Video game influences on my D&D

[victorysaber]

Mysteries of the Moonsea

On or off topic (I'm not too sure)... doesn't Mysteries of the Moonsea seem very videogamey too? Go to area X, fulfill all the quests there, then move on to area Y, fulfill the quests there...

In fact, it even explicitly states "area X is levels A to B, area Y is levels C to D".

It seemed very... like NWN on paper.

 

[Bad Paper]

I don't see the problem at all. I don't play video games. The last time I played anything even remotely RPG-esque was the tedious Dungeon Siege. The last time I played anything even remotely good and RPG-esque was...uh... huh. I think a friend of mine forced me to start a character in WoW a few years ago, but WoW is dull. Before that I would have to go back to an old DnD game (don't remember the name, Pool of Radiance?) from the early 90s that I played on my blazing-fast 386. Beat that, younguns!

I certainly don't see a the problem with the Knight. At all. (aside from being kinda stupid, like the warlock, that is. and maybe that loyalty-beyond-death thing reeks of munchkin) Can someone clue me in? To the uh, video-gamey-aspect? Thanks. I just think it would be a boring class to play.

If there is a good element in a video game, then swipe it for your own! Yay! The world becomes a better place! I think WoW had one or two good elements in it that deserve swiping for PnP play. But really, aren't there better things to worry about?

 

[Faradon]

Maybe it's just me... but the "new" knight class really looks to me like a re-hash of the 1st ed Unearthed Arcana, Cavalier class. So really, if you feel that the new knight class is influenced by video games, then you've got the chicken and the egg mixed up, and 1st ed AD&D influenced video games, who in turn influenced D&D to bring back a powerhouse 1st ed AD&D class (to include the d12 hit die).

Also, on a side note, if it's true what shade said about Fallout inspiring the feat system... then I think that WOTC owes it to throw some cash at the fallout franchise and have them come out with fallout 3

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Maybe it's just me... but the "new" knigth class really looks to me like a re-hash of the 1st ed Unearthed Arcana, Cavalier class.

I don't really see much of a resemblance between the two. A closer fit would be a paladin with the cavalier prestige class.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I certainly don't see a the problem with the Knight. At all. (aside from being kinda stupid, like the warlock, that is. and maybe that loyalty-beyond-death thing reeks of munchkin) Can someone clue me in? To the uh, video-gamey-aspect? Thanks. I just think it would be a boring class to play.

I think the alert has to do with the concept in MMORPGs called "aggro management." Anyone who's played a melee class in an MMORPG has had to deal with it, and D&D has been free of anything like it for most of the new edition, but the Knight has a base ability that's very similar to the effect of MMORPG tanks.

The idea is that the front line combatant, the melee specialist, has the ability to hold the attention of the monster, to focus the monster's attacks on him. Because he has the highest defense and hit points, he can survive the monster's attacks longer, and he protects the others in the party by doing it.

The knight's ability to issue a challenge means that the monster can only target the knight, effectively mirroring those "aggro management" abilities from MMO's.

What that idea fails to realize is that warriors wanting to focus the attacks on themselves pre-dates even D&D (you could argue that chess even has this concept -- you have more pawns, so you want peices to target them). Until recently, there's been no real way for a fighter, paladin, or barbarian to *mechanically* take the attention of the monster in 3e, it's always depended upon the DM role-playing the beast to his ability and the beast's ability to know that the wizards can probably do more damage than the fighters.

The Knight gives us a way to "manage aggro" that didn't exist until then, doing it in a way very much like an MMO's tank does.

I understand where the argument is coming from, but I still think it's a weak argument.

 

[Paraxis]

The Knight gives us a way to "manage aggro" that didn't exist until then, doing it in a way very much like an MMO's tank does.

This is what set me off to begin with. The game we play seems to be moving closer to a mini game that emulates a video game. Lot's of things contribute, feats and flanking rules making us use grid maps, seems like more and more new spells and classes are just so similar to things in computer games. There is even an article in some of the issues of dragon magazine called "silicone sorcorey" where they give rules to add stuff from video games into the pen and paper RPG. I am comenting on a slippery slope effect that will catch us and contribute to the downfall of our hobby, the makers of our game are now the same people who push out a new complete set of MtG cards every year and half, forcing players who want to enter tourneys to buy the new cards. With talk of 4.0 already on the mouths of people and being whispered about in the shadows Hasbro, I think new editions will come faster and faster and become more video game like each time. I want to play and run stories that use my imagination, I am just asking for the game designers to do the same and not regurgitate whats in the new cool video game.

