Computers beat up my role player

[RFisher]

Yep. Back in the day there were people who defined RPGs also by their turn based combat. It was used to help distinguish The Legend of Zelda from an RPG. That's quite outdated by now, however.

The trend away from turn-based combat is, I think, one of the reasons my CRPG playing declined even before my amount of time to devote to gaming declined.

If you go into a Gamestop (or other local gaming store) and ask to see some Roleplaying Games, everyone will know what you're talking about, will not correct you, and you'll often find someone who you can discuss the latest RPG with.

Yes. Language is about communicating. So if you want to discuss the games called CRPGs, you don't bother taking issue with the term. That doesn't mean that everyone feels the term is appropriate.

A friend of mine who absolutely loved RTS games was the first to admit that they weren't really strategy scale games. He didn't bring this up when discussing the games with other gamers. Only when he was explaining the genre to non-gamers.

If you are playing with a particularly restrictive/rail-roady/pixelbitching DM (yes, I'm aware thats a computer game term, but it does describe the actions of some DMs well) where there is only one answer to a problem or you are forced to follow a particular story, are you not roleplaying?

The fact that there have been immature/inexperienced DMs isn't really the issue. They don't last long. They either stop DMing or grow out of it.

Can we simply drop the definition argument for a moment, & let me ask this: What is the difference between CRPGs & TRPGs that is the reason that you who play both don't abandon TRPGs for CRPGs completely?

(Although, I tend to think that single-player CRPGs & MORPGs (whether massive or not) should probably be treated as different categories for such a comparison.)

 

[Hussar]

Grass and tomatoes are both 'plants' just like CRPGS and RPGs are 'Games' or 'Entertainments'.

Tomatoes are a fruit, by nature of it's structure. But they are not sweet like most fruits, and are not made into pies or desserts. Every grocery store I know groups the tomatoes in the produce section with the vegetables. There is even a popular vegetable juice drink that is mostly made from tomatoes. I would be willing to bet that if you asked any ten people in the US to name five vegetables, tomato would be one.

Most people consider tomatoes to be vegetables and treat their actual classification as a fruit as an interesting bit of trivia.

This still does not prevent them from being dead wrong.

/threadjack When I lived in Korea, they would put those little cherry tomatoes on a parfait at the restaurant because tomatoes are fruit.

/threadjack.

Can we simply drop the definition argument for a moment, & let me ask this: What is the difference between CRPGs & TRPGs that is the reason that you who play both don't abandon TRPGs for CRPGs completely?

There is a false assumption in this question. It assumes that for CRPG'S to qualify as RPG's, they must be exactly the same as TRPG's. No one is claiming that they are not different experiences. The claim is that they are both role playing experiences. In both set ups, you are playing a role of a fictional character in a fictional setting determined beforehand by someone with some form of story to be experienced. ((The story might be just walk into each cave and kill everything in sight, but, it's still a story))

Are they different experiences? Of course. That's not the question. However, to claim that there is only one form of role playing and that is Tabletop Role Playing, is false.

 

[Raven Crowking]

In both set ups, you are playing a role of a fictional character in a fictional setting determined beforehand by someone with some form of story to be experienced.

Not exactly.

In a role-playing game, the setting and character are mutable based on the needs of the game. What lies "over that hill" might not be determined beforehand, but you may still go that way and find something (because the DM can "wing it"). Similarly, who your character is (and more important, what he can attempt/how his role is defined) is only partially determined beforehand. You conflate stats with character here. Your character is made based upon how those stats are used, and what actions that character takes, for good or ill. In a computer game, many of these decisions (essential for actually playing a role) are taken away from you.


RC

 

[Hussar]

Not exactly.

In a role-playing game, the setting and character are mutable based on the needs of the game. What lies "over that hill" might not be determined beforehand, but you may still go that way and find something (because the DM can "wing it"). Similarly, who your character is (and more important, what he can attempt/how his role is defined) is only partially determined beforehand. You conflate stats with character here. Your character is made based upon how those stats are used, and what actions that character takes, for good or ill. In a computer game, many of these decisions (essential for actually playing a role) are taken away from you.


