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Seppo87
2016-07-08, 01:39 AM
"if you want fighting, go play a video game" how many times has this phrase been thrown around by self-righteous "purists" of roleplaying?

Actually tho,
a game system that features most of its content as rules and content for conflict and conflic resolution, is most probably an action-oriented RPG by design and is supposed to be played as such (if we *really* want to find a "right" way of playing, just for the sake of completeness, although there is no right way except what works for you and your friends)

But the interesting -and ironic- part is:

Nowadays, most triple A games are written, directed, art directed, and acted better than what most RPG guys will ever manage to bring to the table. Even if you studied acting and writing, you're most probably nowhere near the level of actual professionals that work in the industry. You couldn't compete if you had the time, much less when you're improvising.
Most RPG performances are inferior to videogames, in a narrative sense.

So what's the deal with videogames being used as a paragon of superficial, plotless entertainment? It's time we get past this, and start to ostracize this line of thinking.

Oh, and most Roleplay purists actuyally sound quite ridiculous when "acting", and their narrative consists in convincing everyone else that their mary sue/marty stu is actually legit.
Yeah, rolling dice all the time can get stale pretty quickly, but at least it's not trying too hard.
But let's save this for another day

Genth
2016-07-08, 01:44 AM
"if you want fighting, go play a video game" how many times has this phrase been thrown around by self-righteous "purists" of roleplaying?

Maybe a couple? Maybe less? You're right, ignore the gamer-hipsters, there's not that many of them, enjoy the awesome computer games, get inspired by them and make more awesome tabletop games!

Silva Stormrage
2016-07-08, 01:44 AM
"if you want fighting, go play a video game" how many times has this phrase been thrown around by self-righteous "purists" of roleplaying?

Actually tho,
a game system that features most of its content as rules and content for conflict and conflic resolution, is most probably an action-oriented RPG by design and is supposed to be played as such (if we *really* want to find a "right" way of playing, just for the sake of completeness)

But the interesting -and ironic- part is:

Nowadays, most triple A games are written, directed, art directed, and acted better than what most RPG guys will ever manage to bring to the table. Even if you studied acting and writing, you're most probably nowhere near the level of actual professionals that work in the industry. You couldn't compete if you had the time, much less when you're improvising.
Most RPG performances are inferior to videogames, in a narrative sense.

So what's the deal with videogames being used as a paragon of superficial, plotless entertainment? It's time we get past this, and start to ostracize this line of thinking.

Oh, and most Roleplay purists actuyally sound quite ridiculous when "acting", and their narrative consists in convincing everyone else that their mary sue/marty stu is actually legit.
But let's save this for another day.

... I have never heard this uttered ever. Could you show an example? The closest thing I can think of is people thinking that D&D's 4th edition's ruleset is like WoW or some other MMORPG and regardless if you agree or not that is not about the existence of fighting but more how the combat system is designed.

Vitruviansquid
2016-07-08, 01:55 AM
Yeah... I have literally never heard anyone say that having fighting in an RPG is wrong because you might as well be playing a video game.

Now I *have* heard many people say having mechanics X, Y, or Z means you might as well be playing a video game.

But never about fighting.

Seppo87
2016-07-08, 01:57 AM
... I have never heard this uttered ever

Maybe a couple? Maybe less?
Okay, I'm genuinely surprised here.

Looks like I assumed -wrongly- that my local internet community (and by local, I mean Italy) was somehow representative of the average around the world.

Here's the story, should anyone be interested:
In my country we are literally plagued by these game hipsters.
Facebook groups are an incredible showcase of what I described.
In most of them, simply mentioning "build" or "multiclassing" summons swarms of angry players, slapping in your face their hard truth - basically the stormwind fallacy.

The most influential youtubers that talk about D&D promote this line of thinking and are usually weak on the rules side.
To the point that "The Paladin (in 3.5) is a great class choice that I encourage because paladin is a champion of good, hard to roleplay well, full of difficult choices and always at risk of losing powers because of a small mistake" not mentioning that they mecahnically have an hard time keeping up (and dismissing the Crusader as a powerplayer's weeaboo fantasy).
In another video, the same guy didn't even know you can apply metamagic on divine spells.
These people are influential, but they are not the source. They are just voicing what the majority thinks.

When I DMed my first campaign, I had a player who was literally intimidated by this pressure and wouldn't try to roleplay for fear of not being good enough. That was the most depressing thing ever, and although I told him I didn't enforce acting or didn't even expect any roleplay unless the player spontaneously wanted to, I wasn't able to help him relax.

Okay, now I really feel like playing with people from other places.

Genth
2016-07-08, 02:01 AM
Okay, I'm genuinely surprised here.

Looks like I assumed -wrongly- that my local internet community (and by local, I mean Italy) was somehow representative of the average around the world.

Here's the story, should anyone be interested:
In my country we are literally plagued by these game hipsters.
Facebook groups are an incredible showcase of what I described.
In most of them, simply mentioning "build" or "multiclassing" summons swarms of angry players, slapping in your face their hard truth - basically the stormwind fallacy.

The most influential youtubers that talk about D&D promote this line of thinking and are usually weak on the rules side.
To the point that "The Paladin (in 3.5) is a great class because he's a champion of good, hard to roleplay well, full of difficult choices and always at risk of losing her powers because of a small mistake" while being completely oblivious of the fact that they mecahnically have an hard time keeping up. In another video, the same guy didn't even know you can apply metamagic on divine spells.
These people are influential, but they are not the source. They are just voicing what the majority thinks.

Okay, now I really feel like playing with people from other places.

Do some PBPs here! :D

Slipperychicken
2016-07-08, 02:20 AM
I saw a lot of "gaming purists" in university and on here. They act more or less as you describe -denouncing people for putting any effort at all toward their characters' performance in combat, believing that caring about game mechanics and having fun with roleplay are not compatible, and so on.


I have heard phrases like "video-gamey" and "like a video game" used as negatives on here and other forums too, particularly when denouncing someone for not roleplaying properly. Video-games are seen as a lesser medium to tabletop roleplaying, although I think that perception may be fading as insights and theory from video-game design are being more publicly applied to tabletop. It often comes up as DMing advice, to take some concepts traditionally used in video-games and adapt them to tabletop.

BWR
2016-07-08, 02:54 AM
I do understand the feeling that if you want a very detailed combat system with absurd number options in combat and a game that involves little to nothing other than fighting and loot-gathering, then you're probably just as well or better off with a video game designed for these purposes. The point of roleplaying is roleplaying and if you are going to ignore that aspect then there isn't much point.

This argument about well-crafted AAA games doesn't really hold water because the roleplaying in a proper RPG isn't acting or delivering impassioned lines but creating your character and having the freedom and imagination to determine their actions and reactions with other PCs and the setting in general. No matter how well done a video game is you aren't actually deciding much of anything and are only going through the motions someone else gave you. The story may be good but it isn't your story, it belongs to someone else.

This isn't to say there cannot be a lot of combat in a properly roleplayed game, nor that there aren't games that have mostly or entirely missed the point of roleplaying and are basically a board game or video game without the medium of those games.

Cozzer
2016-07-08, 03:02 AM
Looks like I assumed -wrongly- that my local internet community (and by local, I mean Italy) was somehow representative of the average around the world.

I'm Italian, and I think we do suffer from that. Our nerds are, on average, noticeably more "traditionalist" and conservative than average Internet nerds. But this doesn't say anything about any single nerd! You can get a lot of good and pleasant players if you take care to avoid the "my way or the badwrong way" ones. Try looking at these Facebook groups and whatever as an handy "who to avoid" list.

Seppo87
2016-07-08, 03:29 AM
the roleplaying in a proper RPG isn't acting or delivering impassioned linesYou have no idea how many people firmly believe the opposite

Blackhawk748
2016-07-08, 06:02 AM
I think i've heard that particular usage...once? And i do have a buddy who puts virtually 0 effort into his build, so i do it for him, though i do try to avoid multiclassing when possible as he prefers single classing.


"The Paladin (in 3.5) is a great class choice that I encourage because paladin is a champion of good, hard to roleplay well, full of difficult choices and always at risk of losing powers because of a small mistake"

Oh my god you are so wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. This is the worst kind of person to play a Paladin for. "Oh you Jaywalkeed? You fall."

Segev
2016-07-08, 09:16 AM
I would suggest that it's less "Italy" and more "Facebook" that is your problem culture, here. Facebook does lend itself towards a more free-form style of RP, and that style of RP is rife with god-mode mary sue characters who try to make everything about them and fix everyone's problems in uninteresting, reality-warping ways. The vigilance against this kind of "but I should be GOOD at this!" argumentation for why the free-form character never loses or fails leads to a suspicion of those who are even competent in "too many" areas (a highly subjective thing).

When people with this formative experience are introduced to more rules-heavy games, they bring that bias against being "too omni-capable" with them, and they retain their sense that you should self-censor your character's power. In free-form, you should never be as powerful as you could possibly write a character to be, so obviously, in rules-restricted/defined games, you should never be the maximum power the rules would let you.

They therefore equate mechanical optimization with the god-mode mary sues. Discussing your build means, to them, that you're fishing for those "backstory excuses" to make your character "too powerful." And since such omnicapable PCs are almost always badly RP'd in their free-form games, obviously anybody focused on making a powerful, widely-capable character in a rules-heavy RPG is going to be bad at RP, as well.


The Stormwind Fallacy is seductive because it is easy to look at a stat page full of semi-randomly-named abilities, or at a stat page which has the same familiar high-efficiency options as a bunch of others, and assume that a "real role-player" would have accepted a sub-optimal stat page in the name of doing something different, something that "fit the character" (because obviously, if you wrote your character such that it fit this thing, or you want to use this thing in spite of the fluff the book gives it not fitting, you're a bad RPer). They don't generally "get" re-fluffing, ironically. A rules-heavy game, to them, is rigid, and the mechanics must be tied to the fluff of the rule, rather than used as a tool to achieve the effect you want. And, because free-form has to have flaws simply voluntarily taken for story value, rules-heavy games must have you take bad choices to prove your role-playing chops.

It rarely occurs to them to blame the game's design for the Boxing skill being something that literally everybody who wants to be good at any sort of combat should be seriously considering taking. Only "powergamers" would want that. "Real roleplayers" understand that flaws such as attacking less often make the character more of a "real character." Because, again, in free-form, you HAVE to impose those limits. And those limits don't mean your character fails all the time, because it's free-form, so when the story is better if you succeed, you get the "one in a million" success. Or your failures are narrated with pre-planned results to lead to more story. (It is a failure of a GM to have failure stymie the game entirely, but failure being an option without it being the only option is rarer in free-form than in rules-heavy games.)


