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Message: <blockquote data-quote="awesomeocalypse" data-source="post: 5160874" data-attributes="member: 85641">I have to say, I don't find the argument that video games are better at delivering instant gratification and rewards than PnP to be a compelling one. I mean, obviously they're better at providing certain kinds of gratification and rewards. Constant mechanical engagement (i.e. not needing to take turns) is a big one, as are graphics and sound. Writing a higher level on my character sheet is simply not going to be as viscerally satisfying as having holy light shine down on my character while triumphant music plays. But I think that comparison ignores the sort of gratification and rewards that PnP actually do much better than video games. For one thing, social gratification. The social rewards of single player video games are nonexistant--when I do something awesome in Dragon Age, there's nobody there with me, benefiting from my awesomeness and congratulating or thanking me for it. Multiplayer games are inherantly more social than single player games, but are hampered by the incredibly fractured and largely anonymous nature of the internet--success in an online game may get my screenname onto a leaderboard or earn me a special title or something, but at best all I've done is marginally impress a bunch of strangers who have no idea who I really am (and, since so many people play these games, any one person's success will be both completely relative, and utterly commonplace. anyone who has ever played an MMORPG with titles quickly realizes that when everyone has an "awesome" title, they stop seeming impressive or awesome). The closest online games come to the PNP social experience are close-knit guilds, but even those are typically more anonymous than PNP, less likely to overlap with real-life social circles, and lack the visceral appeal of face-to-face interaction. Someone telling you it was awesome how you killed the dragon is nice when they do it through voicechat, but its better when they're right there telling you to your face. PNP, on the other hand, is terrific at setting up social rewards. You're right there, playing face to face with your friends and people who actually overlap with your social circle and who know who you are. Moreover, success is typically defined in such a way that those friends will all benefit the more successful you are. Which means that each time you do something cool, although you may not get the nifty graphics, you get something that is, to my mind, even better: all of your friends cheering you on, high fiving you, and telling you how awesome you are. For an "ego-driven" gamer, what could be better? The other form of gratification/reward that PNP is terrific at are story/setting rewards, i.e. giving your actions significance to the plot and to the world around you. Here, multiplayer games lag behind single player, for the most part--because characters share a world, even with instancing/phasing there are limits to how much any one character can change that world. And since so many people are playing, its impossible for one player or group of players to be "the heroes", because everyone is one of "the heroes". Being the savior of the world doesn't feel quite as badass when you're surrounded by thousands of people who are also world saviors. "Yeah, I know this NPC is telling me I'm terrific for killing that dragon, but if I log in with my alt he's gonna tell him the same thing". Single player games are better about this, but even they offer far less freedom to shape the world than PNP can. A PNP game can be literally shaped around its characters and everything they do, so that when they accomplish something heroic, the story and world acknowledge it and react to it. For an ego-driven gamer, saving the world is a lot cooler when you're the only one doing it and, when you do save the world, the world reacts to that and rewards you for it by treating you like the awesome hero you are. The more single player games try to simulate this, the more likely they are to become either railroady (sure you change the world, provided you do it in this one specificn way) or generic ("Thanks for saving the world [blank]. Your awesome [insert class here] powers really saved the day" isn't as cool as an interaction built around your specific character). Basically, I think PNP are still better at providing social gratification than even the most social MMORPGs, and I think they're still better at offering up a satisfying story shaped around the protagonist's choices than even the most well-crafted single player RPG. To me, those are two powerful mechanisms of reward and gratification, and as a player who does play in part out of ego and the desire to feel awesome all the time, I find them to be significantly more appealing than the rewards offered by video games.</blockquote>

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