Things that don't translate to the table top

[nomotog]

One of my hobbies is to look at video games/movies/books and wonder can you make an RPG about that. I have a lot of fun with it mostly because a lot of ideas don't translate well, so lets talk about that.

Alternate paths: I love them in video games and one imagines that the freedom to solve a problem in multiple ways would be perfect for an RPG, but I only spare a token amount of time to add them to my encounter ideas. The game is just too open and it's virtually guaranteed that no matter what I think of the players will think of something different, or nothing at all.

Visuals: I guess this one is something of a no dua, but trying to replicate something you like because it looks cool is really hard in a table top. I have kind of bumped into this a lot when I would watch a movie and think wow that could make a cool RPG only to hit a block when I realize it just looked cool. I'm no artist.

Exploring and finding: This one relates to the visuals bit, but has anyone found a way to replicate the feeling that exploring gives you in a video game. If you have ever played a game like fallout 3, you should know what I mean. Your always scanning every place you visit looking for secret loot. I can't think of a way to replicate this in a table top game that doesn't seem unfair or just boring. (The old trap problem fits in here too.)

Stealth: Has anyone found a way to do stealth with more depth then making the players roll a stealth check? Like a full suite of distractions, take downs and other tools? (I think this one likely can be done. I just don't quite know how to do it.)

So anyway do you think I am wrong about these ideas being hard to translate, do you have any solutions or other untranslatable elements?

 

[Celebrim]

Hmmm.

Alternate paths don't translate well from video games because they aren't needed per se because unlike a computer a person can improvise, though I have at times brain stormed them and written them down in an effort to try to stay ahead of the player's. For example, for the opening session of the current campaign, I was pretty sure what player's might do but nonetheless wrote up resolution paths for 6 additional possible ways of responding to the problem. And at times, published modules have a severe flaw in that alternate paths are not considered in the write up. So, so far as it goes, I would say that 'alternate paths' translate very well, and should be considered in published modules but I'd be surprised to see a lot of attention paid to them in a write up for personal use.

Visuals: Visuals in fact translate very well to a PnP. The iconic example would be the booklet of images that came with S1 'Tomb of Horrors' that supplemented the encounter text. The big problem is that they are expensive to produce, particularly in terms of preparation time for a homebrew campaign. But I would love to have every session have 10-20 images. It would be awesome. But it would also mean like spending thousands of dollars a session paying artists to prep images.

Exploring and Finding: This translates well to pen and paper, and in my opinion you've got it backwards. The sort of thing you see in a game like Fallout 3 where you've got secret loot hidden away in various places is actually direct heir of Gygaxian style dungeon crawling, where almost every room had some hidden feature containing loot that a party could find by interacting with the room.

Stealth: Stealth can be done just fine in an PnP. The big problem with translating stealth based play to a PnP game is that stealth based play is poorly suited to cooperative play and tends to work better as solo play. Even in cases where the whole group chooses to play stealthy characters, often its simply more stealthy to work alone.

The big things that are difficult to translate from video games to PnP games is motion and book keeping.

There are a lot of mechanics - some of them even directly inspired by PnP games - that you can put into a video game that you can't really put into a PnP game or at least, can't spotlight as thoroughly as you could in a video game, because they simply become too tedious in play because of bookkeeping. Having a computer track everything for you tends to smooth gameplay a lot, and is the reason that the computer has more or less killed traditional PnP wargaming all on its own.

The other thing that is hard to translate into a PnP game is continuous motion, again, partly because of book keeping reasons and partly because of the visceral experience of real motion is impossible to capture through simulation. Simulating motion involves breaking the turn into such small increments that it slows down play to a crawl, and the experience of playing slow is the opposite of the experience of being in motion.

 

[nomotog]

Ya detail is rather hard to do in table top. (Not that it stops some systems from trying.) In depth systems in general tend to be hard because of all the detail. I once played with a borderlands RPG and just making a random gun system felt like a lot of work with out a lot of pay off. I am also thinking about how to do RTS like resource management system. Something like state of decay. The stumble I see with that is that it's so tempting for the GM to cheat or brake the simulation.

