Video Game Influences

[Roi C.]

I'll admit that what got me into D&D in the first place was the Baldur's Gate series. When I first played it (2002 or 2003) I was 10 years old (and English is not my first language), so I didn't get very far, but I was so enchanted with that world, that it just drew me into this D&D thingy, and RPG games (mostly CRPGs, but also tabletops).

What do you take from your favorite video games into your tabletop sessions? From more simple, mechanical ideas (like offering the players certain options based on their traits and skills without checks, a-la Black Isle/Obsidian), to implementing entire plot elements, reskinned for your game. Doesn't even have to be taken from RPGs... For example, my DM replaced the Ash Zombies in LMoP with zombies from The Last of Us, because it's his favorite game.

Any specifics? Ideas you've been thinking about using but still haven't? Very successful implementations? Complete failures? Everything goes; share your experiences. Thank you :)

[RazorChain]

Mostly I get inspired by plot lines or NPC's in CRPG's and adapt them to my games.

The mechanical aspect not so much.

[Vitruviansquid]

Video games are on the cutting edge of game design and I take ideas from them for the design of my own game.

You just need to be careful that video games and tabletop RPGs are different media, and keep your medium in mind.

[Aliquid]

Planescape: Torment is a game that has provided all sorts of inspiration for me.

Even little things. I ran a game a while ago where there expendable magic items weren't boring like 'potions', they were bizzare enchanted trinkets, that were consumed in different ways. Smear a dead enchanted bloated blood-fly across your skin for a "cure light wounds". Eat an unpleasant enchanted piece of bark for "bark-skin" etc

It made the world a bit more interesting.


Bigger aspects like having players that can't die has been something I have always wanted to do.
Make the players all have a powerful regeneration ability, where it is very difficult to actually kill them. They appear dead, but will revive, and keep going...
The interesting thing is that after they realize this and start to be reckless, you could scare the crap out of them with a TPK, and they wake up stripped of all their gear. That would make sure they are more cautious in the future.

[Karl Aegis]

"Dude, just Jesse Perring your way through the game."

And thus the speedrun was born.

[johnbragg]

Multi-stage boss battles. http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-...ght-now-in-5e/

I don't do it exactly the way Angry does it (Creature gets double actions for Phase I until its first set of HP are gone, then starts over for Phase II with regular actions and regular HP). One time I ran my PCs against a giant spider that, when it hit zero HP, cracked open and bazillion regular-sized spiders (swarm rules in 3E) came out.

Also fun to slap a bunch of templates on something for Phase I, then lose them in Phase II. So you fight a flying hit-and-run claw-claw-bite thing, and when you've damaged it enough it can't fly anymore and takes out its bigass melee weapon and you fight a fairly typical bruiser.

[BRC]

Video games can be a great source of inspiration, and I'm sure this thread will have TONS of good advice about that, but I sometimes see GM's trying to copy video games onto tabletop games. Seeing themselves, not as a Game Master, but as a CRPG designer who doesn't need to hire programmers.
And I get it, I enjoy CRPGs. I've fantasized about making my own, but the two mediums are very different.

Once, a group of guys came into our FLGS with an RPG system, setting, and starting adventure they had created from scratch. We agreed to demo it. It kind of broke my heart to give the feedback we did. The system itself was functional, but a bit of a mess.

We proceeded to make a holy mess out of their introductory adventure, which IIRC they said they had only ever played amongst themselves. We only actually did the first encounter (Which was fine I guess), but afterwards they let me read through the rest of their session plan.

And...It read like a video game level. This was supposed to take place in New York, during a magical apocalypse/awakening thing (From what I gathered, most of the Setting was supposed to take place years after this incident). Their plan for an adventure was literally just a list of fights for the PC's to do while wandering through the streets towards their destination, with no context besides "These things are here, and they're trying to kill you".

One thing that really stuck with me was that their intro adventure involved a fight against "Bandits", generic human enemies with AK-47s who, in the midsts of all this chaos, try to rob the PC's on the street. There was no explanation given for who these people were, why they had assault rifles in the middle of a city, and why, with fire raining from the sky and demons bursting out of the ground, they've decided to start shooting at people running through the street. Why? This was one of like six encounters they had planned, none with much in the way of context. None with anything to them besides the expectation that the PC's would line up and fight it out in the middle of the street.