 

[WizarDru]

This is what set me off to begin with. The game we play seems to be moving closer to a mini game that emulates a video game. Lot's of things contribute, feats and flanking rules making us use grid maps, seems like more and more new spells and classes are just so similar to things in computer games. There is even an article in some of the issues of dragon magazine called "silicone sorcorey" where they give rules to add stuff from video games into the pen and paper RPG. I am comenting on a slippery slope effect that will catch us and contribute to the downfall of our hobby, the makers of our game are now the same people who push out a new complete set of MtG cards every year and half, forcing players who want to enter tourneys to buy the new cards. With talk of 4.0 already on the mouths of people and being whispered about in the shadows Hasbro, I think new editions will come faster and faster and become more video game like each time. I want to play and run stories that use my imagination, I am just asking for the game designers to do the same and not regurgitate whats in the new cool video game.

Well, I'd start by saying 'read the .sig', but several folks have already made this point.

Quite honestly, I think you're worried about something you don't really need to be worried about. People have been talking about 4.0 since 3.0 arrived, and since 3.5 arrived (you know, a couple of YEARS AGO) people have been implying it will arrive daily.

1. The implication that D&D is becoming more like a video game is usually trumped out by people who usually aren't familiar with video games. Personally, I don't conflate CRPGs and MMORPGs with video games...but again, these systems follow after D&D, not the other way around. 'Turtling up' for example, is hardly a new idea. Keeping your armored fighters in the front was the key to success in the earliest days of D&D. That idea hasn't changed.

2. The RPG hobby's sky has been falling for the last 20 years, when the zeitgeist and fad passed on. The Halcyon days of 1985 are gone. The boom days of 2001 have passed. Now we're back to reality. M:tG didn't destroy D&D. Everquest didn't destroy D&D. WoW isn't destroying D&D. It's not a zero-sum game. It never will be.

3. Just for the record, those rare silicon sorcery articles (which I found poorly put together) haven't run in Dragon for quite some time, with maybe one or two exceptions. They weren't that popular, either, which would contrary to your point.

It's all good. D&D is just fine.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

1. The implication that D&D is becoming more like a video game is usually trumped out by people who usually aren't familiar with video games.

I see your point, but, and I'm not trying to be insulting to anyone, it also strikes me that such implications are often made by people who aren't that well-read in regards to D&D's inspirations and sources. Esdpecially the ones that predate D&D. Not just the fiction Gygax listed in the 1e DMG, but all the other sources he's mentioned over the years, and which other designers who've been behind the reins of D&D in various capacities have mentioned - Arthurian tales, Norse mythology, Celtic mythology, etc. etc. I'm not going to say that RPGs like D&D haven't drawn any inspiration from video games in recent years, but for just about every "power" or ability that someone ascribes to this or that video/computer game, I usually can think of instances of it appearing in literature or film that came before video games.

 

[EricNoah]

The path from fantasy literature to RPG to video game and back again isn't a simple straight line. You've got D&D, heavily influenced by Tolkien and Moorcock and Lieber and Howard, leading through many years to Diablo, and then Diablo leading back to D&D (remember the Diablo II RPG supplements for D&D?) and to literature (novels based on Computer games or RPGs). Just to cite one of many tangled paths.

It's pretty inevitable. Each medium is going to lack something the others have, and have something the others lack. Do RPG designers always manage to grab the best things from the other mediums? Not always. There are things in each medium that do not translate well to the others.

I think what rankles (certainly me, probably others) is the expressed notion that tabletop RPGs are inherently superior to computer RPGs, and thus so are their players. Feel free to believe it, but please don't take offense if I think you're a snob.

There are probably a lot of tabletop RPG-ers who also play computer RPGs (I'm one of them). There's an even larger segment who only plays computer games and at best has a vague urge to branch out to tabletop RPGs (at worst the thought has never crossed their minds). And you know what? We're going to have to tap that market of computer gamers and draw them to tabletop RPGs somehow, or I this hobby is gonna die. If a "video gamey" element in a tabletop RPG draws someone into the hobby, I'm all for it.

Of course, if your premise is that computer gamers are inferior to tabletop RPG-ers, then you probably don't want those cretins in your hobby at all!

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Here is link to knight off the wizard's site, for those of you without PHB2.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060501a&page=2

It is a tank from an online rpg, basicly it just causes agro (keeps bad guy on him) and has strong defense abilities higher AC and such.

I disagree. I see the knight as more "novel-y". It tries to emulate a concept from most novels/movies. The sturdy warrior type who goes in and calls out the head bad guy, and they engage in mano-y-mano combat. Whereas in 3.5, the fighter gets ignored for the vastly more devastating wizard/cleric/druid. The only problem is bringing CR into the equation, which is a flat out screwed up mechanic to begin with.

Warlock with it's endless blasts and spell-like abilities is another class I think is strongly based on video games.

Its really more like any traditional fantasy novel caster than anything else out there. Ask a random non RPG person how many times Merlin can fling fire per day. Odds are they'll say "as much as he wants". Vancian spellcasting, to me, has always been lame, and at odds with what the typical person thinks of when they think of wizards. Its a shame it wasnt fully chucked when D&D went to 3.0