Exploring kind of started in D&D, but I don't know if we have really worked searching out. It's the trap problem. How to you handle hidden traps in a way that is interesting and fair? I have seen a dozen ideas, but they tend to dodge the issue, turn into guess and check gameplay.

 

[Umbran]

A general structure that you often see in books or television, but doesn't translate well to tabletop games: "...3 days earlier..."

In TV and the movies, we often start in media res, in some highly dramatic scene. Then, the action jumps back some significant time, and unfolds again until we catch back up to that dramatic scene. I've seen this done *once* successfully in a game, and the time jump back was a matter of minutes, rather than hours or days, and the setup made the route to the end point blatantly obvious.

But, in general, you have little control of how action unfolds in play, so that returning to the envisioned spot is often difficult without severe railroading.

 

[Celebrim]

Ya detail is rather hard to do in table top. (Not that it stops some systems from trying.) In depth systems in general tend to be hard because of all the detail. I once played with a borderlands RPG and just making a random gun system felt like a lot of work with out a lot of pay off. I am also thinking about how to do RTS like resource management system. Something like state of decay. The stumble I see with that is that it's so tempting for the GM to cheat or brake the simulation.

There are both direct and indirect things that get lost as a result of the need to simplify. An example of something direct might be the fact that in a PnP game, you really can't worry too much about skills becoming rusty through lack of use, or worry too much about the difference between a backsword, a cutlass and a tulwar in combat. Of if you do, then those things will become the dominate mode of play and you'll have to forgo something else.

But some of the indirect things you lose through lack of detail are less obvious and surprising. For example, one of the things you end up losing is the sense that magic is, for lack of a better word, magical. One would expect based on how magic works in stories, for magic to be a numinous fearsome thing which is as easy to control as a angry viper and must always be wrestled with and never fully safe and controlled. But in RPGs it almost never works like that and the more spotlight the RPG has on magic the less magic is like that. In D&D, many DM's have complained how the D&D magic system makes magic into an easily accessible science with predictable results. But it does so not because giving magic quirks and randomness and an aura of numinous awe is impossible, but because - if you are going to have PC spellcasters of any significant skill - doing that shifts such a huge burden of 'knowing' on to the DM as to make the system basically unusable. A system like D&D shifts much of the burden of understanding and knowing on to the player. Spells for example are traditionally in the player's handibook, and more or less fully described to them in ways that make the effects mostly predictable. You could make magic work in different ways, but only by greater detail and putting greater burden on the DM.

And yet even so, the people who are critical of D&D's magical system almost invariably go about creating a simpler and more controllable and more predictable system that undermines the sense of magic even further through unified mechanics and simplified descriptions of effects. The very fact that D&D writes up each spell effect individually, rather than uses a unified 'blast' mechanic for example, invites oddity and inexplicability into the game.

Exploring kind of started in D&D, but I don't know if we have really worked searching out. It's the trap problem. How to you handle hidden traps in a way that is interesting and fair? I have seen a dozen ideas, but they tend to dodge the issue, turn into guess and check gameplay.

Handling the "I search" proposition (or it's absence) is one of the most delicate and complex problems in all of RPGs. I would note that in general, computer games tend to handle it fairly poorly as well, with either mechanics that ignore or trivialize the problem through passive perception or through systems that require 'pixel bitching' to detect what is hidden.

 

[GMMichael]

Several features of video games can be converted decently to RPGs if the GM pays close attention to his choice of words.

Getting closer to something:
GM: There's a potion ahead of you, on the table.
(PC walks up to it)
GM: It's a big flask, and is red.
(PC grabs it)
GM: There's a golden braid running from the cap, and dangling on the end is a tiny, black skull.

Witnessing a monstrous creature:
GM: The earth trembles and quakes. You see three of everything, your eyes shake so much. It seems as though a mountain has picked itself up to walk past you, crumbling and crunching. And just when you can focus and clear your head, the monster's other foot hits the ground, and you fall flat on your back.

Being startled by a zombie:
GM: The corpse in the coffin looks almost happy to be there. Its dead eyes are partially exposed, the eyelids dessicating up into the skull.
PC: Is it dead?
GM: It's a corpse. Of course it's dead. It hasn't moved since it died.
PC: Phew. Okay, I start looking around the room for the key then, until my friends get here.
GM: Okay. (Rolls a die) you start by crouching at the lower, dusty bookcase. You brush some dust away when a sickly, gray hand reaches over your shoulder, offering you a key...