Because six context-less fights against bandits and imps and giant rats while wandering through the streets would be a perfectly acceptable introduction to a CRPG, since many CRPGs are just contextless fights against random enemies, and encounters in CRPGs are relatively quick, simple affairs. Video Games also have the advantage of being able to limit the Player's responses to any given situation. Unlike a Tabletop game, in a video game all your choices are some variant of choosing from a list of presented options. If you want them to fight the bandits, all you need to do is not give them a chance to do anything else, and the player will probably accept that, because that's how those games work.





Hokay, TLDR version, BRC's pitfalls for video-game inspiration

1) Just because it works in a video game, that doesn't mean it will work in a tabletop game.
2) Video Games use contextless combat to pad the length of the game, since the mechanics themselves are often a primary source of engagement. In Tabletop games, the Story is the primary source of engagement, combat scenes take a very long time, and contextless fights do little but muddle up the actual story progression.
3) Video Game Stories often only work because they get to dictate the possible responses to any given situation (since they need to program in every response and outcome). As a GM, you do not have that luxury.
4) People are more forgiving of ludonarrative dissonance when it comes to video games (See above, the mechanics are a primary form of engagement, so what if there are a few points where things don't really make sense with the Story). When thinking about if something works, don't say "Would I accept this if I had to do it in a video game", think "Would I accept this if I read it in a novel".
5) Video Games are a visual medium. Tabletop games are not. A Video Game can wow the player with the spectacle of fighting a 100 foot tall Giant, but as the GM you need to make that Giant feel more Than an extra-tough statblock. A Really Cool sequence in a video game could easily just turn into a series of boring checks when rolled out on the table.
6) At most, in Video Game RPGs, the player gets to define and control a single character, with everybody else (even party members) essentially being NPCs, and even the Protagonist is largely defined by the game designers. In a Tabletop game, you have a whole group of players, each in almost full control of their characters. Trying to tell a CRPG story on a tabletop often leads to either One character being the Designated Protagonist, or the story not responding to the unique identities of it's heroes. Let your Players feel their hand in crafting the story (Yes this is generic "Don't Railroad" advice, but if you're idea of a good RPG comes from video games, then you'll be especially prone to this".



Basically, "Cool" can translate pretty well. "Fun", not so much.

Think about, say, Uncharted.

In Uncharted, there is an elaborate sequence on a sinking cruise ship. That is Cool, and would probably still be Cool in a Tabletop Game.

In Uncharted, there is a bit where you sneak around an ancient ruin, hiding while guards pass you, and then stealthily taking out guards one-by-one. That was Fun, but Walking through that in a tabletop game would be pretty tedious.

[ImNotTrevor]

Planescape: Torment is a game that has provided all sorts of inspiration for me.

Even little things. I ran a game a while ago where there expendable magic items weren't boring like 'potions', they were bizzare enchanted trinkets, that were consumed in different ways. Smear a dead enchanted bloated blood-fly across your skin for a "cure light wounds". Eat an unpleasant enchanted piece of bark for "bark-skin" etc

It made the world a bit more interesting.


Bigger aspects like having players that can't die has been something I have always wanted to do.
Make the players all have a powerful regeneration ability, where it is very difficult to actually kill them. They appear dead, but will revive, and keep going...
The interesting thing is that after they realize this and start to be reckless, you could scare the crap out of them with a TPK, and they wake up stripped of all their gear. That would make sure they are more cautious in the future.

I'm currently of the opinion that a darksouls-style RPG could work. (XP is currency, point-buy, respawn, lose all xp on death, combat based on prediction and timing more than bashing things until dead, etc)

It would certainly feel very different but it could be very cool.

[BRC]

I'm currently of the opinion that a darksouls-style RPG could work. (XP is currency, point-buy, respawn, lose all xp on death, combat based on prediction and timing more than bashing things until dead, etc)

It would certainly feel very different but it could be very cool.

