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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2515260" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, in the first instance, I want to say this is WAY off base. Check the link in my sig, and you'll see the first steps of actually translating D&D to take more of a video game feel into account. And I've been working at it for years. The two are FAR different beasts, and even making D&D "more like a videogame" has warranted an entirely new game system that bears only superficial resemblance to D&D. Video games are simplistic elements of button-pushing that achieve on-screen results. The core of a video game involves pushing a button and getting a reaction, a peg-and-slot kind of formula of mathematical simplicity. In a video game, you advance the plot by pushing buttons. Everything is abstracted -- doing things because "it is a game" is perfectly fine, because the game is the main reason it is being played. Verisimilitude always runs a constant second to the ability of the player to push a button and see pretty lights. D&D is a complex game of rescource management and strategy wherein the plot adapts to the needs of the party, where the choices of the players drive the story in a demonstrably powerful way. Verismilitude is ac ore concern, and demands a certain complexity from the rules. Everything is made more concrete -- doing things because "it is a game" is only fine if it doesn't ruin the feel that "this is a role-playing game." It is only partially being played to roll dice -- it is also played to tell a story that changes, fluctuates, and moves with the powers and descisions of the players.D&D is NOWHERE NEAR a video game.That's not to say that D&D hasn't gained some qualities for feedback, namely in the realm of complexity and miniatures combat. D&D has been made, to some extent, a SIMPLER game by the use of some videogame ideas (such as body slots).You point these out as evidence that D&D has suffered from an inclusion of videogame motifs, but it just doesn't ring true. Extensive panoplies of magic toys have been in every edition of D&D, and they never have taken over from someone who was invested in their own character. Never have video games given carte blanche mobility (because in a videogame, this would be impossible) like an enire flying party. Characters have never been richer than towns becuase towns never have riches in video games -- they are plot devices. The adventures are never free of consequences in a video game, rather the consequences are dictated (while in D&D the conesquences are in the players' hands). Video games don't have divination. They have VERY limited teleportation. What matters is not blowing up stuff and killing things but advancing the plot of the world or developing your character's next ability.This is not evidence for your main beef. There is nothing in what you have said to support your hypothesis. Video games have none of these symptoms, yet D&D does. It's obviously not video games that are the PROBLEM here. At most, the problem is D&D having too much magic (which has been a beef against it since day 1), at least the problem is you not liking to deal with the complications that lots of magic introduces (and who can really blame you)?Video games are not the problem.</blockquote>

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