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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5160531" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't know that I would say that delayed gratification is better, because that would be like saying 'RPG's are better than video games' or something like that.  It's just an opinion.But I will say that a PnP designer chasing after an immediate gratification cycle like you have in a video game is on fool's errand because you can never really compete with a video game on that level.  You are playing against the strengths of a PnP game and into its weaknesses.   If PnP games are to start offering comparable experiences to video games as a goal of design, they are going to lose out to video games every time.To give an obvious example, in multiplayer video games no one necessarily needs to wait for his turn.  It's always your 'turn' in a real time video game.   There is no wait to return to when the attention is on you.  But in a PnP game, there is no way that the referee can give his attention to every player simultaneously.  Chasing after the experience that is the side effect of it always being your turn as in a video game at best will never get there, and at worst will end up with mechanics ill-suited to the tools and needs of play in a PnP gameJust as bad, when you gear your game toward offering that experience, you are almost invariably going to create an experience which is invariably inferior to that can be offered by video games.  If you look at the big RPG boom in the late 70's and early 80's, RPGs actually offered the best 'ego gamer' experience that was widely available.  Computer RPGs either weren't available because of the entry fees and rarity, or they were primitive solo games, or they were non-primative adventure games (like the classic Infocom games) that weren't primarily offering the short feedback cycles you got with 'swing and hit' from oD&D, AD&D, etc but which tried to offer PnP's 'puzzle solving' experience (from which we get terms like 'pixel bitching').  But that isn't the situation now.  If you try to compete with modern video games now on there terms, with the massive processing power we have now and the hundreds of man years of artwork involved you are going to lose.  A play group that moves into RPGs now without mentoring is going to percieve the PnP game as an inferior computer game - an experience obseleted and outdated by modern technology.  If I really wanted to criticize WotC's handling of 4e, it wouldn't be over the mechanics - even though I think those mechanics moved away from where I wanted to go.   The real criticism I would offer of 4e is the same one I think is the biggest single problem with 3e - WotC did not seem to believe that modules were important and IMO invested far too little into them.  If people start listing great modules, they invariably end up listing primarily old school stuff and if not, then they list third party products (by Paizo, for example).  But even though you can't make alot of money on modules, they are the heart and soul of building up a player base because the module is what builds new game masters.   I'm increasingly of the opinion that D&D's historical dominance is D&D's association with the lowly and sometimes deprecated art of module writing.  I can't think of another game system that is in the same league when it comes to offering products that, in isolation from a mentor, help tutor up and inspire game masters.What's 4e got in the module department that is memorable?  What did late 2e do or late 3e do but recycle the great modules of the past?  This almost deserves its own thread and I'm probably side tracking the conversation again, but I'm bringing it up here because its part of this whole notion of 'game mastery' which is core to the PnP experience and which I think is increasingly depricated in the design of games.  Part of the problem with the whole notion of 'what makes a game fun' is that the whole short action/reward cycle assumes that everyone important at the table is a player.</blockquote>

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