What does Videogamey mean to you?

[Raven Crowking]

in a Conan novel, only evil and vile magicians ever use magic

Not true in the original REH stories, where users of magic also aid Conan. In the only original Conan novel, it is Conan's decision not to characterize a church in Aquilonia as "evil and vile magicians" (i.e., his championing religious freedom against the general consensus of the nobility) that allows him to escape the forces of the BBEG, and to defeat the BBEG in the end. Both sides use magic, and because the good magic takes care of the evil magic, Conan can be victorious.

A roleplaying game is videogamey if the possibilities and activities within the game are limited largely by factors other than the people actually playing the game.

Good definition.

RC

 

[MrMyth]

I find things 'videogamey' if:

1) Options are presented which only have one single, predefined solution, and solutions outside of that inexplicably fail; and
2) If characters have to wander around 'levelling up', or otherwise feel like they are just grinding through enemies for treasure and xp.

I've never had the second one happen while playing D&D. I did see it happen when a friend ran the DiabloII RPG - but that was basically the entire point (to run through a zone collecting randomly generating potions and treasures), so it was the goal of the experience, not a fault.

The first issue, though, I have definitely seen crop up in games. And it is worth noting it is entirely an issue with the DM, rather than the specific game or edition being run.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not even going to read the thread, because if I did I'd probably start arguing with someone. To begin with, let me say I enjoy playing video games. I like them alot. But traditionally, video games have not been able to emulate the PnP game experience very well, nor have PnP games tried to emulate the video game experience.

In my opinion, the traits that define a computer RPG (cRPG) as opposed a traditional pen and paper RPG (RPG) are:

1) Designed to be played without a moderator, or with minimal creative input by the moderator: cRPGs are player centric, because the moderator is just a dumb computer with no vested interest in the game. But its possible to make an RPG which is player centric and reduces the moderator to a 'dumb' instrument that simply acts mechanistically and validates the player actions. PnP RPG's designed with these principles would have rules for generatoring encounters from base principles, would encourage a social contract where the moderator acts essentially as the player of the adversary side, would discourage NPC interaction/improvisation (ei, 'I use diplomacy on the NPC' would be valid player proposition), and would discourage on the fly rulings to handle special cases. They would have tight supposedly unambigious rules sets that would fully describe the possible range of player interaction, and encounters would have enumerated lists of action/results. I should note that any 'Tournament Module' is going to have these features to try to encourage uniformity of experience, but an RPG going the cRPG route would see uniformity of experience as one of its primary goal and would make the tournament play experience something of the default.
2) Everyone is a spell caster: One of the attributes that is increasingly common to cRPG's is that every character class has similar mechanics. Regardless of the flavor basis of the classes powers, it has a list of powers with some recharge feature (time, mana, etc.) which lets them use special manuevers at intervals. This has alot of strong external logic, in that it makes sense to design a game that way, but it often has poor internal logic. That is, from the perspective a of martial character within the game universe, it doesn't make alot of sense that he can make some sort of attack without tiring or otherwise suffering penalty, but that he's then unable to make that same attack until some arbitrary interval has passed.
3) External Logic trumps Internal Logic: The creators of a cRPG are constrained such that they have to make a game. They don't have the freedom to actually simulate something, because they don't have a creative actor as a moderator. The program can't invent on the fly. So the game has to work entirely on the game logic. The game world works the way it does because the game requires it. The village might only have 5 NPC's in it, and no discernable means of trade or industry, but the village blacksmith still manages to have for sale an everchanging list of weapons worth several times the value of everything in the village. This happens because the game requires that players be able to purchase weapon upgrades. This is however the reverse of the traditional RPG perspective, which is that everything in the game rules is dependent on simulating some sort of reality known to the game creator independently of the game. For example, you might be trying to create a game that simulates the reality of the Authurian myths, and so the game rules and the game so created has to match this reality. The constraints of the game world dictates the rules, rather than the reverse.
4) The game has a built in victory condition: There is a definite point in the game play where you know that it is 'over' and its time to start over. Much of game seems designed to bring you to this point where you beat the game. The game is inherently close ended by design.
5) Scalable Math: One of the things that Diablo brought to cRPGs that was very successful was that the math just worked regardless of the player level. As your character advanced in level, so did the power of the enemies so that for example, if your 10th level character had 10 times the hit points of your 1st level character and hit 10 times as hard, then the monsters he was facing would have 10 times the hit points and also hit 10 times as hard. If the character had a +50 bonus to attack that made him more likely to hit, then the monsters would have a +50 bonus to defense that made the character more likely to miss. The result was a uniform experience of game play and challenges that could scale up almost infinitely. You could then reuse the same limited set of game elements to challenge the character again and again. This was very useful in a video game because the program isn't creative. It doesn't invent things on the fly, so being able to reuse game features extended game play - or at least, gave the illusion of extended gameplay (arguably, it just allowed for infinite redundancy). An RPG that seemed 'videogamey' to me, would adopt this idea into its basic mechanics so that gameplay that was balanced at 1st level would be basically balanced at any level. This greatly simplifies the design process and is very useful if balance, uniformity of experience, low reliance on DM experience/ability, and the inherent notion of marching toward an end game state are going to features of your game design.

