Witty Comeback
First Post
People have been marveling at the success of Gabe at Penny Arcade who, after years of dismissing PnP RPGs and exclusively playing videogames, took a shot a DMing and appears to be brilliant at it.
I recently wondered if the exposure to videogames wasn't in fact a strength rather than a weakness. In videogames, there is a certain economy of actions or varied resources, and the trick to winning a game is to understand the interaction between those resources and build a strategy. Various games mimic each other, but there is a vast array of different games with different resolution systems, different victory conditions, etc.
Gabe has posted maybe a handful of different experiences, and in each one he has altered 4E to include some new resource. There is a hunt through the underdark for spider parts, etc. Someone might be kind enough to post links.
Anyway, every innovative thing that he has done was probably shaped in one way or another by a video game for him. Hasn't this given him a deeper bag of tricks to vary a game session to be something more than combat-skill challenge-rest-repeat?
I recently wondered if the exposure to videogames wasn't in fact a strength rather than a weakness. In videogames, there is a certain economy of actions or varied resources, and the trick to winning a game is to understand the interaction between those resources and build a strategy. Various games mimic each other, but there is a vast array of different games with different resolution systems, different victory conditions, etc.
Gabe has posted maybe a handful of different experiences, and in each one he has altered 4E to include some new resource. There is a hunt through the underdark for spider parts, etc. Someone might be kind enough to post links.
Anyway, every innovative thing that he has done was probably shaped in one way or another by a video game for him. Hasn't this given him a deeper bag of tricks to vary a game session to be something more than combat-skill challenge-rest-repeat?