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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 2719372" data-attributes="member: 32740">I could not agree more.  A computer RPG does not interact with players in anything even CLOSE to the manner in which REAL RPG players interact with each other and their DM - MMORPG's not at all.  It is at best a misnomer to actually refer to them as RPG's.  The best a computer can do at this point in RPG's is give a limited selection of programmed responses that are limited in their effects.  An NPC will volunteer a limited array of interaction choices or simply pose a short list of questions that they will answer, or in posing a question or giving a statement to the player there will be a PREDETERMINED list of responses for the player that they cannot deviate from which is almost worse.  That is NOT roleplaying.  It is simply mimicking roleplaying interaction because it's understood that even the superficial veneer of roleplaying induces more interest in the game and moves it away from being what they really are at heart - just pretty level-grinders.Now, that said I believe that CRPG'S have had a positive impact on RPG'S as rule systems.  D&D itself suffered greatly under a vast, complex, contradictory, frustrating, inefficient set of rules.  3E/3.5 - - - IMO - - - is the best version of D&D bar none because of the clear influence that computer game rules have had upon the rules system itself.  Unified resolution mechanics; game effects that work well together in a coordinated whole, rather than thousands of exceptions and unique rules; a balance of power that derives from things that actually affect the game and are not simply ignored out of hand or rendered moot as a matter of routine; these are the positive influences of CRPG's and MMORPG's.  But the influence has not all been positive.Computer games, as they naturally must, handle so much of the game for the players while enforcing their EXTREMELY limited interaction to tightly scripted events (what would be known in REAL RPG'S as "railroading") and it simply kills creativity.  It kills it in old RPG players because just as they rely on the computer to feed them every adventure rather than GENERATING their own by their genuine interactivity with the game world, just as they rely on the computer to carefully delineate for them what their options are (negotiation is an option only if the NPC is PROGRAMMED to negotiate or offer it as an option), they come to rely on the DM to perform the same way.  Because the game itself is now better constructed to permit that kind of approach to play everyone tends to use it as a crutch (players and DM's alike) to avoid the rules-free influences of REAL roleplaying.  It kills creativity in players new to real RPG's because they haven't had the opportunity for rpg's - REAL rpg's - to train them to use their creativity.  They then come into RPG's having been "taught" by CRPG's and MMORPG's that creativity does not lie in the INTERACTIVITY, it lies in the manipulation of numerical combinations in creating and building characters.  THIS IS A DESTRUCTIVE IDEA as far as actual roleplaying is concerned.The irony of course is that the very changes in rules that enable the avoidance of roleplaying were instituted to enable MORE roleplaying by eliminating the interference of rules ambiguity in gameplay.  What do we see now (at least on discussion boards)?  Endless debates about ultimately meaningless rules ambiguities and never once even a whisper of the old RPG battlecry - Make it up!  Providing a vastly tighter and more elegant structure of rules has only made RULES into the focus (which has been, IMO, actively facilitated by WotC in a horribly ill-concieved approach to the issue inspired by CCG's rather than CRPG's.)So, influence on RPG's - positive.  Influence on GAMERS in playing RPG's - exceptionally negative.</blockquote>

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