 

[Oryan77]

Healing SurgesI I must admit I'm surprised that people consider videogamey.

Indeed, I don't know of a videogame that actually HAS healing surges.

It's not that any video games specifically have something like healing surges; it's an example of the RPG having a feature that has no explanation for it's existence other than existing to make the "game" easier for the players & less of a hassle. Call of Duty is supposed to simulate real world war as close as they can do it, but it doesn't really make sense when you get shot and can heal the wound after a few seconds if you didn't die. That definitely can't happen in real life. But if it didn't do that, the game would be pretty annoying and not as fun. This seems to be the same explanation for Healing Surges in D&D.

My reasons for playing D&D is because I enjoy playing a character that I can roleplay well enough that the PC seems like a real person to me. I enjoy seeing how this characters life will turn out and I enjoy interacting in the campaign world. But if the world doesn't seem real to me and is filled with all kinds of illogical features with no attempt to at least make it seem logical, then I can't take it serious and it comes off as phony. If I wanted to approach D&D as "just a game" and not take the character serious, I'd rather play a computer RPG or an MMORPG because they are more convenient.

I can understand why people prefer having Healing Surge rules, but those rules are something I would definitely call videogamey because it just is (to me). It's not meant to be an insult to any edition, it's an observation.

 

[Oryan77]

And if significantly more posters would take the trouble to write stuff like this instead of simply saying, "It's too videogamey," I wouldn't dislike the term so much.

Oh man, if I did that every time I wanted to point out that I thought something was videogamey, nobody would ever read my long/boring posts ever again I assumed nobody was going to read that long post I wrote up

 

[AllisterH]

It's not that any video games specifically have something like healing surges; it's an example of the RPG having a feature that has no explanation for it's existence other than existing to make the "game" easier for the players & less of a hassle.

<snip>

I can understand why people prefer having Healing Surge rules, but those rules are something I would definitely call videogamey because it just is (to me). It's not meant to be an insult to any edition, it's an observation.

But this doesn't make sense to me.

The standard HP model has absolutely no model I can see in fiction whereas, Healing Surges at least to me correspond neatly with "Action movie/books staples".

Again, surely people have seen/read action scenes where the hero gets beaten up in an encounter, five minutes later is fresh enough to handle ANOTHER encounter but at the end of the day, he's TOTALLY beat and looks like a hamburger but a good night's sleep and he's ready to go the next day.

It's practically a staple of the Hollywood action movie/blockbuster

I can see complaints about this being too "action-movie" oriented but videogamey?

That I don't see how since the "videogame" method was usually the HP method of D&D for a LONG, LONG time.

Indeed, I've read vide games designers who explicitly mention the idea of regneration (which has become somewhat of the default healing method in videogames these days) was a move towards trying to make the world more believable since it was easier to justify a being have quick healing than having to mysteriously find an inechaustible supplu of healing potions/wands.

 

[corncob]

Videogamey: A game, or elements withing a game, that are overtly gamist and also happen to annoy the user. This term is commonly employed by those whose vocabulary suffers from Small Reference Pools. Synonyms: boardgamey, wargamey badwrongfun; antonyms: verisimilitude, sensawunda, real roleplaying

 

[MrMyth]

It's not that any video games specifically have something like healing surges; it's an example of the RPG having a feature that has no explanation for it's existence other than existing to make the "game" easier for the players & less of a hassle. Call of Duty is supposed to simulate real world war as close as they can do it, but it doesn't really make sense when you get shot and can heal the wound after a few seconds if you didn't die. That definitely can't happen in real life. But if it didn't do that, the game would be pretty annoying and not as fun. This seems to be the same explanation for Healing Surges in D&D.

Except that the entire model for hp itself has no real basis outside the game. How come someone with 200 hp can take 190 damage and be perfectly fine, and then another 20 damage instantly kills him? How come each of those attacks don't inflict various long-lasting injuries on him? Some games use those models - D&D doesn't. Instead, it treats hp as a combination of many factors, including both health and fighting capability. Healing surges are just an extension of that - how much vigor a character has over the course of an entire day, rather than at any one time.

