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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Asmor" data-source="post: 5759271" data-attributes="member: 1154">Everyone knows the usual grounds for what tabletop RPGs can do better than MMOs: the fact that there's a human arbiter there means you have the flexibility to do literally anything.But it occurred to me recently that there ARE other ways tabletop RPGs can differentiate and elevate themselves from MMOs.Last night I switched my shaman in WoW to elemental and was enjoying learning the new rotation when something hit me: WoW has a lot of strategy, but very, very little in the way of tactics. Almost all of your meaningful decisions are made long before you begin combat. In combat, you're just trying to execute your powers according to a fairly static priority list (i.e. cast the spell highest on the list for which you meet its particular prerequisites at this particular moment). WoW mixes this up a bit with different mechanics that you need to keep in mind or work around, but basically, that's the whole game.Is this something that's necessarily the case for all MMOs? I don't know. Probably not. But WoW's the most popular, and the most popular also-rans (which may well be successful in their own right, but their still at best the Bing to WoW's Google) are basically clones of WoW. So if you find a way to beat WoW, you've de facto found a way to beat MMOs.So there's a way for tabletop games to beat MMOs when it comes to mechanics: tactical depth and interesting decisions on the battlefield.What other ways can tabletop gaming beat MMOs which don't rely on 'the human factor'?</blockquote>

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