So it's easy for me to see WHY people fall for the Stormwind Fallacy. WHY they assume that wanting rules is just an excuse to abuse them and ignore RP. They're wrong, but that's where it comes from.

Belac93
2016-07-08, 09:46 AM
I've honestly never heard this. I quite enjoy both.

The game is built to do combat and roleplaying, and I usually optimize my characters. I make my character concept before my build, but that's because I get bored if I just have a blank character, and have to develop them later.

Try playing a PbP here (find one that you think will last a while), or hang out a bit in the individual game forums. About half of everything in the advice sections is optimization or Q&A.

Seppo87
2016-07-08, 10:00 AM
@segev
This is an interesting digression about Facebook and freeform RP, but my experience is different and I suspect is a european (or simply italian) thing, bor out of our traditional artistic and literary roots - more specifically, out of our nostalgia of the classics.
(as if roleplaying well was somehow a way to stay true to our ideals of artistic expression, which is a very common need in hipsters and not-so-social people who incidentally happen to be plenty in the D&D crew)

Most people playing tabletop around here do not have a freeform background.
They have most likely read Tolkien tho.
There's this basic assumption that the purpose of RPG is to enact dramatic scenes that should be performed by the actors, rules used only as a supporting tool.

Naturally there are fans of other gaming styles around. I'm describing the majority, and it's not just Facebook, it used to be like this way before Facebook existed.
The biggest italian D&D forum used to be ran by these people, and I'm not joking here, there was a rule that would get you banned if you did not write properly in any of the sections.

For a long time the only two games with a wide fanbase were AD&D and whitewolf's wod stuff (mostly Vampires) and those people were used to a pure old school, perform-heavy, railroaded and punishing (i.e. you played bad no XP, you're challenging the questgiver you character gets humiliated etc) style of play
The old generations "trained" the new ones and their legacy is still alive.

This is another kind of stormwind. It's not about the character lacking any flaws because that's poor taste, it's more a Player VS Story thing. Optimization is seen as the tool bad players use to prevail at the expense of the narrative.
Also, being interested in action scenes is deemed childish and shallow.

Of course I can see the situation here (on gitp) is entirely different, but I thought the phrase I quoted in OP was common worldwide and this place being visited by expčerts was the exception, not the rule.

Anyway, the situation is slowly changing for the better here, the forum I mentioned earlier has a new staff and they were so bitter about the situation that they made a rule against people who try to enforce a single right way of playing (i.e. answering "you should play a single class othwerise you're a munchkin" in an optimization thread - yes they were free to do so before, and they still do where there are no rules against it, i.e. on Facebook)

The very group I'm playing in currently, in 2016, has a player who at some point said the phrase in OP.

I guess it's just a matter of time.

Talakeal
2016-07-08, 10:41 AM
I have heard it all the time, both online and in person. Heck, my former DM said it so often that it was almost his catch phrase.

I also has one PC who has a completely opposite oppinion. He likes lots of combat in his RPGs and claims that if he wanted plot he would just go and read a book.

sktarq
2016-07-08, 10:41 AM
Another side to it is that some people play a very "video-gamey" play style seem horribly inefficient. If that was the mental itch you wanted to scratch why play a TTRPG when video games can now do it better?

For me the above only makes sense for players who want to only dungeon delve have four things to do entering a room (trap search, loot search, kill what ever moves, and pick a door). I figure the OOC. Socialization drives them to play the slower more awkward TTRPG over a computer game. And those people can be just as pushy about the game being played "wrong" if it is dealing with politics and doesn't have enough stabbing for their tastes.

Slipperychicken
2016-07-08, 10:56 AM
Oh my god you are so wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. This is the worst kind of person to play a Paladin for. "Oh you Jaywalkeed? You fall."

It is a horrible way to DM for paladins, and one which I strongly discourage, but he is right if the DM is playing it by the book. A long time ago, I put together a list (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?248164-3-5-A-Complete-List-of-Evil-Acts) of things that 3.5 considers to be evil actions. For example, willingly killing a bandit for treasure is considered a "nefarious purpose", and that's an evil act by the book, which in turn falls the paladin.

BWR
2016-07-08, 11:33 AM
It is a horrible way to DM for paladins, and one which I strongly discourage, but he is right if the DM is playing it by the book. A long time ago, I put together a list (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?248164-3-5-A-Complete-List-of-Evil-Acts) of things that 3.5 considers to be evil actions. For example, willingly killing a bandit for treasure is considered a "nefarious purpose", and that's an evil act by the book, which in turn falls the paladin.

I would agree. Killing people in order to take their gains, ill-gotten or otherwise, is pretty evil. If, however, the paladin kills the bandits in accordance with local law to protect innocent people from ne'er-do-wells and cannot find the original owners of their loot and takes it for herself (probably donating a certain amount to charity), it is perfectly acceptable.
It's not the killing in itself that's a problem in D&D, it's the targets and the purpose that make all the difference.

Lord Raziere
2016-07-08, 11:48 AM
well this a new complaint.

personally, I wouldn't want any roleplaying where I DON'T have combat. I may be a good roleplayer and want to play characters with their flaws and shortcomings and problems and so on, but I also want to kick evil's behind, be an awesome action hero, save the day, be a badass. if I can't have both, its not a roleplay I want to be in. like y'know, stuff like Marvel comics, or anime heroes....

I think the closest equivalent to what your talking about Seppo, here in the US is the murderhobo accusation. basically, murderhobo is a term to refer to the common "wandering fighting adventurer" archetype, and it has negative connotations, implying that the character is nothing but a murderous hobo who does it just for the exp and loot, with no connections to the world around them. an accusation which of course is completely ignoring the long history of knight errants from chinese wuxia, to japanese samurai to european knights to even american cowboys who count as that archetype, who are all basically wandering adventurers and great characters as well.

so yeah. might just be murderhobo accusation in different clothes.

also, whoa Italy is way more anti-optimizer than I used to be back when I was stupid. unfortunately, even if that had been known to me at the time, I'm still a combat person, so they still wouldn't appeal to me at all.

Talakeal
2016-07-08, 12:26 PM
The IP seems to have the implication that most roleplayers put a lot of stake in the wuality of the players performance and everyone's acting ability. I dont think this is a very fair assumption, and it has never really been something that I have even noticed and is never discussed in my groups, most of which are pretty much on the far side of a high combat game.

ngilop
2016-07-08, 01:03 PM
"if you want fighting, go play a video game" how many times has this phrase been thrown around by self-righteous "purists" of roleplaying?

Actually tho,
a game system that features most of its content as rules and content for conflict and conflic resolution, is most probably an action-oriented RPG by design and is supposed to be played as such (if we *really* want to find a "right" way of playing, just for the sake of completeness, although there is no right way except what works for you and your friends)

But the interesting -and ironic- part is:

Nowadays, most triple A games are written, directed, art directed, and acted better than what most RPG guys will ever manage to bring to the table. Even if you studied acting and writing, you're most probably nowhere near the level of actual professionals that work in the industry. You couldn't compete if you had the time, much less when you're improvising.
Most RPG performances are inferior to videogames, in a narrative sense.

So what's the deal with videogames being used as a paragon of superficial, plotless entertainment? It's time we get past this, and start to ostracize this line of thinking.

Oh, and most Roleplay purists actuyally sound quite ridiculous when "acting", and their narrative consists in convincing everyone else that their mary sue/marty stu is actually legit.
Yeah, rolling dice all the time can get stale pretty quickly, but at least it's not trying too hard.
But let's save this for another day

In my 29 years of gaming, never once have I ever heard anybody say this or anything remotely close to it. But guys who design RPGs are inherently better actors that lets say Sir Ian Mckellan? That's is something I am going to call bull pukcy on.

But then I never heard of murder-hoboing before this website, so I would assume its the same people doing both? Not sure.



I'd rather the game-ist, or what have you, would stop referring to people who have 'sub optimal' characters in RPG (specifically D&D) as: wastes of life, should kill themselves, are stupid and should not breed, should never play a RPG ever, and some other such nonsense.

And yes some of these have been said to me on these very forums as well as in private messages.

Not everybody needs to be playing at the highest levels ofoptimization to have fun
playing a gam with friends ya know. There do exist games, many of them actually, where the knight, bard, rogue, cleric, and wizard can all play together and have a blast.

Seppo87
2016-07-08, 01:17 PM
I'd rather the game-ist, or what have you, would stop referring to people who have 'sub optimal' characters in RPG (specifically D&D) as: wastes of life, should kill themselves, are stupid and should not breed, should never play a RPG ever, and some other such nonsense
This is bad news and I feel sad thinking about it.
I do not support any of this and if that happens again its best to report such messages to the staff

Segev
2016-07-08, 01:23 PM
The only times I'd criticize somebody for a sub-optimal character is if they're complaining their character can't do something and refuse to take advice on how to make it do it better, personally.

wumpus
2016-07-08, 02:38 PM
I saw a lot of "gaming purists" in university and on here. They act more or less as you describe -denouncing people for putting any effort at all toward their characters' performance in combat, believing that caring about game mechanics and having fun with roleplay are not compatible, and so on.


I have heard phrases like "video-gamey" and "like a video game" used as negatives on here and other forums too, particularly when denouncing someone for not roleplaying properly. Video-games are seen as a lesser medium to tabletop roleplaying, although I think that perception may be fading as insights and theory from video-game design are being more publicly applied to tabletop. It often comes up as DMing advice, to take some concepts traditionally used in video-games and adapt them to tabletop.

A character who doesn't pay attention to combat performance is outright suicidal in most games. It might be a popular trope to role-play (especially with a drawn out death scene), but I'd hardly call it role-playing. Much of the issues with "builds" is that the mechanics are outright bizarre in terms of the characters lives. Just imagine the weird turns that Nale went through to build his class, and how odd it was when Elan threatened to take a level of wizard. But something like a sword and board character would be equally odd since (unless the character had an intelligence of a "D&D 7 or 8") they would be aware of how dangerous it was and how ineffective the shield was.


You have no idea how many people firmly believe the opposite

It works really well if you are playing a bard. Possibly in a "everyone is a bard" party. Not so well if you are playing a stoic barbarian.

MrNobody
2016-07-08, 03:14 PM
As a fellow player, and as fellow Italian, i plead guilty of having defined a game "video-gamey" in a negative way. There is a difference, though: i use this term talking about the structure of a game, and not about its plot.

When i play, i like being free of choosing what to do and even if i'm not an optimizer i like to have plenty of options to pick from. The more a game gets closer to locked skill-trees, the more it looks like a video game to me, the less i like it.