Okay, this is one of the things I'm warning about.
Dark Souls combat works when fighting zombie randos takes 30 second of real time, and learning physical inputs to beat certain attack patterns is key. That doesn't translate well to a Tabletop game.

How do you handle, say, knowing to dodge to the right when the Hollow Knight gets ready to swing his greataxe? Are the players just learning the right order to say things? "Dodge Right, Duck, wait half a second, backstab"


Because it's fun in a game, doesn't mean it's fun on the tabletop. The things Dark Souls does well don't really translate to Tabletop, and trying to do so won't work.

Not for a standard RPG anyway. Board Games like Kingdom Death: Monster, and the Dark Souls Board Game managed to get a similar experience across, by making strict use of a grid system, and giving the players enough knowledge of attack patterns to make careful positioning/ "AI" manipulation possible. "If we set things up so that THIS character is closest, the enemy will only hit them/End up in this position, which is good for us."

That sort of thing is a lot of fun. But, it's not the same as Dark-souls style "Know when to block" timing based gameplay. It gives you the same FEEL of mastery and execution mattering deeply, But if you start from a point of trying to translate knowing when to hit Block to a tabletop game, that's not where you'll end up.

[Knaight]

There are a couple of video games (especially those I played when a kid) that had some effect on aesthetic preferences, stock characters, and genre preferences. There's also a few films that did that, and a fairly large pile of books, but as for the games specifically there's a few that really stood out. Notably:
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Metroid Prime

Fire Emblem is notable mostly because there's a black knight character in it, who comes across with a comparable level of menace and nigh invincibility as Darth Vader. That character trope was burned in at a young age, and is now a pretty standard one in my repertoire, although in more recent games if it shows up that's a starting point. It is also what formed my mental image of wyverns, and on the rare occasion that they show up in my game that's what they look like, wyvern riders are disproportionately likely to show up (as that's where you see them), and even the draft wyverns that would definitely have made it onto the cover of the most recent game I ran were it a commercial product came in through this game's influence.

Metroid Prime is more diffuse. At least for me, the aesthetics of a genre tend to be based upon a few foundational texts, which influence the rest of what I read and certainly the rest of what I make. For genres with heavy presence in more visual media, these "texts" can easily be games or movies. There are then occasional shifts as I find later works that really appeal, forming a shifting personal canon. Still, those early texts have an outsize effect.

Metroid Prime is one of my foundational texts for space opera. It, Titan AE, the Damned, and the Humanx Commonwealth* were the big early influences, and all of them show through in my games.

*Some of it, there's about 50 books in this and I haven't read all of them.

Okay, this is one of the things I'm warning about.
Dark Souls combat works when fighting zombie randos takes 30 second of real time, and learning physical inputs to beat certain attack patterns is key. That doesn't translate well to a Tabletop game.

How do you handle, say, knowing to dodge to the right when the Hollow Knight gets ready to swing his greataxe? Are the players just learning the right order to say things? "Dodge Right, Duck, wait half a second, backstab"

Take a look at the Fight! matrix in Burning Wheel. The key to it is that there's a double blind pick system, some picks have an advantage against other picks (most of the really aggressive moves work well against feint, as just one example), and characters are going to get more mileage out of some moves than others depending on their stats and equipment. This produces an interesting system of tactics for small duels, and it is a tabletop game. It's not a translation of a videogame, instead being more a translation of fighting directly which cuts out the middle man, but it does demonstrate that this sort of thing could work if implemented well.

[BRC]

Take a look at the Fight! matrix in Burning Wheel. The key to it is that there's a double blind pick system, some picks have an advantage against other picks (most of the really aggressive moves work well against feint, as just one example), and characters are going to get more mileage out of some moves than others depending on their stats and equipment. This produces an interesting system of tactics for small duels, and it is a tabletop game. It's not a translation of a videogame, instead being more a translation of fighting directly which cuts out the middle man, but it does demonstrate that this sort of thing could work if implemented well.

I may need to check that out. It sounds interesting.

I'm also not convinced it's where most people's minds would go if they said "Hey, Dark Souls has a cool system! I want to make Dark Souls, but as a Tabletop Game!".

