General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Just think its a mistake to get to far ahead of things. This is isn't rocket science, and it isn't art. Its just D&D.
True dat. But then, sometimes something happens to click, some kind of a vision or something and if you pursue it you may find out you have made something awesome. Like the creators of good ol DnD.
I think there is to much invested in the idea of traditional computer rpgs and MMO's.
After all, the non MMO, non first/third person games are very successful as well. Remember bejeweled?
There is a ton of room for variant computer games. The Wii showed how much of a success could be built catering to non MMO group play. The kind of close proximity group play that table top gaming depends on.
I think there is a big future for tabletop play assisted or using a computer, table top play of a form not that much different than what goes on now. Even if you throw out the tactical maps and miniatures. I can imagine a multilayer computer game designed to be played by a group of people at the same table.
Throw in battle mats and miniatures and I almost already see it.
Some where I saw a monitor stand that let you flip a monitor so the glass was parallel to the table top. That and a lap top could go a long way to support the computer battle mat. Imagine a 24 or 30 inch flat panel being used on a table as a battle mat. I'm not even talking about multi touch tech yet.
I find pitching things as a battle of MMO vs. Table top as very myopic.
Last edited by darjr; 23rd June 2009 at 03:45 AM..
Boardgames, consoles and MMOs all do the contemporary (and historical) D&D style of play--create so-called "heroes", butcher monsters, sweep and clear dungeons, collect loot and gear--better for the common man. It's immediate, tactile, convenient and accessable in a manner that TRPGs can't achieve without becoming one or more of them (and ceasing to be a TRPG).
Let them have it.
Tabletop RPGs are at their best when they focus upon the intangibles that those same media can't handle very well because it's neither tactile nor friendly to codification or inumeration. TRPGs that go heavy on investigation, on interpersonal interaction, on practical problem-solving, etc. are TRPGs that play to the strengths of the TRPG medium.
The future, therefore, is not with D&D- not as it's usually conceived, and certainly not as the current edition presents itself.
Boardgames, consoles and MMOs all do the contemporary (and historical) D&D style of play--create so-called "heroes", butcher monsters, sweep and clear dungeons, collect loot and gear--better for the common man. It's immediate, tactile, convenient and accessable in a manner that TRPGs can't achieve without becoming one or more of them (and ceasing to be a TRPG).
Let them have it.
Tabletop RPGs are at their best when they focus upon the intangibles that those same media can't handle very well because it's neither tactile nor friendly to codification or inumeration. TRPGs that go heavy on investigation, on interpersonal interaction, on practical problem-solving, etc. are TRPGs that play to the strengths of the TRPG medium.
The future, therefore, is not with D&D- not as it's usually conceived, and certainly not as the current edition presents itself.
Very interesting points. Old school D&D is particularly videogame-y if it's compared to crpgs such as Morrowind or Oblivion.
Sandbox style play. Impartial referee (in fact here a computer will always be better than a human). Exploration a significant part of play. Gamist, no roleplaying (in the sense of acting).
__________________ The female tiefling's horns are not 'handlebars'.
External visual culture is rampant in our own day, and will be on the increase. But it doesn't ever stand a chance of supplanting internal visual culture. Not as long as there are people who appreciate the difference. Everyone who ever read, and was captivated by, a book knows the difference. So don't let Ryan fool you into thinking that one day that difference will go away.
Despite the somewhat insulting tone of your post (it might not surprise you to learn that I've read a book or two in my day, and understand the power of the inner eye), I stand by what I said.
Books and roleplaying games exercise different imaginative muscles anyway. Roleplaying... putting yourself in a situation, empathising with those around you, employing in-character dialogue, shutting out your own meta-knowledge... these things are hard. They take practice, certainly a lot more practice than reading a good book, where the author uses words to entice you into a world of his own making. And like anything that's hard, something that's easier, more immediately gratifying, and at least as much fun, will win. If WoW can do it, then a future, much more immersive simulation which creates a roleplaying scenario on the fly, translates your actions into photo-realistic imagery, and allows you to share that environment with your friends, bloody well will do it as well.
__________________ "The last time I ran into myself, I kicked my own ass." Chasing the DM, a blog for DM's like me who really feel they should know what they're doing by now.
For DM's: 4E Dungeon Index (adventures, conversions, and sidetreks by level, last updated 16th Oct. through Dungeon #171).
I have a problem to understand "Neighborhood culture is breaking down", for example. Do kids not have a circle of friends anymore? My kids do. So do all of the kids they go to school with.
One thing that might have changed over the year is the number of children in a neighborhood. The advent of the pill changed the number of children people have a lot. And this results in less children that are around overall, and so less chances to make social contacts to kids of similar age.
But that's why kindergartens and schools can be so valuable, too. They bring all the kids together, even if they do not normally live close to each other, and eliminate that problem again.