Stated this personal opinion (that is, remember, purely personal), i add that i do not consider a "video-gamey" RPG to be an inherently a bad game, or superficial, or plotless. For example, i'm not a big fan of WoD "dots" system, but i consider it to have produced marvellous plots and "historical backgrounds"!! I simply don't play those games by my initiative: if my gaming group decides to give it a try, i'll try it too, but i won't be the one to propose it.

RPGs are, after all, social games, and the base for an enjoyable game is to play one (and play it in a way) that everyone agrees on. In my 10 years experience i've mostly played D&D 3.5, and i've addressed it in different ways with different groups: "Standard" dungeon crawl, heavy roleplay... i had my "drama queen" moments at the table acting with tears at the corners of my eyes and i organized a small Dragon Ball -like tournament in which every player controlled four 15th level characters at the same time in TOTAL CLASH FOR UTTER AND MINDLESS DICE-DELIVERED DESTRUCTION!!!!

I indeed agree that here in Italy we have gamers that share strange habits*, but the behaviour you describe looks more like a form of extremism like many others (and thus relate to being a rude and a little close-minded human being) and less a gaming-specific problem.


@segev
This is another kind of stormwind. It's not about the character lacking any flaws because that's poor taste, it's more a Player VS Story thing. Optimization is seen as the tool bad players use to prevail at the expense of the narrative.
Also, being interested in action scenes is deemed childish and shallow.


In all the groups i've played in (it counts up to 25-30 people), optimization is seen as something everyone (DM and players) has to agree with before anyone (DM or player) brings it to the table.
An example: recently in my gaming group a player decided to come up with a new PC. He quickly browsed the net and found out a wizard-incantatrix-something-something uber-build digging out feats and additional rules (even ones that my group never used, like LA buy off) from different splatbooks. Where's the deal? the deal is that half of the group likes to play as simple "hobby" and does not care that much about builds, resulting often in sub-optimal PCs. Bringing to the table such a PC would have broken an enstablished balance, the player understood the matter and accepted to tune the build down to match the general level.


*For example my first DM claimed that no adventure could start at a level different from the 1st. He also liked short games, so you could grow up a character up to 5th level at max before the adventure stopped. After a 5th level paladin, a 5th level rogue-wizard, and a 5th level druid the whole group forced him to change: we started at 2nd level and ended at 6th :smallbiggrin:
Another DM i briefly played with made us roll a d6 instead of the standard spot/listen check to notice things (it may have taken it from a previous edition of D&D but i'm not sure), and set up a special sub-quest for our 5th paladin to find his mount because it was "acceptable" that a warrior could summon it out from nowhere...:smalleek:

Darth Ultron
2016-07-08, 05:08 PM
So what's the deal with videogames being used as a paragon of superficial, plotless entertainment? It's time we get past this, and start to ostracize this line of thinking.


Well, most video games after Pong had a plot. Even if it's a boring, superficial, railroaded plot. So, yes, video games are paragons of simple, straight forward game play. You must do X adventure is every RPG type video game.

Video games have to be simple, that is just a rule of reality until they invent Artificial Intelligence. When you walk up to a NPC in a video game they will say ''ho, adventurer! For no reason other then you need to know..wink,wink, the red circle is the way to the north door. Here take this potion of life i have for no reason and good travels." Simply put they can only program so much.

BayardSPSR
2016-07-08, 09:06 PM
I realize some of the posts on this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?493786-Why-More-Rules), which I started, may have been an immediate contributor to this one. I didn't address them there, since they were a bit off-topic, but I will here.

Video games and tabletop RPGs have similarities, appeal to many of the same people, and evolved almost symbiotically, drawing inspiration from each other, over the same handful of decades. The fact that they're entangled - that there are RPGs of video games, and video games of RPGs - is inherent to both industries. They inhabit overlapping pop cultural spaces. This is okay.

This means, inherently, that some RPGs will resemble some video games relative to other RPGs, and that some video games will resemble RPGs relative to other video games. There's a whole genre of video games called "RPGs," even. Venn diagrams overlap; this is okay.

Because of this symbiotic development and ongoing exchange of inspiration, it is fair to criticize both RPGs and video games for having drawn elements from each other that are inappropriate for their medium. It's also fair to credit RPGs and video games for having drawn concepts from each other that are evocative, work well, are fun, or good in any other way. That is, "being like a video game" isn't a criticism; "being inappropriately like a video game" is.

RPGs and video games are not better than each other. They are different media that include games with elements inspired by each other, and that's not inherently bad.


I saw a lot of "gaming purists" in university and on here. They act more or less as you describe -denouncing people for putting any effort at all toward their characters' performance in combat, believing that caring about game mechanics and having fun with roleplay are not compatible, and so on.

Ironically, I've seen the opposite. That is, the "gaming purists" I've run into were heavy online gamers, actively studying game design, and the kind of people who play collectible card games with the express intention of creating the most elaborate rule-spirit-crushing victory-engines possible.

Tangent: the games of theirs that I playtested were an excellent demonstration of the fact that "good design" and "fun" are two totally different things.


Personally, I wouldn't want any roleplaying where I DON'T have combat.

Any? Ever? Wow. To be clear, I don't think this is a bad thing, or that I wouldn't be able to participate in a fun RPG with someone who had the same preference to the same degree, but I didn't realize anyone wanted that much consistency out of it.


As a fellow player, and as fellow Italian, i plead guilty of having defined a game "video-gamey" in a negative way. There is a difference, though: i use this term talking about the structure of a game, and not about its plot.

This seems like a valuable distinction to make. Video gaming is fun, but the medium isn't noted for being characterized by engaging narrative structure (with notable exceptions).

goto124
2016-07-08, 09:31 PM
Video gaming is fun, but the medium isn't noted for being characterized by engaging narrative structure (with notable exceptions).

Due to the difference in medium (live human vs pre-scripted computer running the world), TRPGs and CRPGs have very different ways of going about narrative. The latter is much more linear and 'railroady', for example. Conventions acceptable in CRPGs (e.g. you must get to the next area by killing this specific monster for this specific key to take to this specific door) are not acceptable in TRPGs (why can't I pick or bash down the door? Why can't I pickpocket the monster holding the key? Why is the monster even holding the key? Why is there no other way to get to the next area? Why can't I choose to go to a different area instead?).

BayardSPSR
2016-07-08, 09:44 PM
Due to the difference in medium (live human vs pre-scripted computer running the world), TRPGs and CRPGs have very different ways of going about narrative. The latter is much more linear and 'railroady', for example. Conventions acceptable in CRPGs (e.g. you must get to the next area by killing this specific monster for this specific key to take to this specific door) are not acceptable in TRPGs (why can't I pick or bash down the door? Why can't I pickpocket the monster holding the key? Why is the monster even holding the key? Why is there no other way to get to the next area? Why can't I choose to go to a different area instead?).

Exactly. Ironically, this seems particularly prevalent (or at least, feels most egregious) in the video games most inspired by tabletop RPGs.

2D8HP
2016-07-09, 01:00 AM
"if you want fighting, go play a video game" how many times has this phrase been thrown around by self-righteous "purists" of roleplaying? I've read it online (which is also where I learned the phrase "Murder-hobo"). I've never actually heard it spoken IRL, but I'm pretty much out of the loop, having not played a video game since the 1980's, and having never played a "MMORPG". But a lot of the criticism of a certain type of play seems to be aimed at what I remember as being the usual way we played in the 1970's and 80's, which was glorious fun, and I would love to play again! :biggrin:

I read a lot of criticism of 4e D&D (which I never played so maybe some of the hate was valid, I couldn't say), and often times I would read how it was "video gamey" or "like a MMORPG", and when I'd read how the play 4e encouraged was supposedly like that I'd think, "but that just seems like what we were trying to play in the 1970's"!
What can I say "haters gonna hate" :yuk:
Fun is its own reward, and I don't recall getting paid to role-play "the right way" ever.. Last I checked, it's a game for fun. Maybe once upon a time those who wanted the games to be more of an improvisational theater practice session received sass and now they want to send some back?
I like rolling dice with friends, but maybe the haters are right and video games are just so awesome were fools not to try them?
I already have enough demands on my time and wallet so I don't plan on finding out, but getting around a table with dice, friends, and pizza while imagining whomping on (or running from) monsters, without worrying about your PC's "motivation" and "tragic deal"? Good lord how I miss it.
:frown:

goto124
2016-07-09, 02:07 AM
I read a lot of criticism of 4e D&D (which I never played so maybe some of the hate was valid, I couldn't say), and often times I would read how it was "video gamey" or "like a MMORPG", and when I'd read how the play 4e encouraged was supposedly like that I'd think, "but that just seems like what we were trying to play in the 1970's"!

IIRC, 4e was 'video-gamey' because it went so hard for 'balance', every class played in the same boring fashion with just a bit of refluffing between them.

Segev
2016-07-09, 10:25 AM
IIRC, 4e was 'video-gamey' because it went so hard for 'balance', every class played in the same boring fashion with just a bit of refluffing between them.

Honestly, while the rest of this statement is very accurate, I never saw how that made it "video-gamey." It doesn't play nor feel like a video game. It certainly doesn't play like WoW or any other MMORPG. So I never got those criticisms.

I don't like 4e. But those always struck me as strange ways to criticize it.

Cybren
2016-07-09, 10:32 AM
Honestly, while the rest of this statement is very accurate, I never saw how that made it "video-gamey." It doesn't play nor feel like a video game. It certainly doesn't play like WoW or any other MMORPG. So I never got those criticisms.

I don't like 4e. But those always struck me as strange ways to criticize it.

The conceptual aesthetic of the design resembled an MMO, but the actual gameplay didn't. The combat roles of Tank/DPS/Healer/Control dates back to DikuMUD, after all, but the real time nature of 99+% of MMOs means that the more tactical fiddly elements of 4E weren't really possible in them. The interplay of mechanics that let you move enemies in precise directions of your choice, or to target a specific enemy and buff a specific ally at the same time would be harder to implement in a real time environment (though with multitargetting in many MMOs they do similar things), while at the same MMOs are better able to track more and more varied resources, so you have classes that play wildly different, while in 4E everyone played somewhat similar (though I think "everyone plays exactly the same!" was an overstated criticism)

Enixon
2016-07-09, 12:45 PM
Okay, I'm genuinely surprised here.

Looks like I assumed -wrongly- that my local internet community (and by local, I mean Italy) was somehow representative of the average around the world.

I'm just as surprised as you are :smalleek: , not so much on this site thankfully, but in my experience at other RPG message boards, as well as IRL (I'm in central California) dismissing people who show an interest in combat (or in the mechanical aspect of RPGs as a whole really) as knuckle dragging murderhobos who should just go play Skyrim is incredibly common.