Like, I'm not saying it can't be done. But "It was cool in the video game, so I want to do it on the tabletop!" is a dangerous perspective.

[ImNotTrevor]

Okay, this is one of the things I'm warning about.
Dark Souls combat works when fighting zombie randos takes 30 second of real time, and learning physical inputs to beat certain attack patterns is key. That doesn't translate well to a Tabletop game.

How do you handle, say, knowing to dodge to the right when the Hollow Knight gets ready to swing his greataxe? Are the players just learning the right order to say things? "Dodge Right, Duck, wait half a second, backstab"


Because it's fun in a game, doesn't mean it's fun on the tabletop. The things Dark Souls does well don't really translate to Tabletop, and trying to do so won't work.

Not for a standard RPG anyway. Board Games like Kingdom Death: Monster, and the Dark Souls Board Game managed to get a similar experience across, by making strict use of a grid system, and giving the players enough knowledge of attack patterns to make careful positioning/ "AI" manipulation possible. "If we set things up so that THIS character is closest, the enemy will only hit them/End up in this position, which is good for us."

That sort of thing is a lot of fun. But, it's not the same as Dark-souls style "Know when to block" timing based gameplay. It gives you the same FEEL of mastery and execution mattering deeply, But if you start from a point of trying to translate knowing when to hit Block to a tabletop game, that's not where you'll end up.

You'll find on close examination that none of what I said means precise timing or making it emulate the experience of the videogame. There are ways to involve timing mechanics into combat that I can think of, and even the boardgame gives enemies behavior patterns. (Why could an individual mechanic that works in a boardgame not work in a TRPG?)
It does not need to be 3.5 d&d tactics grid stuff to get a similar (but distinct!) darksouls-y feel to the combat without needing to be reliant on exactly AI manipulation and fast-twitch reflex. Not to mention the inclusion of a 3-6 person party changes things significantly enough. (Hence the "it would feel very different" qualifier I put in.)

Again, it's possible to do a darksouls-esque game with those as design goals. I was especially careful not to pick things impossible for TRPGS. (Such as regular minor enemy fights, xp grinding, fast-twitch response, etc.)

And I don't see how my original post could be taken as "it was cool as a game therefore it would be cool as a trpg." All I said is that several parts of it could translate fairly well, and an rpg themed around some of its mechanics could be possible and fun.

Take a moment and read what I actually wrote before projecting my hidden agenda that isn't really there, please.

[Braininthejar2]

Running Baldur's Gate as a single player campaign. - changing some details to better fit pen and paper of course. The player caused some more changes, going happily off the rails at some points.

[BRC]

You'll find on close examination that none of what I said means precise timing or making it emulate the experience of the videogame. There are ways to involve timing mechanics into combat that I can think of, and even the boardgame gives enemies behavior patterns. (Why could an individual mechanic that works in a boardgame not work in a TRPG?)
It does not need to be 3.5 d&d tactics grid stuff to get a similar (but distinct!) darksouls-y feel to the combat without needing to be reliant on exactly AI manipulation and fast-twitch reflex. Not to mention the inclusion of a 3-6 person party changes things significantly enough.


Again, it's possible to do a darksouls-esque game with those as design goals. I was especially careful not to pick things impossible for TRPGS. (Such as regular minor enemy fights, xp grinding, fast-twitch response, etc.)

And I don't see how my original post could be taken as "it was cool as a game therefore it would be cool as a trpg." All I said is that a lot of it could translate fairly well. >_>

I might be oversensitive, because I could easily see Dark Souls as being EXACTLY the sort of game somebody might look at and say "Oh Boy! That stuff is Cool! and it's similar to what we do in RPGs (Knights, Monsters, ect), I want to translate Dark Souls into an RPG!" There are enough Aesthetic similarities between Dark Souls and D&D to make it seem like it would be an easy system to build.

