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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CruelSummerLord" data-source="post: 4299892" data-attributes="member: 48692">Here are my two copper pieces, based on my own personal views.  Feel free to take them with a grain of salt, as I don't game, and use D&D more as an inspiriation for my own personal fantasy writings and imagination than anything else.  But anyway...Over and over again, opponents to the "video-gamey" accusation have asked for a definition of what exactly this means.  Based on my own personal observations, I'll try and clarify exactly what this means, at least to a certain extent.  I think we can all agree that one of the rules of good video game design is that the designers will always ensure the players face challenges specifically tailored to their levels of power.  The power level creeps up as the game progresses, but a good design team is always careful to ensure that the player has a reasonable opportunity to overcome the challenge.  Exceptions such as bonus dungeons or extremely hard-to-kill monsters, designed for hardcore players, are different from what I'm talking about here. Now, one trend that's come up more and more in RPGs is the player getting the option of tailoring his characters in different ways.  Different series, from Final Fantasy to Might and Magic are obviously going to do it in different ways, but the player has the opportunity to decide how to best "build" their characters.  Especially flashy powers and attacks are also increasingly common.  Some video games have magical "buffs" that can be cast to augment the characters' abilities.  In a video game like Final Fantasy XII these buffs can be repeatedly cast, and it's common practice for most players to do so.  Now, turning to 3E, you see elements of this in the CR system.  In some ways, monsters have to be, or are encouraged to be, specifically balanced to match a party of a given level.  PCs are expected to level up after a specific number of combats, gaining XP and treasure appropriate to their level.  In some ways, this is a lot like a video game-players level up at specific times, and the items they get are supposedly tailored to their level, the way they are in video games.  It's even been said by some that play balance in 3E specifically requires that the PCs have a specific amount of magical items to have a chance against specific monsters, and to me that wrecks the versimilitude of the setting.  Then there's the question of magic shops-I remember one argument I had with another guy on this board about magic shops and how I as a DM would refuse to allow them in my setting.  While it may not be a hard and fast thing, there's little question in my mind that 3E, as is, is skewed towards a specific style of play, including setting elements, such as magic shops, that leave a bad taste in my mouth, ruining the kind of setting I have in mind.  Next, we have the concept of character "building".  This has become much more prevalent in 3E, with skills, feats, prestige classes, etc.  There have been debates, both on this forum and elsewhere, about people who "powergame", versus people who play for "fun" and deliberately make sure their characters aren't the most powerful on the block.  This shows that, in some players' minds, there's a tendency towards building the perfect killing machine, without regards to character development.  Take three levels of this, two of that, a feat here, a magic item there...all for the perfect damage dealer.  Now, I'm not talking about those players who have a very clear idea of what they want their character to develop into from a role-playing standpoint, and tailor their choices appropriately, but rather those players who choose skills, powers and prestige classes simply to do as much damage as possible, without taking the time to necessarily explain just why, from a plot point of view, their character has developed that particular combination of abilities.  Both MMO RPGs and console RPGs have a tendency to do this, and apparently some people think it's being repeated in 3E, and now 4E.  I can't speak to 4E, but with some of the threads I've seen (not all, of course!), this is fairly clear to me in 3E.  Finally, I'm sure we can all recall debates about the "scry/teleport/buff" threads that certain gamers have complained about.  In this case, it seems, players spend a lot of time min/maxing the exact amount of damage they can do, what kind of buffs are available to them, and things like that, before they decide how they'll fight the dragon.  This kind of min/maxing is often very useful in RPGs, but in tabletop RPGs, I guess it can spoil the mood for some.  Please note that many of the examples cited above are from threads I've seen, but I can't remember the exact posters who wrote them.  If you recognize something you talked about in this thread, please do so.  I'd be especially interested in hearing from the person, whoever he or she is, who said that they were very frustrated by the 3E mechanics, because they couldn't fit a lot of the ideas they had into the system.  Hopefully, you'll get a better idea of what some people mean by "video-gamey": structured progress (whereas before the exact types of magic items you'd get would vary widely from DM to DM), min/maxing, and buff casting.  Those are, I think, specific examples of how 3E plays like a video game.  I won't say anything on 4E, mostly because I haven't seen it, but I'm sure you can draw similar parallels from what I post here in the 4E mechanics, or other video game tendencies you might see repeated in video game RPGs.</blockquote>

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