a videogame, if you reach a dead end, you just press buttons until something happens. This is pretty impossible in any kind of table-top game.

What's unique to the table top, is freedom. Your options are unlimited, which is why you can't just try all your options -- you effectively have more options than you could ever try. It's also why we need a GM -- a judge -- to tell us what happens when we take an option. A human hand can guide the events much better than a dispassionate, raw physics engine (or heavy simulation).

In my mind, a "pure tabletop game," using the medium to it's greatest advantage, would focus entirely on that freedom. This means it would be necessarily fairly rules-light and abstract. It would be modular and easy to design for, allowing individual GMs to fully master their own games, and to make them distinct. It wouldn't be tied to a genre or a playstyle. It may be tied to a central resolution mechanic -- what to roll when you want to do something, and how that roll is modified.

I don't see 4e very strongly focusing on that freedom (not that any other edition necessarily did more or less -- talking about 4e as 4e here, not in comparison to other D&D's). It's codified, complex, defined, genre-specific, obsessed with combat and the minutae of pushing around plastic toys. It's tethered to that, and limited by that.

I don't think most games use the medium to the best of its ability. Indeed, some of the best (GURPS? T20?) pointlessly tether themselves. It's easy to have complexity, after all. Simplicity is difficult and doesn't really sell books.

But if D&D and the tabletop in general want to dodge the slow bleeding death from a million little digital cuts, they're going to need to accentuate that freedom, that unique capacity to "do anything." Replace the powers system with the stunt system in 4e. Make GURPS less modular, more cohesive. Leave videogames the "make a choice between two things" territory, and embrace "do as thou wilt."

In fact, the tabletop has been mired in ways to limit freedom. That won't survive. If players want to choose between limited options, videogames are much easier, and much more satisfying. The tabletop needs to hone it's own unique contribution: the ability to go wild, go off-script, and blaze your own trail.

More thoughts later, more than likely.

PS: Pic is supposed to be evocative of a setting I'm kind of half-working on called Infinite Skies. It's conceived of as a D&D setting entirely on floating islands above a planet of choking dust where giant mechanical deities lie (and occasionally stir). The central idea in that setting is one of "freedom:" something that can only be unique to table-top games.

Kamikaze Midget