The other thing that is hard to translate into a PnP game is continuous motion, again, partly because of book keeping reasons and partly because of the visceral experience of real motion is impossible to capture through simulation. Simulating motion involves breaking the turn into such small increments that it slows down play to a crawl, and the experience of playing slow is the opposite of the experience of being in motion.

Brainstorming here, but could you simulate continuous motion by employing player help? In exchange for die contests (you have to beat X after modifiers to win), maybe you can give each player a certain amount of thumbs up and thumbs down. Then you ask each player to help you judge outcomes, adding four (or so) brains to your computing power. Was a maneuver effective? Count the thumbs up compared to the Broad Difficulty Category (1, 2, or 3). Each player announces his general intentions for the round, and then everyone hands out their ups and downs, to whomever they think deserves one.

What keeps a player from being biased in favor of himself or his team is that he has X thumbs up, and once those are gone, he can only abstain or give out thumbs down. Also, throwing out something like Armor Class would mean that you don't stop to determine success, you just count progress until there's one decided winner.

I guess you have to go more abstract to get more speed, huh? Or get more processing power. Delegate.

I addressed this in my game by freeing characters to act at any time. So turns are representative of priority-of-actions rather than who-can-act-when. Also, there's the suggestion that characters who have used all their actions for the round are "busy," not standing around, doing nothing (which is a pretty common interpretation of what the character's doing who took the first turn that round).

 

[Celebrim]

Several features of video games can be converted decently to RPGs if the GM pays close attention to his choice of words.

It should not be surprising that I agree, as I previously asserted that the style of play and exposition you describe in your examples is at least Gygaxian in origin - and he may have very well picked it up by observing Anderson.

There are several difficulties we pick up eventually as you progress in this mode. The first is the difficulty of conveying to the player the exact picture that the DM sees in his mind so that the mental bauble we are both manipulating has all the same features in both player's imagination. The second is when we wish to begin to apply the character's mental skills to the problem as well as or instead of the player's mental skills. How do you simulate a character with exceptional powers of observation and deduction, when the player themselves lacks these features or at least necessarily lacks them to the same degree as the heroes of fiction. And a third is, how do we avoid bogging down play in these very miniscule issues of investigation, particularly in situations where they aren't appropriate or called for?

Brainstorming here, but could you simulate continuous motion by employing player help? In exchange for die contests (you have to beat X after modifiers to win), maybe you can give each player a certain amount of thumbs up and thumbs down. Then you ask each player to help you judge outcomes, adding four (or so) brains to your computing power. Was a maneuver effective? Count the thumbs up compared to the Broad Difficulty Category (1, 2, or 3). Each player announces his general intentions for the round, and then everyone hands out their ups and downs, to whomever they think deserves one.

More brains will increase accuracy (possibly) but it won't increase speed. You have to do two things to simulate real motion. First, increment the action using very small turns as for example Star Fleet Battles uses when it employs 32 'impulses' (or segments) to the round. And secondly, you must have secret and simultaneous declaration. Older versions of D&D in many ways did a better job of simulating motion than 3e and later versions, but they did so at the expense of almost all detail regarding this motion and by making almost all the rest of the game simple and abstract.

I addressed this in my game by freeing characters to act at any time. So turns are representative of priority-of-actions rather than who-can-act-when.

This is equivalent to every participant holding their action until they feel it is time to act, which you can simulate with the base D20 system without modification. The real problem is in stock D20 actions take no time to perform. That is to say, you never begin an action which cannot be finished until later in the round. If you take a move action, you complete the whole move at that time, rather than 5' now, and then 5' more a little further on, at which time another character begins their motion, and so forth.

 

[nomotog]

There are both direct and indirect things that get lost as a result of the need to simplify. An example of something direct might be the fact that in a PnP game, you really can't worry too much about skills becoming rusty through lack of use, or worry too much about the difference between a backsword, a cutlass and a tulwar in combat. Of if you do, then those things will become the dominate mode of play and you'll have to forgo something else.