Vitruviansquid
2016-07-09, 01:16 PM
That still seems pretty strange to me since the most popular tabletop RPG out there also happens to be one of the most combat-heavy.

Blackhawk748
2016-07-09, 02:01 PM
Honestly, while the rest of this statement is very accurate, I never saw how that made it "video-gamey." It doesn't play nor feel like a video game. It certainly doesn't play like WoW or any other MMORPG. So I never got those criticisms.

I don't like 4e. But those always struck me as strange ways to criticize it.

It was less like an MMO and more like a Skirmish Wargame, like Fire Emblem and similar games.

Knaight
2016-07-09, 04:04 PM
Nowadays, most triple A games are written, directed, art directed, and acted better than what most RPG guys will ever manage to bring to the table. Even if you studied acting and writing, you're most probably nowhere near the level of actual professionals that work in the industry. You couldn't compete if you had the time, much less when you're improvising.
Most RPG performances are inferior to videogames, in a narrative sense.
I'm not convinced. Putting aside how videogames aren't exactly getting the highest caliber writers, the format tends to cripple the writing. CRPGs are probably the most obvious point of comparison, and all I have to do to be better than them when it comes to dialog is to not be so far behind the writer that my improvisation can keep up with a premade dialog tree that can take only very limited things into account, that has then been run through any number of marketing based restrictions. All I need to do to be better than them with regards to ability to influence the plot is to have improvisational or last minute writing skills that let me have more branches than a couple of highly expensive options.

When it comes to art direction, sure, videogames have a major edge. With writing? I don't buy it for a second.


So what's the deal with videogames being used as a paragon of superficial, plotless entertainment? It's time we get past this, and start to ostracize this line of thinking.
It's probably because videogames are a paragon of superficial, plotless entertainment - at least if the criteria being used are narrative. The writers tend to be lackluster, and even great writers would be incredibly limited by the medium.

RickAllison
2016-07-09, 10:59 PM
I'm not convinced. Putting aside how videogames aren't exactly getting the highest caliber writers, the format tends to cripple the writing. CRPGs are probably the most obvious point of comparison, and all I have to do to be better than them when it comes to dialog is to not be so far behind the writer that my improvisation can keep up with a premade dialog tree that can take only very limited things into account, that has then been run through any number of marketing based restrictions. All I need to do to be better than them with regards to ability to influence the plot is to have improvisational or last minute writing skills that let me have more branches than a couple of highly expensive options.

When it comes to art direction, sure, videogames have a major edge. With writing? I don't buy it for a second.


It's probably because videogames are a paragon of superficial, plotless entertainment - at least if the criteria being used are narrative. The writers tend to be lackluster, and even great writers would be incredibly limited by the medium.

I think this is really unfair. Video games have the interesting problem of trying to balance telling a story, providing engaging gameplay, and making choices matter. In books and movies, they get to simplify this by only having to worry about the first, while TTRPGs and video games deal with all three, but not to the same degree.

At their core, TTRPGs are collaborative storytelling and/or war gaming. In either format, the player's choices need to matter because that is their contribution to the story. Even in war gaming, the outcome of a series of matches is dictated by the tactical choices, affecting the war story. In games with a flexible DM, everyone can change the game to fit a particular style (more gameplay, more story, more player choice, etc.). This isn't available with video games.

In video games, providing great gameplay is the most important criteria. Some games get around this with great stories or choice, but it is much harder to sell someone on just a story in what is supposed to be an interactive media than in film or literature. Some games run with this and focus solely on it (I'm looking at you, Call of Duty). A game like Skyrim, though, is trying to engage you while also giving you choices. At that point, it is trying to combine the strength of video games (gameplay) with the strength of tabletop games (choice), and so for the sake of space must sacrifice story and even the choices will be limited. The logical end to that is games like Civilization, where the only story is created by the choices of the players. This creates a unique kind of game, but it will never have the same story as a sandbox tabletop game. Then, we have games like Final Fantasy. Other than character builds, these offer little in the way of choice. Though there may be numerous ways to get there, the story is always the same. This is roughly equivalent to a DM putting players on the rails. This would be highly disappointing for a player who wants to impact the world with his decisions, but is just fine for a good story and fun gameplay.

But I digress. Your criticism that video games are vapid is invalid not because of your reasoning, but of the reason. You are claiming that it is poorly-written because your improvisation can be superior to the dialogue tree. That is not being badly written, that is limiting player input. In contrast, a D&D game can be full of plot holes, predictable, and overall poorly-written, but we enjoy it anyway because we can influence the world. As an example, a game like The Last of Us is likely miles ahead of the writing in a typical TTRPG campaign, but the TTRPG will let you alter the world more. Your complaint isn't that it is poorly written, but that you don't have agency. Completely different things.

Knaight
2016-07-10, 03:39 AM
I think this is really unfair. Video games have the interesting problem of trying to balance telling a story, providing engaging gameplay, and making choices matter. In books and movies, they get to simplify this by only having to worry about the first, while TTRPGs and video games deal with all three, but not to the same degree.
Exactly. The writing in videogames tends to be worse because the writers are dealing with a lot of systemic difficulties which drag it down - books and movies have different restrictions which are much less limiting. There's a similar thing with musical scores as well, where movie music can be made knowing exactly how long each piece will be playing, what's going on in the background, etc. and videogame music has none of those advantages and tends to end up weaker.


At their core, TTRPGs are collaborative storytelling and/or war gaming. In either format, the player's choices need to matter because that is their contribution to the story. Even in war gaming, the outcome of a series of matches is dictated by the tactical choices, affecting the war story. In games with a flexible DM, everyone can change the game to fit a particular style (more gameplay, more story, more player choice, etc.). This isn't available with video games.
Again, no disagreement here. That's totally irrelevant to the original claim about them being written better though; that the reason they aren't written better is tied into structural factors with the medium has no bearing on the actual quality of the writing.


A game like Skyrim, though, is trying to engage you while also giving you choices. At that point, it is trying to combine the strength of video games (gameplay) with the strength of tabletop games (choice), and so for the sake of space must sacrifice story and even the choices will be limited. The logical end to that is games like Civilization, where the only story is created by the choices of the players. This creates a unique kind of game, but it will never have the same story as a sandbox tabletop game. Then, we have games like Final Fantasy. Other than character builds, these offer little in the way of choice. Though there may be numerous ways to get there, the story is always the same. This is roughly equivalent to a DM putting players on the rails. This would be highly disappointing for a player who wants to impact the world with his decisions, but is just fine for a good story and fun gameplay.
Final Fantasy is actually a really good example. There's a largely linear story, but there is still all sorts of weirdness. You can faff about grinding monsters for in game months, and all the characters pushing a sense of urgency just continue to do so with no more intensity. You can quickly deplete NPC lines and have characters talking over and over about the same few things in exactly the same phrases. Even if you just look at the strings of cutscenes and plot critical box text, there's heavy restrictions because videogame animation is expensive. The writing is dragged down by a lot of major structural difficulties absent in a TTRPG.


But I digress. Your criticism that video games are vapid is invalid not because of your reasoning, but of the reason. You are claiming that it is poorly-written because your improvisation can be superior to the dialogue tree. That is not being badly written, that is limiting player input. In contrast, a D&D game can be full of plot holes, predictable, and overall poorly-written, but we enjoy it anyway because we can influence the world. As an example, a game like The Last of Us is likely miles ahead of the writing in a typical TTRPG campaign, but the TTRPG will let you alter the world more. Your complaint isn't that it is poorly written, but that you don't have agency. Completely different things.
My complaint is that it is poorly written, and that games that try to spoof agency are particularly poorly written. More than that, it's that at their most fundamental videogames are a format where any storytelling being done is being done by building an interactive structure ahead of time for an unpredictable agent to act in. Even a completely linear game can run into problems, and there are much bigger problems when trying to write around a more complicated system. Take dialog trees - they have a limited length, they tend to repeat, and if a player runs through the same one multiple times the result looks like stupid writing.

As for the typical campaign, it's not particularly relevant. The case made that I'm arguing against is that videogames generally have better writing than tabletop RPGs, and it's really only the ones in both formats that focus to some degree on the writing that are relevant. Games where it is completely beside the point can be safely ignored; Bejeweled isn't relevant here and neither is a dungeon crawl game that is basically Descent. When restricting the field to tabletop RPGs being played by people focused on the literary aspects, I'd argue that videogames are routinely exceeded. Novels and films, not so much.

Also, I never called video games vapid. I said that they were vapid if analyzed from a narrative perspective; that's a completely different position.

2D8HP
2016-07-10, 04:19 AM
I'm just as surprised as you are :smalleek: , not so much on this site thankfully, but in my experience at other RPG message boards, as well as IRL (I'm in central California) dismissing people who show an interest in combat (or in the mechanical aspect of RPGs as a whole really) as knuckle dragging murderhobos who should just go play Skyrim is incredibly common.Um..I never heard of Skyrim before seeing it mentioned in this Forum, I am little interested in "mechanic's", because my age addled brain really no longer has that kind of mental agility, but when it comes to being "interested in combat" (I like rolling dice and the suspense), and still wanting to play "a knuckle dragging murder hobo" PC? Yeah that's a fair cop, I fit the bill.
Funny but IIRC "back in the day", almost all of our PC's could've been called "murder-hobo's"(while I made a few D&D PC's that weren't in the 1980's, they just didn't mesh well with the party), but I never encountered the phrase until recently.
When did that become a slur?

Vitruviansquid
2016-07-10, 05:19 AM
Maybe video game narratives will seem of higher quality when you get a better understanding of the medium and become more skilled at working with it.

Your example of getting to an urgent part in Final Fantasy 7 and then grinding is kind of like if I read to the beginning of the climax in some book, put the book down for a week, and then complained about how that book can't express urgency when I picked it up again to finish the climax.

Cluedrew
2016-07-10, 07:31 AM
Also, I never called video games vapid. I said that they were vapid if analyzed from a narrative perspective; that's a completely different position.I'm not entirely sure that is fair. Possibly one of the most impactful stores I have ever experienced came through a video game. Yes there are problems that have to be dealt with and if they are not it can mess with the work. But there are games that have dealt with those problems and have told very engaging stories.

Knaight
2016-07-10, 08:16 AM
Maybe video game narratives will seem of higher quality when you get a better understanding of the medium and become more skilled at working with it.

My understanding of the medium is fine; I'm just not particularly inclined to pretend that the mediums weaknesses are stronger than they are, particularly not in the purpose of pretending that tabletop RPGs are somehow less suited towards their strengths.

slachance6
2016-07-10, 09:43 AM
So what's the deal with videogames being used as a paragon of superficial, plotless entertainment?