(And in my defense, you did use the word "Timing", which unless you're defining it differently than I do, is something that works great in video games, but does not translate well at all to tabletop)

But, if you try to build a Tabletop Dark-Souls simulator, you get a big mess of a system with nested rolls for blocking and dodging and a giant flowchart you need to follow each round to simulate the whole "Block, roll behind, stab them in the back" gameplay style of Dark Souls. D&D uses a pretty simple "Smack each other until somebody runs out of health" combat system, and even THAT takes forever. Imaging how long it would be if you were actually trying to model the intricacies of blocks, dodges, and parries.

As for why the Board Games can do it, but a Tabletop game couldn't

1) Unlike a Tabletop Game, the Board Game doesn't have a GM. Instead, each enemy (Of which there were, like, six) had very predictable attack patterns. They did the same thing each round, which made the tactical gameplay work, and gave that same "Okay, I've mastered this enemy" feel that you get from playing the video game.
But, from a tabletop perspective, that would be an absolute SLOG to GM. That particular sensation only worked because the Enemies were fairly predictable and deterministic. You could get a sense of how they would move and where they would attack, and so you could lead them into traps or get them to waste actions.

Which doesn't work if you have a GM intelligently responding to the PC's tactics. And if you try to make the enemies deterministic, then the game because incredibly boring to GM.
2) The Board Game could get away with having like 6 enemies. I can't think of any tabletop game that could do that.
3) Similar to a video game, the Board Game precisely controls the ways the players can interact with the game state. A Roleplaying game can't do that. The mechanics used in the game don't allow for, say, trying to trip an enemy with a long spear, or standing back-to-back to avoid being flanked.


I didn't mean to insult you. But, like I said above, Dark Souls is precisely the sort of game that somebody might try to adapt, and hit all the pitfalls I mention in my first post. It doesn't mean that's inevitable. If you deconstructed what made Dark Souls cool, then selected those aspects that COULD work in a tabletop game (Throwing out anything that doesn't translate well, like lots of random minor enemies, no matter how cool or integral to the initial experience it is), then you might be able to produce a good game.

But when I hear "Dark Souls Tabletop RPG!", all I can imagine is somebody including a Dodge/block/Riposte combat flowchart. It fills my nightmares.

[ImNotTrevor]

Just because that's the only way you have imagined to implement timing or darksouls-esque combat, does not mean that it is the only conceivable way.

I've thought of several ways for timing to be implemented on a round-to-round basis, which are all incredibly nascent and by no means complete combat systems but, I'll sketch them out:
Combat with(mini)bosses/major enemies is different from combat with mooks, to begin with. Mooks have damage potential but it takes newness or a major blunder to fall prey to them. They are in very small groups (3-4) and combat with them is a highly simplified rock-paper-scissors sort of conflict.

Combat with bosses uses a map that assumes the Boss as the center of the map, with "danger rings" going out from them. Their attacks prioritize certain rings (close, mid, far) or might target multiple. There will be a time spent learning the boss' patterns while taking opportunistic shots, but individual rounds will go very quickly. Highly mobile bosses may be able to spend their turns moving other characters into different rings in lieu of continuing their pattern. (To simulate their own motion)

You could have the mook-level r-p-s combat but the boss gets multiple turns and hits harder, and combat is quicker, more reactive, and more deadly.

Those are two I thought of, but again....
Just because you've not thought of a good way to translate something doesn't mean it can't be translated. Careful risk/benefit decisionmaking related to the WHEN of the attack is not impossible to pull off.

And no, I'm not assuming the same mountains of esoteric skills that Dark Souls has. The game is meant to emulate the feeling of darksouls, not be the official TRPG.

[Actana]

As far as Dark Souls and other Soulsbornes goes, there are two ways to go about it. Focus on the setting and/or focus on the mechanics.

The first is easier, but still requires a fair amount of examination of the themes and underlying motifs of Dark Souls. But these things are well documented, so it's simply a matter of doing research and making a setting your own in the same vein. Lots of work to make great, but at least you don't have to involve the mechanics in it.

And the difficulty of translating mechanics has been covered already.


All said and done, there are a few games which try to emulate Soulsbornes in their own way. Dungeon World has the Cold Ruins of Lastlife as a setting/campaign book, which does a pretty good job at creating a Soulslike setting that has emphasis on the things the games do in their narrative. Very open ended and mysterious, no clear answers given but many questions stated.