But some of the indirect things you lose through lack of detail are less obvious and surprising. For example, one of the things you end up losing is the sense that magic is, for lack of a better word, magical. One would expect based on how magic works in stories, for magic to be a numinous fearsome thing which is as easy to control as a angry viper and must always be wrestled with and never fully safe and controlled. But in RPGs it almost never works like that and the more spotlight the RPG has on magic the less magic is like that. In D&D, many DM's have complained how the D&D magic system makes magic into an easily accessible science with predictable results. But it does so not because giving magic quirks and randomness and an aura of numinous awe is impossible, but because - if you are going to have PC spellcasters of any significant skill - doing that shifts such a huge burden of 'knowing' on to the DM as to make the system basically unusable. A system like D&D shifts much of the burden of understanding and knowing on to the player. Spells for example are traditionally in the player's handibook, and more or less fully described to them in ways that make the effects mostly predictable. You could make magic work in different ways, but only by greater detail and putting greater burden on the DM.

And yet even so, the people who are critical of D&D's magical system almost invariably go about creating a simpler and more controllable and more predictable system that undermines the sense of magic even further through unified mechanics and simplified descriptions of effects. The very fact that D&D writes up each spell effect individually, rather than uses a unified 'blast' mechanic for example, invites oddity and inexplicability into the game.



Handling the "I search" proposition (or it's absence) is one of the most delicate and complex problems in all of RPGs. I would note that in general, computer games tend to handle it fairly poorly as well, with either mechanics that ignore or trivialize the problem through passive perception or through systems that require 'pixel bitching' to detect what is hidden.

I don't think you can really system something and then also keep it mysterious. The second you put a stat down on your character sheet, you take away some of the mystery. You could try a system where the player doesn't know what they can do with magic outside of some vague magic idea, but your never going to be able to keep that information form the player. (Players always read the monster manual.) Then there is the trust issue where the player has to trust the GM with a majority of their powers. (For the start at least, as players use their magic they would get a better sense of what they can do with it.)

I have mused about a magic system without spells. I wanted to make an avatar RPG. I started trying to compile a list of all the moves they do in the show, but there were just so many that I ended up saying buck it and defined bending as a skill and said the players could make up their own moves and powers.

Pixel hunting might not actually be very cool or slick, but it at least feels good. That is one advantage VG have. A lor of mini and meta games aren't actually good, but in the moment they feel good. (Take that lock pick minigame in a lot of games. It's basically hot and cold, but doesn't feel bad.)

 

[nomotog]

It should not be surprising that I agree, as I previously asserted that the style of play and exposition you describe in your examples is at least Gygaxian in origin - and he may have very well picked it up by observing Anderson.

There are several difficulties we pick up eventually as you progress in this mode. The first is the difficulty of conveying to the player the exact picture that the DM sees in his mind so that the mental bauble we are both manipulating has all the same features in both player's imagination. The second is when we wish to begin to apply the character's mental skills to the problem as well as or instead of the player's mental skills. How do you simulate a character with exceptional powers of observation and deduction, when the player themselves lacks these features or at least necessarily lacks them to the same degree as the heroes of fiction. And a third is, how do we avoid bogging down play in these very miniscule issues of investigation, particularly in situations where they aren't appropriate or called for?

When it comes to letting dumb players play smart characters, I have experimented with a player is right system. Basically the player can make an assertion and if they roll high enough, there assertion is right. The world will warp and bend so that the player is right.

 

[Umbran]

When it comes to letting dumb players play smart characters, I have experimented with a player is right system. Basically the player can make an assertion and if they roll high enough, there assertion is right. The world will warp and bend so that the player is right.

I know of one system that even embraces this. I the FATE-based Atomic Robo game, there is a mechanic for weird science. The GM presents something, say, a giant monster ant, that simply isn't possible by normal science. The GM does *not* decide how it works. Instead, there's a mechanic where PCs can riff off each other about how it works (in something that is a bit like a D&D Skill Challenge), until they build up the reason the thing happens. If they do so successfully, then what they have decided is the truth, and using this truth can give them a bonus against the monster, or what have you.