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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8804993" data-attributes="member: 18">With interesting with MMOs is that the vast majority of MMOs, at launch, try to support and encourage RP. And indeed, up to 2005, whilst some people frowned at it, they tended to be frowning at ERP, not more straightforward RP. In 2005, following WoW's launch, a vast number of frankly, young and unpleasant players who didn't know what RP was but very that sure that it was [homosexual slur] and everyone who did it was [combination of homosexual, misogynistic and racist slurs]. Ironically a small number of those same people today are doing stuff like RPing on GTA Online and so on! Some people change, I guess.Despite good intentions, what companies tend to find is that fighting the twerps who harass RPers requires disproportionate amounts of effort, and often the very same twerps are people who spend a lot of time/money on the game, and further, really supporting RP requires a whole battery of systems to be developed and maintained and improved, all of which may make the game "feel better", but in fairly nebulous and hard-to-prove ways. Whereas you can really hard-track how many people did X raid, or visited Y dungeon (ironically this nearly killed raiding in WoW when they finally worked out how very few people actually did some raids, but that's a whole other post).Possible evidence against from MMOs though, existed.FFXIV has sorta-managed to quasi-monetize RP by selling emotes and outfits suitable for RP and which RPers actually want. It's not ideal but it at least gives the devs an incentive.GTAO wasn't ever intended to be a particularly RP-friendly game, but because it's kind of trying to be a "criminal world simulator", people on PC have modded it and are using it to do RP.So I think RP will survive. I'm just less sure about TTRPGs as a hobby.I'd tend to agree, but I think D&D is still the "gateway drug" for RPGs for the most part (lol), and unless another RPG becomes relatively well-known, and showcases RP more, I suspect that element will gradually become deemphasized (as will anything that's not mechanically supported well, including "clever plans").Oh, sorry, to be clear I agree. It's definitely not hard evidence. I'm prognosticating and this is pure opinion on my part, please do not read as fact (I try to emphasize when I am claiming something is a "fact" and little if any of this is). Feel free to mock! I don't think you're wrong to do so. But I'm looking at what seem to me to be likely longer-term outcomes, when we account for what drives business, and what can be monetized and so on, I think we're going to see WotC gradually move more and more towards the G and away from the RP.I am aware, as a fan of 4E, that this is exactly what people were concerned about. So it's kind of ironic for me to be concerned about it, yeah? I just thought 4E actually was quite enabling for RP. And maybe 1D&D and so on will be? I just kind of doubt it. Especially if they do it well! That's kind of the thing - the better the job they do, the more successful they make online/digital play, the more it's going to motivate a push towards G and away from RP.It's certainly also possible they'll end up in a very different space, where they just have a wonderful digital offering that supports tabletop play still with a DM and with homebrew adventures and worlds, and so on. I just think the financial incentives will direct them away from that.</blockquote>

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