My thoughts:

Video games, or at least AAA video games, are not inherently superficial and plotless. Some have well-portrayed characters, detailed lore and complex plots that had a lot of work put into them. The same goes for many tabletop campaigns. The difference is that the player isn't required to care about the story in a video game.

I can play the campaign of a first person shooter without giving a crap about the plot, skipping cutscenes so I can get to the next fight as soon as possible. I can very easily create a character for an MMO without considering the game's lore or making a backstory for my character. This doesn't harm anyone because there's no one to get mad at me for not paying attention to the story.

On the other hand, if I'm playing D&D and make a character that has no personality and no backstory and only care about fights and treasure, I come across as an inconsiderate *******. The other players and the DM expect me to participate in the narrative that they themselves have created. If I don't, I'm just causing disruption without any benefit to the game.

Vitruviansquid
2016-07-10, 10:08 AM
My understanding of the medium is fine; I'm just not particularly inclined to pretend that the mediums weaknesses are stronger than they are, particularly not in the purpose of pretending that tabletop RPGs are somehow less suited towards their strengths.

Evidently your understanding is not fine, if you're making a game run through the same dialogue multiple times and then declaring that makes it stupid writing.

goto124
2016-07-10, 10:29 AM
Some of the features are anti-frustration features, even. Especially when there's no GM to guide or change things to suit specific players.

Gastronomie
2016-07-10, 10:30 AM
I don't necessarily believe in the Stormwind fallacy. I like creating strong characters.

However, I don't like creating strong, murderhobo characters who have no personality whatsoever.

If someone is interested in solely optimization and doesn't care a single s*** about RP'ing, or if someone tells someone else to optimize and become better at fighting or leave, I certainly will tell him to "go play video games".

Because, like slachance6 mentioned, in video games, you don't need to be good at socializing, and you don't get other people upset with your lack of willingness to RP.


On the other hand, if I'm playing D&D and make a character that has no personality and no backstory and only care about fights and treasure, I come across as an inconsiderate *******. The other players and the DM expect me to participate in the narrative that they themselves have created. If I don't, I'm just causing disruption without any benefit to the game.This basically sums up my thoughts.

I know someone at my school who once played Call of Cthulhu with us, said it was boring, and quit. It was probably good for both him and us, because he's an online video game addict who didn't understand the concept of "role-playing" in the first place. (I don't think that everyone playing video games is bad at role-playing - only that certain people are really unsuited for table-talk.)

It is an undenyable fact that table-talk is the type of game that is the most "pickey" of the players. Not everyone can enjoy it. And not everyone can make others enjoy it.

Cluedrew
2016-07-10, 03:18 PM
One point I actually tend to optimize is when I have a character that is supposed to be good at something. Then I will minmax (or just raise and lower) until I think I have my character's strengths and weaknesses.

To use D&D's tiers, what is you wanted to play a character best represented by a T4 class in a party of T2 characters. Do you accept getting left behind? Or do you optimize that character to the ends of the earth to bring them up to par? Actually I would search up '[class name] T2 fix' someone has probably done it already.

2D8HP
2016-07-10, 05:11 PM
I know someone at my school who once played Call of Cthulhu with us, said it was boring, and quit. It was probably good for both him and us, because he's an online video game addict who didn't understand the concept of "role-playing" in the first place. (I don't think that everyone playing video games is bad at role-playing - only that certain people are really unsuited for table-talk.)

It is an undenyable fact that table-talk is the type of game that is the most "pickey" of the players. Not everyone can enjoy it. And not everyone can make others enjoy it.
I find this interesting. Take this with a grain, salt in that the majority of my "table top" experience in pre 1990's, as is all of my video game experience.
From this Forum I get the impression that the style of D&D I played in the 1970's and 80's would be slandered as "video-gamey", "murder-hobo'ey", and as "roll-playing" not "role-playing" (though a close interest in rules mechanics was never at the table), but when we played "Call of Cthullu", either as an "Investigator" (player), or a "Keeper" (gamemaster) in the 1980's, it definitely seemed closer to improvisational theater. Perhaps the setting and easy to use rules just made it easier to "role"-play. While I always championed "lets just play plain ol' D&D again", my players prefered me to gamemaster espionage settings or "Call of Cthullu".
Maybe your friend just didn't like the setting?
IIRC Call of Cthullu was usually more about mystery investigation and research, perhaps a gonzo "hank n' slash" Arduin like setting or comic book style superhero adventures would be more to his taste?
I know I left the hobby in the 1990's because the game settings that people wanted to RPG in seemed close enough to real life (Champions, Cyberpunk and Vampire) that I just couldn't see the fun in playing them (I prefer Stesmpunk, Swords & Sorcery, and Space Opera). Maybe the 1920's just aren't different enough for him?

Knaight
2016-07-10, 09:51 PM
Evidently your understanding is not fine, if you're making a game run through the same dialogue multiple times and then declaring that makes it stupid writing.

Yeah, because talking to the same NPC multiple times never comes up in the course of the game. Things like crowd scenes where you are supposed to talk to people until you find a particular one are totally absent from the genre. On top of that, this is only one of a great many examples of where the major disadvantage of trying to write around an unpredictable player crops up.

Vitruviansquid
2016-07-10, 10:27 PM
Yeah, because talking to the same NPC multiple times never comes up in the course of the game. Things like crowd scenes where you are supposed to talk to people until you find a particular one are totally absent from the genre. On top of that, this is only one of a great many examples of where the major disadvantage of trying to write around an unpredictable player crops up.

It's like you're watching a puppet show and criticizing how the story never addresses the way all the characters have a guy's hand up their ass. When you learn to work with the medium rather than expecting it to do what it's not, you ignore the puppeteers and enjoy the show. Being able to ignore the puppeteers and concentrate on the puppets is a requirement of consuming puppet shows as a medium.

Just as being able to picture described scenes in your head is one of the requirements of reading novels.

Just as being able to understand rhythm and rhyme is a requirement to reading poetry.

Just as being able to perform closure is a requirement to reading comic books.

Just as filtering out the usability features like FF7 allowing you to stop and grind is a requirement to playing FF7.

RickAllison
2016-07-10, 10:57 PM
It's like you're watching a puppet show and criticizing how the story never addresses the way all the characters have a guy's hand up their ass. When you learn to work with the medium rather than expecting , you ignore the puppeteers and enjoy the show. Being able to ignore the puppeteers and concentrate on the puppets is a requirement of consuming puppet shows as a medium.

Just as being able to picture described scenes in your head is one of the requirements of reading novels.

Just as being able to understand rhythm and rhyme is a requirement to reading poetry.

Just as being able to perform closure is a requirement to reading comic books.

Just as filtering out the usability features like FF7 allowing you to stop and grind is a requirement to playing FF7.

Totally agree, except for poetry. Rhyme is hardly a necessity, all you need is rhythm. In fact, some types of poetry expect that NO rhyming will occur.

Mastikator
2016-07-11, 06:20 AM
I'm gonna go ahead and defend the self-righteous purists. A TTRGP takes a lot of time and effort to make happen, it takes time and effort to get people into a room simultaneously, it takes time and effort to make said people put effort into making a character and play it. It takes time and effort and often money to get a game and a campaign.

If all of this work is going to amount to an experience that is equivalent to playing Diablo or WoW then I'd rather just play Diablo or WoW. Not necessarily because the experience will be superior, but because it's way easier and probably cheaper.

If I am invited into a game I'll have the expectation of roleplaying and other players roleplaying. And since time and effort are finite resources any time and effort that is spent on murderkilling goblins is not spent on roleplaying. (and don't give me "stormwind fallacy", that is a fallacy, time and effort are finite resources, resources that I consider to be poorly spent if it's just kill the bad guy and take his stuff)

goto124
2016-07-11, 07:19 AM
Which is still different from outfight scolding people for not giving their character weird flaws for the sake of flaws. Plenty of space between freeform roleplay and hack-and-slash.

In addition, making your character mechanically effective can also help towards creating a character archetype, especially one that involves being good in a certain skill covered by the mechanics as well. Strength, swords, diplomancy, performance, etc.

2D8HP
2016-07-11, 07:56 AM
time and effort are finite resources, resources that I consider to be poorly spent if it's just kill the bad guy and take his stuff)But killing the bad guy and taking their stuff is fun! And, yeah finding folks to do it now is more work, but that didn't used to be the case (it would just be the guys I went to school with), plus I like rolling dice more than moving a joystick. And the cost is sunk already.
For a "Dungeon Crawl" all I need is dice (or chits), paper, pencils, and the 48 pages of the 1977 "blue book" (most of the rules of which I memorized decades ago).
For a video game I need to buy a TV and console, and have a place to put them. To play video games required that no one else wanted to use the TV, whereas you could play D&D at lunch in the school yard, or after school you could get a room at the library! It was awesome! The closest I've gotten to D&D in a video game was playing "Adventure" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(Atari_2600)) and "Ghost and Goblins" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghosts_%27n_Goblins) back in the 80"s, which were obviously "inspired" by D&D, but which were hardly the same experience at all.
In this decade the most important rules for D&D are free online:

http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop/players-basic-rules

http://dnd.wizards.com/node/6526

http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SRD-OGL_V5.1.pdf

Plus I can get the "core" books (and the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure) at my local Library branch, and the "Starter Set" (http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/rpg_starterset) I bought for my 11 year-old son is much cheaper than his "PlayStation" (and the TV).
But......he doesn't want to play D&D!
He and his friends would rather cary around "Magic: The Gathering" cards, and yes he'd rather use the PlayStation.
:frown:
Darn! I really wanted a DM!
I wonder how much he would charge.....
:wink:

Amphetryon
2016-07-11, 08:01 AM
any time and effort that is spent on murderkilling goblins is not spent on roleplaying.
Any time spent killing goblins isn't roleplaying? In an RPG? You're not playing the role of your Character when you're saving the village from the goblins/lizardfolk/dragons?

Mastikator
2016-07-11, 09:58 AM
Any time spent killing goblins isn't roleplaying? In an RPG? You're not playing the role of your Character when you're saving the village from the goblins/lizardfolk/dragons?

I have several computer games that let me do just that and I don't have to spend weeks in preparation to do it. If that's all there is to it then why even bother?

This may sound ridiculous but what about talking to the goblins? There are not many games that give that option, in fact I would say TTRPGs are uniquely equipped to do precisely that better than any other medium. It take a tremendous amount of time and energy to play TTRPGs and nearly all of it is wasted on content that computer games do way more easily and for a smaller monetary price.

And yes, any time spent not roleplayingisn't spent on roleplaying, even in a roleyplaying game. Sort of like any time not spent running, isn't running, even in a marathon. And any time not spent working isn't time spent working, even when on the job. See what I'm getting at here?
No?

Nobody?