Well, at least that's my working thesis. But I am not sure that this relates strongly to RPGs - as I said, kindergartens and schools ensure that children still have others of similar age to play with. That they don't necessarily have a close-knit neighborhood might not matter at all.
Thoughts of the Arch Chancellor - My weblog on EN World - containing game related material, like: house rules, design theories, reviews, play reports, adventure ideas
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Tabletop RPGs are at their best when they focus upon the intangibles that those same media can't handle very well because it's neither tactile nor friendly to codification or inumeration. TRPGs that go heavy on investigation, on interpersonal interaction, on practical problem-solving, etc. are TRPGs that play to the strengths of the TRPG medium.
That is what makes TRPGs stand out from MMOs or CRPGs. But it's not everything. The trick is that TRPGs combine this with the things MMOs also do. It can't do them as well (since humans have to resolve the rules, not a dual core processor.) But that doesn't mean that part is irrelevant.
If you make that part to simple in an effort to attract new players, you will lose players that like it more complex. And they still don't want to play WoW.
I am one of those players. If you reduce my tactical and strategical possibilities to a simple coin toss, I am out of the game, no matter how much investigation you have to offer. It just wouldn't feel right to me. But if you take away all that ivnestigation, interpersonal interaction, problem-solving, world exploration and leave me with resetting dungeon instances and killingmesoftly, the Elven Druid and hotchick23, Human Paladin, I am out, too.
But you can't add all this stuff to [insert generic MMORPG] and expect hotchick23 to care for it, either.
You cannot please everyone all of the time. The real goal for every game is figuring out what its niche is and who to appeal to. You can try to go for compromises, and it might work some of the time. But don't be surprised if people ignore you, because they don't necessarily want to compromise some of their fun for a hypothetical other player they don't play with.
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If you make that part to simple in an effort to attract new players, you will lose players that like it more complex. And they still don't want to play WoW.
I am one of those players. If you reduce my tactical and strategical possibilities to a simple coin toss, I am out of the game, no matter how much investigation you have to offer. It just wouldn't feel right to me.
This is what I do not understand. Chess for example has relatively simple rules but the tactical and strategical possibilities are immense. A more complex game does not mean more options necessarily. It may mean more things to calculate and organize. As it sands 3e D&D and 4e suffer too much from this IMO. There is too much crunch that offers nothing of what you are saying in the end. Too much crunch just for the sake of it.
Roleplaying... putting yourself in a situation, empathising with those around you, employing in-character dialogue, shutting out your own meta-knowledge... these things are hard. They take practice, certainly a lot more practice than reading a good book, where the author uses words to entice you into a world of his own making.
I disagree. A good roleplaying game should not require these tasks but naturally condition the players by its rules to roleplay their characters. For example in D&D and every other rpg you have actions you can choose and actions come with consequences. The more artificial these rules are the more effort you need to roleplay. The less artificial they are the more naturally your choices will resemble the choices one would make in the situation the game puts you into.
A more complex game does not mean more options necessarily. It may mean more things to calculate and organize. As it sands 3e D&D and 4e suffer too much from this IMO. There is too much crunch that offers nothing of what you are saying in the end. Too much crunch just for the sake of it.
Could you possibly name (even some of) the game features of each system that are 'guilty of this', so to speak?
This is what I do not understand. Chess for example has relatively simple rules but the tactical and strategical possibilities are immense.
Would you consider Chess a "casual" game?
It needs the right amount of complexities. Chess weakness is not the amount of rules you need to know, it is that it requires thinking several moves ahead, luring your enemy in a trap while avoiding his. That requires a lot of continual mental effort, and you have little tools to help you think through it.
I like to distinguish between "complex" and "complicated".
In this context. Complicated is if you have to run through a lot of steps to achieve your goals. Complex is if you have a lot of possible things to do.
For example: There are tons of feats in D&D 3E and 4E. But that doesn't make the game complicated, just complex. Complicated is a feat that does give you a +2 bonus instead of a +1 bonus to attacks when you charge an enemy you have marked that has hit you on his last turn. The bonus increases to +4 if the enemy hasn't moved since his last turn. (This feat doesn't exist, as far as I know. ) Try to figure out when you can use this feat and what benefit you get!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aus_Snow
Could you possibly name (even some of) the game features of each system that are 'guilty of this', so to speak?
Yes. I usually see more features that are "clumsily" implemented, but not really crunch just to have crunch. And demanding to avoid this is like demanding a bug-free software. A noble goal, but practically impossible.
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It needs the right amount of complexities. Chess weakness is not the amount of rules you need to know, it is that it requires thinking several moves ahead, luring your enemy in a trap while avoiding his. That requires a lot of continual mental effort, and you have little tools to help you think through it.
I like to distinguish between "complex" and "complicated".
In this context. Complicated is if you have to run through a lot of steps to achieve your goals. Complex is if you have a lot of possible things to do.