There's also Fragged Aeternum, which was kickstarted recently. It's aiming to be very Bloodborne in style, right down to character death (and subsequent rebirth) being a core focus. It's set in a Yharnam-esque town fighting Bloodborne-esque monsters. I didn't back it so I can't really comment on the mechanics, but I'm quite interested in the end result. Might be worth looking into for anyone interested in how people are doing Dark Souls in tabletop.

[RazorChain]

Planescape: Torment is a game that has provided all sorts of inspiration for me.

Bigger aspects like having players that can't die has been something I have always wanted to do.
Make the players all have a powerful regeneration ability, where it is very difficult to actually kill them. They appear dead, but will revive, and keep going...
The interesting thing is that after they realize this and start to be reckless, you could scare the crap out of them with a TPK, and they wake up stripped of all their gear. That would make sure they are more cautious in the future.

The fun thing is that me and my group did this way before Torment, then we were inspired by the Highlander.


I'm not always fond of video game influences. When I started playing then the RPG's were influencing video games, Ultima, Phantasie, Dungeon Master, Rogue...who doesn't remember those games :) But now almost all new RPG players have already played CRPG's so the games are influenced by their expectations. Is this bad?

Probably not, it's probably just me getting older and more conservative and not appreciating multi-stage bosses or boss monsters. Or the term build for characters which probably came from CRPG...at least I didn't encounter the term until hanging around roleplaying forums on the internet, it wasn't used by my roleplaying circles.

[War_lord]

I think Video Game influences on things like aesthetics and theme are not only acceptable, but expected. Creating a homebrew world is a creative process, and all new creative writing is ultimately formed out of the soup of works digested. Miayzaki's Soulsborne for example, has the Manga Berserk as an obvious aesthetic influence. I think the problem starts when people start trying to hack video game mechanics into the Tabletop medium, without having any grasp of design. Multi-stage boss fights do not translate well to D&D, constantly respawning does not translate well to D&D, chains of unavoidable contextless fights does not translate well to D&D.

[ImNotTrevor]

I think Video Game influences on things like aesthetics and theme are not only acceptable, but expected. Creating a homebrew world is a creative process, and all new creative writing is ultimately formed out of the soup of works digested. Miayzaki's Soulsborne for example, has the Manga Berserk as an obvious aesthetic influence. I think the problem starts when people start trying to hack video game mechanics into the Tabletop medium, without having any grasp of design. Multi-stage boss fights do not translate well to D&D, constantly respawning does not translate well to D&D, chains of unavoidable contextless fights does not translate well to D&D.

I don't need any of those things to translate to D&D. I need them to translate into minor mechanics in a separate system all its own.

And, respawning can indeed work in TRPGs generally. Mutants and Masterminds has it has a purchaseable power, to name one.
My current game of FATE uses the preexisting mechanics of the system to allow respawns (which makes sense since this campaign happens inside a computer) etc.

"It doesn't work in d&d" is only a problem if you're playing d&d

[War_lord]

I wasn't talking about any of the thousands of games with a fraction of the player base of even Pathfinder. I was talking about the threads that pop up every few weeks where people ask how they can do, specifically, Dark Souls in D&D edition X.

[BRC]

I think Video Game influences on things like aesthetics and theme are not only acceptable, but expected. Creating a homebrew world is a creative process, and all new creative writing is ultimately formed out of the soup of works digested. Miayzaki's Soulsborne for example, has the Manga Berserk as an obvious aesthetic influence. I think the problem starts when people start trying to hack video game mechanics into the Tabletop medium, without having any grasp of design. Multi-stage boss fights do not translate well to D&D, constantly respawning does not translate well to D&D, chains of unavoidable contextless fights does not translate well to D&D.

Eh, Multi-stage Bossfights can work fine, it's a good way to give a bossfight that "Epic" Feel without having it get repetitive. I ran a pretty successful multi-stage bossfight.
It certainly has it's own potential pitfalls/frustrations, but most of those are mitigated by applying standard "Good Bossfight" advice.

[goto124]

Unless my understanding of 'multi-stage boss' is flawed, why would 'introducing new elements that the players would have to think about to overcome as the boss fight progresses' be unworkable in tabletop?