RC

And, thus, the experience is different. I get that. I'm not disagreeing with that. However, it's disingenuous to expect both experiences to be exactly the same. It's also strange to claim that the sole definition of role play is based on tabletop gaming, when people claim to play roles in other types of games.

 

[Umbran]

In a role-playing game, the setting and character are mutable based on the needs of the game.

I don't believe that's necessarily true. There's stories all over the place about railroading GMs - they have a fixed scenario outside of which the players cannot step, predetermined solutions to challenges the players must use. Are these guys running an RPG?

You seem to be running really, really close to saying that a group of people sitting down with D&D rulebooks and a published module that like to run the combat rules strictly as written won't be playing a role playing game. And that's going to be pretty darned absurd.

 

[Raven Crowking]

And, thus, the experience is different. I get that. I'm not disagreeing with that. However, it's disingenuous to expect both experiences to be exactly the same. It's also strange to claim that the sole definition of role play is based on tabletop gaming, when people claim to play roles in other types of games.

I don't expect both to be the same. Playing Traveller (original) is a very different experience than playing D&D. I would say playing 3.X is a different experience than playing 1e. Nonetheless, these are all role-playing games.

Differences that arise from details are not the same as differences of kind. it's disingenuous to claim that differences in kind don't lead to real differences in what the games are.

It is a fact that computer "role-playing games" arose directly as an attempt to simulate the experience of playing tabletop role-playing games. In fact, many of the early ads for those games were quite upfront about this. I have seen nothing whatsoever that remotely suggests that computer games are not simulations of playing RPGs to this day.

Certainly, I will grant that there are computer programs that can aid the DM as a form of communication, and some computer "games" might at times fill this niche....insofar as the technical proficiency of the DM allows the "game" to be a help and not a hinderance to actual play.

I will also grant that some people today use the term "RPG" to mean something very different than its original meaning.

I will even grant that, some day, a computer game might pass a Turing test, so that there really is computer role-playing game.

However, those things granted, there is no c"RPG" today, in the sense that "RPG" was originally used (i.e., assuming that you do not artificially extend the meaning of "RPG" to include computer games, as the computer game industry has, apparently, successfully done). This is not a knock against computer gaming; some of the computer games I have played have been quite fun.

It is a recognition that the difference is a difference in kind.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

You seem to be running really, really close to saying that a group of people sitting down with D&D rulebooks and a published module that like to run the combat rules strictly as written won't be playing a role playing game. And that's going to be pretty darned absurd.

That's an oft-used strawman.

Unless, of course, you suggest that a group of people sitting down with D&D rulebooks and a published module that like to run the combat rules strictly as written are unable to adapt to unforseen ideas and plans during the course of the game. If so, you have a very limited view of people, and your position is going to be pretty darn absurd.

If, conversely, that group sits down and allows no option for action outside the RAW, allows no non-preordained dialogue to affect the action, and allows no solution to problems that was not already written into the module....in other words, if the DM runs the game as a computer game.....then you are right. I would say it ceases to be a role-playing game. Of course, that's a pretty darn absurd scenario, too.


RC

 

[Hussar]

It is a fact that computer "role-playing games" arose directly as an attempt to simulate the experience of playing tabletop role-playing games. In fact, many of the early ads for those games were quite upfront about this. I have seen nothing whatsoever that remotely suggests that computer games are not simulations of playing RPGs to this day.

This is ... wrong. Sorry, a CRPG does not simulate the experience of an RPG and never really has. It simulates the same thing that an TRPG simulates - living and acting within some form of adventure.

Unless your CRPG'S include arguing with your DM and Cheetos, it's certainly not simulating playing an RPG.

In your football example, Madden Football is simulating playing football. Shooting a paper ball with your finger is also simulating playing football. Thus, they are both simulations. One is cruder than the other, but, they are still simulations. Yet neither one is simulating the other.

Just as CRPG's are not simulating playing TRPG's. Both CRPG's and TRPG's are simulating the same thing. They are doing it in different ways, and certainly the CRPG is far more crude in terms of player freedoms, but, a CRPG in no way is simulating playing a TRPG.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Unless your CRPG'S include arguing with your DM and Cheetos, it's certainly not simulating playing an RPG.

