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Message: <blockquote data-quote="InVinoVeritas" data-source="post: 4110364" data-attributes="member: 41485">I'm reminded of the transformation of painting and portraiture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For a long time, painting was about making a scene as realistic as possible. The elements might be fanciful, but the most acclaimed works looked real. Then photography came along and suddenly, painting couldn't compete. There was no way that a painting could be as realistic as a photograph, and some people thought that this would be the end of the painting.Of course, it wasn't. With Impressionism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, et al., painting broke free of verisimilitude. The other aspect of painting is that it creates something emotional, and post-photography, painting started exploring all the ways it could do that, regardless of how realistic the painting was anymore. The understanding that a brush stroke carries a different emotional value than a photo has become such a given that even in the age of Photoshop, now that a photo can be just as fanciful as any painting--paintings still hold a particular quality the photos do not.In much the same way, tabletop RPGs are at a crossroads. In my opinion, increasing the verisimilitude of tabletop RPGs is not a good solution. Things can remain far more easily consistent in any MMORPG than is worthwile to pursue in a tabletop. However, tabletop allows for a far more personal, emotional connection than any MMORPG can muster. In fact, by giving a graphical representation, MMORPGs can never achieve the same level of connection that tabletops can. The graphical representation is by necessity the vision of the programmer, while the visual image in the player of tabletops is solely what the player wants to see. As a result, it will hold more personal meaning to the player. Certainly, a player programmer could, in some worlds, design a new character that allows for the personal vision to be formed graphically. Yet an artist can just as easily--indeed, probably more easily--create a garphical representation of the player's vision as well. And in both cases, programmer or artist, the player needs to have a level of advanced skill that cannot be assumed. The unskilled player can still create a visual image of the character's surroundings without prompting. Thus, for tabletop to have a future, it must rely on creativity, immersion, and personal connections to the shared world. MMORPGs are a better solution for pulling together multiple, far-flung players, creating stock graphical representations, and maintaining consistency of the world's physics. A final addition on a secondary point: There should be a way that allows these personal campaigns to cross over into other media. It happens already in a piecemeal fashion--Record of Lodoss War, D&D Online, and the old TSR/SSI modules are examples of this. However, there should be a mechanism by which a good campaign can be found, identified, and turned into intellectual property. This will greatly increase the profitability of tabletop as a breeding ground for new stories, games, and worlds that can be shared outside of the original participants. Are there any thoughts on how this should be done?</blockquote>

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