[johnbragg]

Unless my understanding of 'multi-stage boss' is flawed, why would 'introducing new elements that the players would have to think about to overcome as the boss fight progresses' be unworkable in tabletop?

It's not. I've done it with my kids in a low-level party. They fought a giant spider who was in the treetops slinging webs at them. When they killed the 3-4 HD spider, its carapace cracked open--and a kazillion spiders spilled out, and they had to fight the spider swarm. By the book, these are two completely independent creatures. Narratively, they're the same monster in different forms.

Inspired by http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-...ght-now-in-5e/

We switched to a new 5e campaign before they got to it, but I statted up a half-fiendish ogre (flight, claw-claw-bite flyby attack routine) who, when downed, transmogrifies into a (new monster) fire-infused ogre with plate armor and a bigass greataxe.

EDIT: Or you can just rule that, in the fight against the monstrous tribe of cultists, enough blood spills on the floor at the end of the battle to finish summoning the demon they were working on. FIGHT!

[War_lord]

By multi-stage bossfight I mean something like Sister Friede in Dark Souls 3. As in you cut through their hitpoints, but then they get up with a full health bar and new attacks. That works in a video game because you're dodging attacks and learning patterns, but not an a tabletop, because you're just calling attacks and rolling dice.

[johnbragg]

By multi-stage bossfight I mean something like Sister Friede in Dark Souls 3. As in you cut through their hitpoints, but then they get up with a full health bar and new attacks. That works in a video game because you're dodging attacks and learning patterns, but not an a tabletop, because you're just calling attacks and rolling dice.

IT works fine in tabletop. You just use different creatures (with different abilities and attack) in sequence, and use thematically similar creatures or some narrative explanation.

Digression--a facebook friend's goldfish is sick. I suggested "bringing it to the fish doctor. Sometimes the medicine makes the fish change color." IOW buy a new fish and tell the kids it's the old fish.

By the same token, when you finish off the mid-level fire-themed sorcerer Pyroticus, he/she/it "rises again" as a fire elemental of the right CR named Pyroticus.

[War_lord]

If a DM pulled that on me, I'd walk. It's just tedious uncreative nonsense. "Oh, you beat the single sorcerer I sent at you? Now it's a single FIRE ELEMENTAL!"

It's a clear sign they can't craft an interesting boss encounter.

[johnbragg]

If a DM pulled that on me, I'd walk. It's just tedious uncreative nonsense. "Oh, you beat the single sorcerer I sent at you? Now it's a single FIRE ELEMENTAL!"

It's a clear sign they can't craft an interesting boss encounter.

OK, you'd probably walk from my table.

"Eladra's arrow cracks the (horse-sized) spider in the tree's carapace open, and a bazillion spiders spill out." (large-spider fight is over, spider swarm fight begins).

"As the winged ogre tries another fly-by attack, Algon's held-action attack slashes it across the wing and it crumples to the floor. It rises, drawing a Large greataxe and becoming surrounded in small flames."

It's not something I pull out without preparation, it's planned that way.

[Knaight]

I wasn't talking about any of the thousands of games with a fraction of the player base of even Pathfinder. I was talking about the threads that pop up every few weeks where people ask how they can do, specifically, Dark Souls in D&D edition X.

This doesn't demonstrate that the games don't translate well to TRPGs though, just that people who are only familiar with D&D are probably not going to be particularly good at translating them.

[ImNotTrevor]

I wasn't talking about any of the thousands of games with a fraction of the player base of even Pathfinder. I was talking about the threads that pop up every few weeks where people ask how they can do, specifically, Dark Souls in D&D edition X.

If they want to do the necessary homebrew to make something darksoulsy to one degree or another, that's their perogative.

[Knaight]

If they want to do the necessary homebrew to make something darksoulsy to one degree or another, that's their perogative.

Although I will say that there's a certain level of frustration that comes from people trying to make D&D do things outside its wheelhouse when they could just pick another game. I wince every time I see a thread to the effect of "I'm trying to GM a science fiction game, we're using D&D [edition]". Just...don't.