Are you saying that I must argue with the DM and eat Cheetos to play a role-playing game?

If not, why must I do so to simulate playing a role-playing game?

Or, to use Madden Football, if we accept that Madden football is a simulation of football, and we accept that MF doesn't include everything that comprises an actual game of football, we must also accept that the argument that "Z is not a simulation of X, because Z doesn't contain some components of X" is wrong.

So, either Madden Football is football, or your argument doesn't hold. I personally believe the latter, but if you accept the former, I'll concede that following the same logic your conclusion is correct.


RC

 

[takyris]

I can put on my game designer hat and try to answer some of this. Bear in mind that my game designer hat is new and relatively small.

Offhand, there's one game that I can easily think of that tried to actually simulate a tabletop game, and that's Neverwinter Nights. In NWN, a team of players running with a live DM could easily deviate from the DM's planned adventure. About the only thing you can't do on the fly is make new maps, but a DM who makes a "placeholder map" and jumps the players there and tells them to "imagine the setting" can still plunk down orcs, treasure chests, and whatever else needs to be plunked down. Players who want to deviate from a dialogue tree can ask the DM to play a creature live, and the DM can do it.

It won't be as polished as the adventure that the DM had planned, of course, but that's not all that different from a tabletop game in which the players opt to go someplace completely different -- the monsters tend to be right out of the book instead of crafted specially, the NPCs don't have as much interesting dialogue, and everything takes a bit more time because the DM is coming up with it all on the fly.

As for other games, they give you a character to play with a varying degree of story and freedom... just like a tabletop game.

- In the current tabletop game I'm playing, I was informed that I had to be human, that only one person in the party could be a magic-user, and that our backgrounds were to a large degree determined for us -- we got to choose from options presented to us.

- In a game I played in a few years ago, the DM, running a module, railroaded the players mercilessly through the module, even to the point of saying, "See this? (raised hand) This is the hand of plot. The hand of plot says that you can't get inside this building until you go clear that other building."

I suspect that some people will now try to cast aspersions on CRPGs by saying, "That frustration you experienced was because those DMs DM'd as though they were the computer in a CRPG." No. They DM'd like DMs. That's my point.

A tabletop RPG has, in theory, more freedom than a CRPG. A tabletop RPG also has more potential areas for things to go off the tracks -- the computer that people attack for its inflexibility never forgets how Bull Rush works or gets into an hour-long argument about whether walking along the very narrow ledge is a Balance check or a Climb check.

But in practice, as in most things, CRPGs aren't as far from tabletop RPGs as most people would think. They aren't identical -- it's almost always easier to have a fight against 20 unique bad guys in a CRPG than in a tabletop game, and it's almost always easier to roleplay a cocktail party in a tabletop game than in a CRPG -- but they are very very similar. In both cases, the person running or designing the game makes some choices that balance exploration freedom versus the story that the designer wants to tell. In a CRPG like Oblivion, the designers wanted the player to have the freedom to create his or her own story. In a CRPG like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the player has a lot less freedom, but the story is a lot more focused (and much stronger) than in Oblivion. Games like Baldur's Gate 2 strike a middle ground by giving the player a long-term goal (story) but a lot of freedom about how to get there (exploration).

In the tabletop games I played in, the DMs made choices -- the first DM wanted a low-magic, human-centric game, which is why we all started out as peasant kids. The second DM wanted to run a game right out of the module without doing any work of his own. In theory, the DMs could have decided to change what was over the hill because of what the party wanted, but in practice, it didn't happen. People generally make choices and stick with them.

The difference is that in a CRPG, the choices all have to be made beforehand -- how much dialogue to give a given character, whether to make someone romanceable, how many options to give the players. You play the odds -- most players will take this obvious path, some will take the less obvious path, and one or two would think to try something crazy. You design the obvious and less obvious paths, and you look at the crazy path and figure out whether you've got the additional resources to make it happen. A lot of times, you don't, and that's life -- just like a DM deciding on the fly that he's not letting the players get into the warehouse unless they talk to the guard, because he doesn't want to have to come up with some other way for the players to learn the information that the guard gives them.