I've never found a version of D&D hp that reflects 'real life'. It honestly used to bug me quite a bit that a high-level fighter could literally let someone take a dagger and cut his throat, repeatedly, a dozen times, without dying. But that comes with abstraction, and 4Es embrace of that abstraction - and tying it more to cinematics and narrative over anything else - actually worked for me a lot more smoothly than trying to accept it as based on reality.

So... yes, at least to me, healing surges are perhaps video-gamey, but no more so than hitpoints themselves.

 

[Celebrim]

This term is commonly employed by those whose vocabulary suffers from Small Reference Pools. Synonyms: boardgamey, wargamey badwrongfun; antonyms: verisimilitude, sensawunda, real roleplaying

Whereas, implying that people who disagree with you are stupid or ignorant is commonly employed by....?

videogamey != boardgamey != wargamey

I don't think there is a small reference pool here. I think that you'd hardly find a broader reference pool on the subject of games than people who visit EnWorld. If you want to discuss games, this is one of the deepest pools in the ocean. If you don't like the vocabulary we are employing here, please go whereever you think the posters are more knowledgable on the subject of RPGs and leave off the assertions that people who don't agree with you do so from the basis of ignorance.

While the subject is coming up, let me say that terms like 'videogamey' get used for several different reasons:

1) 'videogamey' can serve as short hand for a whole bunch of interrelated ideas, for example see Oryan77 Today 02:58 and my post at 11:23 AM. If I want to discuss these ideas with Oryan77, I don't want to have to repeat an entire essay whenever I refer to the ideas in question. I note clear overlap in several areas that Oryan77 considers videogamey and areas I consider videogamey. We used different vocabulary to name and describe these different areas, but the ideas under discussion are clearly related.

2) 'videogamey' can serve as an instinctive way of describing a feeling that person has which they are not yet able to articulate clearly. This is hardly surprising considering the way the human mind works. It's entirely possible for someone to pick up on some aspect of his surroundings without being able to name it or even describe it. In this sense the person is saying, "It gives me the impression that I first experienced or most associate with playing video games. I haven't yet analyzed why I would get this impression thoroughly that I can articulate what the linkage between the two experiences are, but I'm calling my impression 'videogamey' and after I wrestle with the problem a while I hope to be able to explain this in more detail."

Both senses are completely valid. Not everyone is able to articulate every feeling that they have clearly, and everyone has problems articulating their opinions at least some of the time. Most people have various vague feelings but have never been able to give those feelings a concrete grounding in logic. In fact, one of the reasons why people might talk about something in a forum like this is to help themselves articulate what they feel or believe. Nothing helps clarify and hone your thinking quite like bouncing ideas off other people, including those that might be critical of your ideas.

 

[Oryan77]

the hero gets beaten up in an encounter, five minutes later is fresh enough to handle ANOTHER encounter

Except that the entire model for hp itself has no real basis outside the game.

The model for HP was actually how I have always imagined it being explained in comparison to AllisterH's movie character example.

The PC gets beat up during an encounter, but he is still alive and the wounds really don't have any impact on his ability to keep fighting (until he's unconscious). The wounds just bring him closer to death, but he is still whooping butt. When he rests for 8 hours, then he's a bit more refreshed and not as worried about being close to death.

Let's see if I can explain this with game stats:

Rambo has 100 HP.

Rambo gets shot in the arm, but is still fighting (-20 HP)
He gets stabbed in the thigh, but is still fighting (-10 HP)
He gets punched and kicked in the face, but is still fighting (-10 HP)

He looks pretty beat up, but he's alive. Realistically, he probably wouldn't be able to keep fighting. And I doubt I'd want to keep fighting after getting shot & stabbed. But, it's a movie, so he is still left with 60 HPs. He can keep fighting if he wanted or he can go home and rest for the night. But with Healing Surges, Rambo could be 100% health, get stabbed for 5 HP, use a Healing Surge, and be at 100% health again. How can that be explained in the real world?

Just because he was wounded but still fighting doesn't mean that he Healing Surged himself. He just had plenty of HP to keep going. That is how I always imagined HP representing your ability to keep going (even though HPs still aren't very realistic).

Healing Surges to me seem to say that you actually heal wounds instantly. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it seems to be saying. I get stabbed, and rest for 5 minutes and my stab would could be completely gone. That's how I see it in Call of Duty...I get shot but survived, then a few seconds later I'm perfectly fine.