For example: There are tons of feats in D&D 3E and 4E. But that doesn't make the game complicated, just complex. Complicated is a feat that does give you a +2 bonus instead of a +1 bonus to attacks when you charge an enemy you have marked that has hit you on his last turn. The bonus increases to +4 if the enemy hasn't moved since his last turn. (This feat doesn't exist, as far as I know. ) Try to figure out when you can use this feat and what benefit you get!
I see. For me, for an rpg that is played among a group the interesting qualities of complex and complicated come to be the same.
This stands for the options the whole group or team may be finding itself due to the options of individual players. They have to be so many as to be unpredictable, more or less like chess, so that group dynamics are continuous and players will eventually be developing within the group a playing personality or style due to the dynamic social dynamics within the playing group that are in work. Something like 4e's tactics in combat for example.
But to achieve this you do not need loads of crunch. You need the right interface or formula. For example in complex theory the application of a very simple rule may be generating a pattern just as complex as any patchwork you could be trying to create to make things as complex as you can.
The more patchwork you want or have to do the more prone you are to be creating artificialities or bugs as you call them. If you are a hardcore fan these may not matter or on the contrary be welcome since you are invested in game mastery yourself as a hardcore fan. But this is most problematic for the casual gamer. A casual gamer may still want all the tactics and options you want, he may want to have as much fun as you have but he does not want to learn or master artificial things to achieve this. What he wants is something more natural and friendly but equally powerful.
If I were a Russian, I guess chess would be what comes in mind when someone says "a casual game"
No, seriously mass media press and stuff carry chess matches columns. All the chess rules fit relatively in a 2 page brochure.
But to achieve this you do not need loads of crunch. You need the right interface or formula. For example in complex theory the application of a very simple rule may be generating a pattern just as complex as any patchwork you could be trying to create to make things as complex as you can.
To stay on an abstract level:
The problem is that "re-using" a formula requires working through an algorithmus. That is great for a computer, he will do your do {..} while loop 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times. He doesn't care.
Humans will find it boring after the 10th loop, if not before.
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To stay on an abstract level:
The problem is that "re-using" a formula requires working through an algorithmus. That is great for a computer, he will do your do {..} while loop 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times. He doesn't care.
Humans will find it boring after the 10th loop, if not before.
But you do not have to loop. Humans naturally attend a more fuzzy approach towards complex patterns and naturally expect more than just one thing to happen. They assign and value options or approaches probabilistically. The precision space that is left here is filled with group dynamics. Group dynamics themselves give statistical information to the player in a natural way since they lie in our natural operational realm. In practice this substitutes the whole loop because round after round things change and in the end group dynamics is what will matter -not seeing through the loop you are talking about.
As often, I begin to lose understanding of what you want to say or express.
I think a lot of your theoretical discussions would be better if you posted some descriptive examples.
What does a "fuzzy aproach towards complex patterns" mean? "Assign and value options or approaches probabilistically"? How does this relate back to the simple rule that creates a complex pattern?
Thoughts of the Arch Chancellor - My weblog on EN World - containing game related material, like: house rules, design theories, reviews, play reports, adventure ideas
Secret Member of <Think we would just hide our secret with a spoiler tag, eh?>
WOW does everything that D&D4 does, but it's faster, easier and far more convenient than D&D4. Hence, I play WOW and not D&D4.
So how is that new Dungeon Maker in WoW?
What about that new tool that lets you open every door?
Or that dynamic dialogue where you can actually have a conversation with any NPC?
Or what about that amazing world shattering event that you helped move forward, that was your own idea!
How about that kingdom that you set up? I imagine your characters children are getting to the age where they too might go adventuring.
Perhaps you can explain further about the armies you raised up against the gnomish kingdom who insulted your dwarven brothers?
And speaking of dwarves I hear you can actually change their stats to what you like now in the game.
Isn't the biggest obstacle to D&D not getting players interested but getting players interested who actually want to DM?
I've been playing since 1e and all through the years, getting players has never been the problem. Finding one of them who wants to DM though? There;s the trick...
They don't. Last I checked, the age group that reads the most comics is 18-20something.
I went through my comic collection a few days ago to replace some of the backing boards. I love doing this to look at the old adverts as the comics themselves.
The backs of comics in the 80's were often taken up by TSR: Top secret, Forgotten Realms grey box, Marvel superheroes, all the various products for their games. There ofcourse was often lots of candy and cookie ads as well.
I think it might have been last month or the month before, what did marvel have on its back advertisement?
A HONDA HYBRID...
I think this is VERY telling of who the current comic audience really is. The next most common to me seems to be Video game advertisments which is not very telling at all as comic fans hit the demographic VG companies are after.
INSIDE the comics have toy advertisements and young bedroom set adverts... is this aiming at kids or their parents?
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