Nevermind. Go back to your circlejerk people. If you're enjoying yourself then who am I to judge, in your game you can do whatever you want. And my opinion shouldn't matter, even if I am in that game. Because I am a self righteous elitist jerk.

Theoboldi
2016-07-11, 10:11 AM
It take a tremendous amount of time and energy to play TTRPG


It does? If I wanted to sit together with a couple of friends and play a mindless dungeon crawl, I'd just use some random dungeon generator, take whatever encounters it gives me, and have fun slicing up some goblins. Even if I'm not roleplaying, I still enjoy spending my time with other people cooperatively rolling some dice. :smallconfused:

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-11, 10:25 AM
Okay, I'm genuinely surprised here.

Looks like I assumed -wrongly- that my local internet community (and by local, I mean Italy) was somehow representative of the average around the world.

Here's the story, should anyone be interested:
In my country we are literally plagued by these game hipsters.
Facebook groups are an incredible showcase of what I described.
In most of them, simply mentioning "build" or "multiclassing" summons swarms of angry players, slapping in your face their hard truth - basically the stormwind fallacy.

The most influential youtubers that talk about D&D promote this line of thinking and are usually weak on the rules side.
To the point that "The Paladin (in 3.5) is a great class choice that I encourage because paladin is a champion of good, hard to roleplay well, full of difficult choices and always at risk of losing powers because of a small mistake" not mentioning that they mechanically have an hard time keeping up (and dismissing the Crusader as a powerplayer's weeaboo fantasy).
In another video, the same guy didn't even know you can apply metamagic on divine spells.
These people are influential, but they are not the source. They are just voicing what the majority thinks.

When I DMed my first campaign, I had a player who was literally intimidated by this pressure and wouldn't try to roleplay for fear of not being good enough. That was the most depressing thing ever, and although I told him I didn't enforce acting or didn't even expect any roleplay unless the player spontaneously wanted to, I wasn't able to help him relax.

Okay, now I really feel like playing with people from other places.


While not expressed in the "video game" phrasing, this sort of thing has ebbed and flowed in the US gaming "community" for a while.

For reference, see the attitude of the staff and diehard fans of White Wolf games, especially Vampire. Right there in the books, there are snide admonitions about the various ways in which Vampire can be done wrong and the players can be engaged in badwronfun, and much of that centers on a snide disdain for what they lump into a thing they call "superheroes with fangs".

Despite all the analysis that's gone into game design in the last 20 years, there's still a widely-held false dichotomy that asserts a binary choice between "role playing" and "roll playing". Under this false paradigm, the only two choices players have are "concentrate on roleplaying the character with all his great flaws and shortcomings and foibles" or "concentrate on making the most mechanically optimized dice-avatar possible", and that the two are mutually exclusive. To the "roleplaying purists" who tout this false dichotomy, the moment one says "wait, wouldn't it be more efficient to spend X points raising agility, instead of X+Y points adding to 12 skills that are all based on agility", the player has violated some supposed tenant of "good roleplaying" and they're just powergaming scum".

Going back to the Vampire example, the core group of people I gamed with for over a decade played a lot of that game, and not once to it devolve into wailing and the gnashing of angsty teeth, or a bad stereotype of goth-gamers gone sad. It was absolutely character-centric, and whole sessions went by without combat, but more than one character had a combat-competent build, and none of them were built without full knowledge of the rules and mechanics and math involved. The fact that combat happened and the characters were not built under some mythical sense of "benign ignorance of the rules" in no way detracted from the heavily character-centric, roleplaying-heavy nature of those campaigns.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-11, 10:38 AM
I'm gonna go ahead and defend the self-righteous purists. A TTRGP takes a lot of time and effort to make happen, it takes time and effort to get people into a room simultaneously, it takes time and effort to make said people put effort into making a character and play it. It takes time and effort and often money to get a game and a campaign.

If all of this work is going to amount to an experience that is equivalent to playing Diablo or WoW then I'd rather just play Diablo or WoW. Not necessarily because the experience will be superior, but because it's way easier and probably cheaper.

If I am invited into a game I'll have the expectation of roleplaying and other players roleplaying. And since time and effort are finite resources any time and effort that is spent on murderkilling goblins is not spent on roleplaying. (and don't give me "stormwind fallacy", that is a fallacy, time and effort are finite resources, resources that I consider to be poorly spent if it's just kill the bad guy and take his stuff)

1) Is it somehow impossible to roleplay a character during danger, conflict, and combat? I've found that such intense and stressful situations can bring out some very revealing parts of the characters, if you're not in a rush to snidely dismiss it as "murderkilling goblins".

2) The Stormwind Fallacy is, in fact, a fallacy. I've been gaming for longer than some of the people on this thread have been alive, and will state as a fact that there are those people who there who believe, WRONGLY, that any effort put into so much as untangling or cleaning up a character build makes that character somehow tainted by "powergaming", and unsuitable for "true roleplaying".

https://www.google.com/search?q=stormwind+fallacy

The Stormwind Fallacy, aka the Roleplayer vs Rollplayer Fallacy

Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not mean that they cannot also roleplay, and vice versa.

Corollary: Doing one in a game does not preclude, nor infringe upon, the ability to do the other in the same game.


Generalization 1: One is not automatically a worse roleplayer if he optimizes, and vice versa.
Generalization 2: A non-optimized character is not automatically roleplayed better than an optimized one, and vice versa.



3) Personally, I find that the best characters come from considering the setting, the backstory, and the mechanical build as a single, unified, holistic entity, and not trying to make one fit the other in order. A "good" character fits the setting and has a mechanical build and backstory that intermesh seamlessly.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-11, 10:52 AM
This may sound ridiculous but what about talking to the goblins? There are not many games that give that option, in fact I would say TTRPGs are uniquely equipped to do precisely that better than any other medium. It take a tremendous amount of time and energy to play TTRPGs and nearly all of it is wasted on content that computer games do way more easily and for a smaller monetary price.


Any RPG can give the option to talk to the goblins, if the players (including the GM) want to go that route.

The problem comes when fighting the goblins even in some instances is seen as badwrongfun, and all combat is seen as an anti-roleplaying waste of time -- which is how your posts come across.




Nevermind. Go back to your circlejerk people. If you're enjoying yourself then who am I to judge, in your game you can do whatever you want. And my opinion shouldn't matter, even if I am in that game. Because I am a self righteous elitist jerk.


Ironically, despite your intended sarcasm, that's exactly the sort of attitude that makes your posts come across as "self righteous" and "elitist"... and it's pretty confrontational, describing disagreement with you as "circlejerk", and cloaking what seems to be very judgemental comments behind the demand "who am I to judge?"...

goto124
2016-07-11, 10:52 AM
1) Is it somehow impossible to roleplay a character during danger, conflict, and combat? I've found that such intense and stressful situations can bring out some very revealing parts of the characters, if you're not in a rush to snidely dismiss it as "murderkilling goblins".

I have found it to be the case, personally, since after about 5 seconds of combat you're back to the combat mechanics without bothering with RP. You already know what your character wants, there's little time to waffle about in the middle of combat. Your experience may differ.

Mastikator
2016-07-11, 10:57 AM
It does? If I wanted to sit together with a couple of friends and play a mindless dungeon crawl, I'd just use some random dungeon generator, take whatever encounters it gives me, and have fun slicing up some goblins. Even if I'm not roleplaying, I still enjoy spending my time with other people cooperatively rolling some dice. :smallconfused:

Yes, it is a lot of work to play TTRPG
Step 1. Find people who are willing to play or try
Step 2. Organize a schedule where a sufficient number of players will play
Step 3. Make sure everyone has all the necessary stuff (dice, paper, etc)
Step 4. Make sure there's a game to play, which means spending money on a game and a setting, and all the stuff that you might provide other people that didn't bring their own in step 3
Step 5. Actually invite people to play, have a back up plan when 1 or 2 people bail last second
Step 6. Spend money and time on travel to the place where everyone meets
Step 7. Wait an hour for people to actually show up

Maybe these are not steps that you had to take but someone did

Vs playing computer games
Step 1. Find suitable game
Step 2. Buy and Install
Step 3. Play
It's more convenient AND cheaper, if the TTRPG doesn't offer anything beyond what the computer game did, why bother? If it's about people, add "Step 4. call people on VOIP when playing"

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-11, 11:13 AM
I have found it to be the case, personally, since after about 5 seconds of combat you're back to the combat mechanics without bothering with RP. You already know what your character wants, there's little time to waffle about in the middle of combat. Your experience may differ.

"Decide what your character wants, and then do it" is a fairly incomplete description of roleplaying...

For example, imagine a fight between a group of PCs and a group of the most hated enemies of their tribe, people who think nothing of poisoning the tribe's wells, sneaking around to kill their livestock, killing or kidnapping its children, etc. All the PCs actively hate these enemies. Yet, at the point of this combat, the group they're fighting has information that the PCs desperately need to save their tribe.

For each PC, how does that conflict between hate and need play out, during the fight? What happens when one of these enemies deals a PC a wound, and its poisoned, and the burning wound fans the flames of that hatred?

2D8HP
2016-07-11, 11:46 AM
It does? If I wanted to sit together with a couple of friends and play a mindless dungeon crawl, I'd just use some random dungeon generator, take whatever encounters it gives me, and have fun slicing up some goblins. Even if I'm not roleplaying, I still enjoy spending my time with other people cooperatively rolling some dice. :smallconfused:@Theoboldi,
Very well said. Sounds like the best of times.
:smile:

Despite all the analysis that's gone into game design in the last 20 years, there's still a widely-held false dichotomy that asserts a binary choice between "role playing" and "roll playing".What's "the right of fun" instead of what's "badwrongfun" is a landmine. But what I remember as the most fun times at the table, have been when either a whole lot of dice are being rolled over and over, or a whole lot of talking is going on. Usually when there's little talking or rolling have been less fun times.

Yes, it is a lot of work to play TTRPG
Step 1. Find people who are willing to play or try
Step 2. Organize a schedule where a sufficient number of players will play
Step 3. Make sure everyone has all the necessary stuff (dice, paper, etc)
Step 4. Make sure there's a game to play, which means spending money on a game and a setting, and all the stuff that you might provide other people that didn't bring their own in step 3
Step 5. Actually invite people to play, have a back up plan when 1 or 2 people bail last second
Step 6. Spend money and time on travel to the place where everyone meets
Step 7. Wait an hour for people to actually show up

Maybe these are not steps that you had to take but someone did

Vs playing computer games
Step 1. Find suitable game
Step 2. Buy and Install
Step 3. Play
It's more convenient AND cheaper, if the TTRPG doesn't offer anything beyond what the computer game did, why bother? If it's about people, add "Step 4. call people on VOIP when playing"@Mastikator,
Um... I'm not qualified to speak on which is more fun, but cheaper? I have a real hard time imagining how table top could be more expensive than video games. Are you taking a Jet or a Limo to the game?

TheIronGolem
2016-07-11, 12:19 PM
And yes, any time spent not roleplayingisn't spent on roleplaying, even in a roleyplaying game. Sort of like any time not spent running, isn't running, even in a marathon. And any time not spent working isn't time spent working, even when on the job. See what I'm getting at here?
No?

Nobody?

Everybody sees what you're getting at. But you're wrong. RPG's are not divided into Combat Mode and Roleplaying Mode. Starting one does not mean stopping the other.

Knaight
2016-07-11, 01:02 PM
Yes, it is a lot of work to play TTRPG
Step 1. Find people who are willing to play or try
Step 2. Organize a schedule where a sufficient number of players will play
Step 3. Make sure everyone has all the necessary stuff (dice, paper, etc)
Step 4. Make sure there's a game to play, which means spending money on a game and a setting, and all the stuff that you might provide other people that didn't bring their own in step 3
Step 5. Actually invite people to play, have a back up plan when 1 or 2 people bail last second
Step 6. Spend money and time on travel to the place where everyone meets
Step 7. Wait an hour for people to actually show up

It depends on the context, and it's worth observing that a fair number of these transfer. There's plenty of necessary stuff for videogames (computers, mice, keyboards, dealing with the nightmare that is drivers), and these don't necessarily apply to RPGs. Getting together a group of 6 40-50 year olds who all have spouses and kids is an entirely different beast than getting together 3 highschool students (those were the days). Back in highschool, my list was more like this.

Step 1. Notice that I have the same off period as two friends.
Step 2. "Yo people, want to play Fudge?"
Step 3. We all walk home to my house from the school.
Step 4. The game.

Steps 1 and 2 have since grown substantially more complex due to logistics, but the point of the complexity being highly variable stands.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-11, 01:21 PM
Everybody sees what you're getting at. But you're wrong. RPG's are not divided into Combat Mode and Roleplaying Mode. Starting one does not mean stopping the other.

And avoiding one does not guarantee or enhance the other.

QuickLyRaiNbow
2016-07-11, 01:46 PM
@Mastikator,
Um... I'm not qualified to speak on which is more fun, but cheaper? I have a real hard time imagining how table top could be more expensive than video games. Are you taking a Jet or a Limo to the game?

Depends on the table-top game, really. A full set of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Core books (or PHB + two splatbooks) will be more than a AAA video game, and certainly more expensive than free-to-play games like Dota 2, League of Legends, Team Fortress 2 or Hearthstone or low-cost microtransaction-based games like Counterstrike: Global Offensive, which runs between $8 and $15.

Even if you have to build a computer, it's not that hard to buy something that'll get acceptable to good performance for contemporary F2P games and slightly older AAA games for less than $500. That's not that far off buying splatbooks for a well-supported TTRPG as they come out. By my count there are 25 'main' 4th edition books1; purchased at an average of $25 each2 that's $625, or enough for a custom PC and decent monitor. I don't know enough about other games or systems, but rulebooks aren't cheap, and I have a friend who assures me that a really good MtG deck can run in the hundreds of bucks.

1: PHB, PHB2, PHB3, DMG, DMG 2, MM1, MM2, MM3, BoVD, Dark Sun CS, Demonomicon, Draconomicon 1, Draconomicon 2, ECS, EPG, FRCS, FRPG, MotP, Neverwinter CS, Underdark, Psionic Power, Arcane Power, Primal Power, Divine Power, Martial Power
2: The price for the 4e Player's Handbook on Amazon right now.

Amphetryon
2016-07-11, 01:53 PM
Depends on the table-top game, really. A full set of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Core books (or PHB + two splatbooks) will be more than a AAA video game, and certainly more expensive than free-to-play games like Dota 2, League of Legends, Team Fortress 2 or Hearthstone or low-cost microtransaction-based games like Counterstrike: Global Offensive, which runs between $8 and $15.

Even if you have to build a computer, it's not that hard to buy something that'll get acceptable to good performance for contemporary F2P games and slightly older AAA games for less than $500. That's not that far off buying splatbooks for a well-supported TTRPG as they come out. By my count there are 25 'main' 4th edition books1; purchased at an average of $25 each2 that's $625, or enough for a custom PC and decent monitor. I don't know enough about other games or systems, but rulebooks aren't cheap, and I have a friend who assures me that a really good MtG deck can run in the hundreds of bucks.

1: PHB, PHB2, PHB3, DMG, DMG 2, MM1, MM2, MM3, BoVD, Dark Sun CS, Demonomicon, Draconomicon 1, Draconomicon 2, ECS, EPG, FRCS, FRPG, MotP, Neverwinter CS, Underdark, Psionic Power, Arcane Power, Primal Power, Divine Power, Martial Power
2: The price for the 4e Player's Handbook on Amazon right now.

With the SRD, it was and is entirely possible to play 3.5 for the cost of your internet access, which was almost certainly used for other things as well. Online dice-rollers (such as the one on the SRD) meant your expenses, besides the internet and electricity you were using anyway, were whatever your group used for a grid, writing implements, and minis - and that assumes you bought those things just to play 3.5. Pathfinder is similarly accessible, with better splatbook support on the d20PFSRD.

That's not even getting into the number of TTRPGs that are explicitly free to play these days, with no sale price on them at all.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-11, 01:57 PM
Depends on the table-top game, really. A full set of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Core books (or PHB + two splatbooks) will be more than a AAA video game, and certainly more expensive than free-to-play games like Dota 2, League of Legends, Team Fortress 2 or Hearthstone or low-cost microtransaction-based games like Counterstrike: Global Offensive, which runs between $8 and $15.

Even if you have to build a computer, it's not that hard to buy something that'll get acceptable to good performance for contemporary F2P games and slightly older AAA games for less than $500. That's not that far off buying splatbooks for a well-supported TTRPG as they come out. By my count there are 25 'main' 4th edition books1; purchased at an average of $25 each2 that's $625, or enough for a custom PC and decent monitor. I don't know enough about other games or systems, but rulebooks aren't cheap, and I have a friend who assures me that a really good MtG deck can run in the hundreds of bucks.

1: PHB, PHB2, PHB3, DMG, DMG 2, MM1, MM2, MM3, BoVD, Dark Sun CS, Demonomicon, Draconomicon 1, Draconomicon 2, ECS, EPG, FRCS, FRPG, MotP, Neverwinter CS, Underdark, Psionic Power, Arcane Power, Primal Power, Divine Power, Martial Power
2: The price for the 4e Player's Handbook on Amazon right now.


Another reason I got sick of edition-spammed, book-spammed game lines.

Knaight
2016-07-11, 03:01 PM
With the SRD, it was and is entirely possible to play 3.5 for the cost of your internet access, which was almost certainly used for other things as well. Online dice-rollers (such as the one on the SRD) meant your expenses, besides the internet and electricity you were using anyway, were whatever your group used for a grid, writing implements, and minis - and that assumes you bought those things just to play 3.5. Pathfinder is similarly accessible, with better splatbook support on the d20PFSRD.

That's not even getting into the number of TTRPGs that are explicitly free to play these days, with no sale price on them at all.

I think it's generally safe to assume that there are expenses - online dice rollers are the exception. With that said, lets look at D&D specifically; it's both the flagship product of the industry and one of if not the single most expensive games in it. Assume a 5 person group, one copy of each of the core books, a few sets of dice, pencils, and paper. The core books range from about 60-100 dollars new depending on how exactly you get them, dice for everyone is another 20 or so, pencils and paper are both pretty negligible. This comes to about $24/person for entry, which is cheaper than most video games. For other games where the standard is one or maybe two core rule books, that drops to somewhere between $9-18 per person most of the time. Looking at it in terms of per hour cost, the numbers plummet and TTRPGs work out to be a really cheap hobby.

You can spend a lot, if you either collect systems or spend a lot on a system with a ton of splats (D&D, GURPS, Shadowrun). You don't have to though, and it's not like people don't also spend pretty impressive lumps of cash on video games.

Amphetryon
2016-07-11, 04:07 PM
I think it's generally safe to assume that there are expenses - online dice rollers are the exception. With that said, lets look at D&D specifically; it's both the flagship product of the industry and one of if not the single most expensive games in it. Assume a 5 person group, one copy of each of the core books, a few sets of dice, pencils, and paper. The core books range from about 60-100 dollars new depending on how exactly you get them, dice for everyone is another 20 or so, pencils and paper are both pretty negligible. This comes to about $24/person for entry, which is cheaper than most video games. For other games where the standard is one or maybe two core rule books, that drops to somewhere between $9-18 per person most of the time. Looking at it in terms of per hour cost, the numbers plummet and TTRPGs work out to be a really cheap hobby.

You can spend a lot, if you either collect systems or spend a lot on a system with a ton of splats (D&D, GURPS, Shadowrun). You don't have to though, and it's not like people don't also spend pretty impressive lumps of cash on video games.

I never said you couldn't. I was arguing it was not a necessary expense to play D&D. I know more than one group that spent zero money on 3.5 during its entire run, while still playing 3.5, and without resorting to illegal copies of any materials.

Vitruviansquid
2016-07-11, 04:12 PM
We are now looking at the validity of roleplaying experiences based on the work it takes to set up the activity? I don't understand this at all.

What I do understand is that form and function align to create the experience in games.

So if I wanted to have a hero fantasy (as many do) in my roleplaying, I want to do something *heroic* in the actual game. If we sit around talking and all of a sudden I've killed a dragon based on some talking around or rolling one die, then I don't really feel heroic. If I engaged in a tactical combat with said dragon where there was real danger of losing based on my decisions, then I've felt the hero fantasy a little more. This is why Dungeons and Dragons in any edition tends to be mostly made of rules for combat - you need that combat to do your roleplaying as a hero in the first place.

What I would actually say is that, if we are playing DnD and there isn't something like one or two combats per session, our game is not fulfilling the heroic fantasy I'm here for.

Ruslan
2016-07-11, 04:30 PM
But the interesting -and ironic- part is:

Nowadays, most triple A games are written, directed, art directed, and acted better than what most RPG guys will ever manage to bring to the table.Written, art directed and acted ... by whom? Certainly, not by the player. The player of video games is a passive consumer of content. As opposed to player of roleplaying games, who creates content. Admittedly, might not be a content of a high a level, but that's not the point. Point is, key difference here is content consumption vs. content creation.

Video game player churns through levels created and written by others.
Table-top roleplayer writes his own 'levels'.

And of course, some people want to play a roleplaying game in a non-interactive, non-content-creating way. Aimed at some of those people, I believe, the quip "if you want fighting, go play a video game" is at least somewhat valid.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-11, 04:33 PM
But the interesting -and ironic- part is:

Nowadays, most triple A games are written, directed, art directed, and acted better than what most RPG guys will ever manage to bring to the table. Even if you studied acting and writing, you're most probably nowhere near the level of actual professionals that work in the industry. You couldn't compete if you had the time, much less when you're improvising.
Most RPG performances are inferior to videogames, in a narrative sense.


I have to disagree with you on at least the writing part... most videogames have about the same level of storycraft as one might get out of the cooperative efforts of a bunch of 13-17 year old boys sitting around every few nights for a summer.

Mastikator
2016-07-11, 04:57 PM
It depends on the context, and it's worth observing that a fair number of these transfer. There's plenty of necessary stuff for videogames (computers, mice, keyboards, dealing with the nightmare that is drivers), and these don't necessarily apply to RPGs. Getting together a group of 6 40-50 year olds who all have spouses and kids is an entirely different beast than getting together 3 highschool students (those were the days). Back in highschool, my list was more like this.

Step 1. Notice that I have the same off period as two friends.
Step 2. "Yo people, want to play Fudge?"
Step 3. We all walk home to my house from the school.
Step 4. The game.

Steps 1 and 2 have since grown substantially more complex due to logistics, but the point of the complexity being highly variable stands.

We used to do the same thing, except we'd play games over LAN. And when we did play TTRPGs we didn't bother with actual roleplaying.
As I got older and getting people to sit down and play got exponentially more difficult it no longer became worth it to do TTRPGs if it was just gonna be pure action adventure with some "save the princess" faux roleplaying, because (like I said) I can do that at my computer at near zero effort. The few games where I was privileged enough to be in a group that wanted to do serious roleplay actually was worth it, creating characters that are really different from yourself and exploring that experience really was a cut above what the best computer games have to offer. Treating death and killing and the trauma that comes with it seriously, tackling issues like racism and sexism, having actual language and culture barriers in game, it's more than just talking about it when you're immersed and roleplaying a character that is exposed to it. Video games that try that often do it poorly and I think TTRPGs are a uniquely good medium for it. This is why I think it's wasted potential to just murder goblins without giving a second thought to why you're murdering goblins, why you feel nothing as warm blood sprays your face and their screams for mercy fall on deaf ears.

2D8HP
2016-07-11, 06:42 PM
We used to do the same thing, except we'd play games over LAN. What's LAN?
This is why I think it's wasted potential to just murder goblins without giving a second thought to why you're murdering goblins, why you feel nothing as warm blood sprays your face and their screams for mercy fall on deaf ears.O.K. while I find "goblin killing table top" to be great fun, and they only new video games I've seen (my son's "Naruto" and "Need for Speed") looked dull to me, so I'm probably on a different "side" of the argument, I've got to say, your a
really good writer!
Do you GM any PbP games?

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-11, 07:08 PM
What's LAN?


Before the internet was fast enough in many places to play multiplayer remotely, gamers would get together and connect their computers to a Local Area network via a switch (like a hub, but better) in order to play against each other.

Computer stores, gaming groups, charities, etc, would throw giant LAN parties with entry fees, food and beverage sales, drawings, prizes, etc.

The fact that many games are now missing LAN multiplayer functionality has to some degree killed this, and this is largely deliberate on the part of game publishers, as they saw their games being used in a way that did not profit them.

sktarq
2016-07-11, 08:00 PM
For a time (90's & early 00's) they were a significant part of nerd social behavior as well.

Often required a substantial amount of work as CRT monitors and towers were the norm for much of their history.

QuickLyRaiNbow
2016-07-12, 07:07 AM
For a time (90's & early 00's) they were a significant part of nerd social behavior as well.

Often required a substantial amount of work as CRT monitors and towers were the norm for much of their history.

Also getting computers to talk to one another could be difficult without some amount of technical expertise. Wasn't always as simple as "plug cables into box".

Quertus
2016-07-13, 04:34 PM
I have found it to be the case, personally, since after about 5 seconds of combat you're back to the combat mechanics without bothering with RP. You already know what your character wants, there's little time to waffle about in the middle of combat. Your experience may differ.

Combat starts. My signature character, the academia mage Quertus, who hails from the old days when 1st level mages got 1 spell, asks, "You guys got this? Good." He continues reading his book.

When an ogre breaks through the front lines, runs over and hits Quertus squarely with its club, driving Quertus into the ground up to his waist, of course Quertus' defenses hold, and he is unarmed, but he is quite startled, and retaliates with a lightning bolt, through the creature's belly and out the top of its head.

Intended partially as a deterrent, but primarily as a signal flare to simultaneously inform the party of his distress & his location, Quertus is surprised to discover that his instinctive response was sufficient to dispatch the creature. Glancing around, Quertus notes that the party's strongest fighters still remain conscious, and therefore concludes that the battle is well in hand. Quertus resists the urge to request assistance, and begins extracting himself from such an undignified location.

Once he is no longer partially interred, Quertus dusts himself off with Prestidigitation, and resumes reading his book.

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Armus, on the other hand, views combat in terms of protecting others. He generally opens combat by placing himself between harm and whoever is most vulnerable / most under his protection. This despite the fact that he is himself usually the weakest link.

Armus is constantly evaluating the battlefield, and talks more IC during combat than most of my characters - partially to inform his teammates of his observations, partially to evaluate the responses of his foes, and partially to spread misinformation.

-----

Some of my characters pick targets tactically, some based on who has ticked them off, some based on whoever is closest, etc etc. No reason to stop making decisions & descriptions based on the character's personality just because you've entered the combat minigame. :smallwink:

RickAllison
2016-07-13, 05:32 PM
Combat starts. My signature character, the academia mage Quertus, who hails from the old days when 1st level mages got 1 spell, asks, "You guys got this? Good." He continues reading his book.

When an ogre breaks through the front lines, runs over and hits Quertus squarely with its club, driving Quertus into the ground up to his waist, of course Quertus' defenses hold, and he is unarmed, but he is quite startled, and retaliates with a lightning bolt, through the creature's belly and out the top of its head.

Intended partially as a deterrent, but primarily as a signal flare to simultaneously inform the party of his distress & his location, Quertus is surprised to discover that his instinctive response was sufficient to dispatch the creature. Glancing around, Quertus notes that the party's strongest fighters still remain conscious, and therefore concludes that the battle is well in hand. Quertus resists the urge to request assistance, and begins extracting himself from such an undignified location.

Once he is no longer partially interred, Quertus dusts himself off with Prestidigitation, and resumes reading his book.

-----

Armus, on the other hand, views combat in terms of protecting others. He generally opens combat by placing himself between harm and whoever is most vulnerable / most under his protection. This despite the fact that he is himself usually the weakest link.

Armus is constantly evaluating the battlefield, and talks more IC during combat than most of my characters - partially to inform his teammates of his observations, partially to evaluate the responses of his foes, and partially to spread misinformation.

-----

Some of my characters pick targets tactically, some based on who has ticked them off, some based on whoever is closest, etc etc. No reason to stop making decisions & descriptions based on the character's personality just because you've entered the combat minigame. :smallwink:

I get that. My swashbuckler would always be looking for new and flashy ways to influence combat, whether it be bringing down a chandelier or finding someone on a cliff's edge to throw them off. My kleptomaniac monk is looking for ways to make a buck (usually unsuccessfully). My nerdy-bird wizard is obsessed with finding out more about the strange new land he is in, and so seeks to test enemies' strengths and weaknesses.

goto124
2016-07-13, 08:53 PM
I figured people get ticked off if their teammates made suicidal decisions in the middle of life-and-death situations...

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-13, 09:11 PM
I figured people get ticked off if their teammates made suicidal decisions in the middle of life-and-death situations...


Yes, however... why is that an issue?

Is someone telling you that "good roleplaying" involves making suicidal decisions?

AMFV
2016-07-13, 09:31 PM
I figured people get ticked off if their teammates made suicidal decisions in the middle of life-and-death situations...

Not always, some suicidal decisions in life or death situations can result in other people living because you die. It's also important to note that having a character who is willing to take particular risks in combat situations does not necessarily equivocate to a player whose character is directly suicidal. In fact some gambles that could potentially be detrimental the group, could pay out well. Not all characters should take the lowest risk option in a given scenario.

Quertus
2016-07-13, 09:38 PM
I figured people get ticked off if their teammates made suicidal decisions in the middle of life-and-death situations...

Well, look at it like this: when you play the God mode tier 1 as tactically inept, he doesn't steal the spotlight from the other players, and thus is better accepted than most wizards. He facilitates the story, he doesn't solo it. But when things go south, and you need someone to teleport the party away, he's got you covered. :smallwink:

Role-playing in no way has to equate to being suicidally stupid. Despite being the weakest link, Armus choosing to defend his teammates, while unusual, is an amazingly brilliant tactic. In point of fact, Armus was one of my best tacticians, although few of my fellow players recognized or appreciated that fact.

On a similar note, when facing 10 identical orcs, choosing to attack the closest vs the one that ticked you off vs... usually makes little difference, tactically. But having a consistent personality, such that the party can usually predict what you will do, but your foes cannot, is a tactical advantage. When the whole party consists of strong personalities who know each other well, it can look like chaos from the outside, yet be easily predicted from within.

Vitruviansquid
2016-07-13, 09:59 PM
In well-written roleplaying games with classes, the optimal decisions for a class tend to match the flavor of the class anyways.

If the barbarian class is meant to represent impetuous berserkers, the class tends to have mechanics that allow you to play like an impetuous berserker.

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-13, 11:17 PM
I may have a different perspective because I have almost exclusively GM'd for the past 8 or so years, with maybe 4 or 5 total sessions as a player.

With that in mind, I find that when I want to have the game experience of "Murder All The Things!" I pick up a videogame and multiplayer it with my group. I don't have to prep many enemies and rooms, I dont have to take time to either divide my attention to roll ahead nor roll for all the enemies on their turns, I deal with less headaches, we accomplish much more in the same period of time, and we don't feel the need to be actively engaged in what's happening and we can shoot the breeze as we go. So for those times when we want to slog through hordes of enemies and cast down mighty fortresses and etc, videogames provide an easier, more efficient, and just as fun way for us to spend time together.
(Mind you, I primarily play via Roll20 nowadays and my group is unusually international, with 2 members on an entirely different continent, so voice chat is our usual means of communication either way, so YMMV)

When I want a more complex roleplaying experience, I turn to tabletop. This isn't to say I shun combat entirely or that liking pure combat is bad (tabletop war games are popular for a reason) but that's my experience/person preference. That's all.