Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Neonivek]

I guess the only game where you can really do anything is DnD.

Not really the case either if you actually play it.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Which I do.
I admit, I did try to see if I could actually fly when I was playing a character that had gone mad, and I rolled a 1.
I subsequently became the world's largest pizza.

[Armok]

Or just an evil choice that doesn't fit on this page. It's funny, but it really doesn't  make much sense story-wise.

DAMN YOU TROPE LINKER!!! That page indirectly made me view the encyclopaedia dramatica "offended" entry...

[dragnar]

Or just an evil choice that doesn't fit on this page. It's funny, but it really doesn't  make much sense story-wise.

DAMN YOU TROPE LINKER!!! That page indirectly made me view the encyclopaedia dramatica "offended" entry...

If my free time is to be devoured then so is yours! Bwahahaha!!!

[Shima]

I guess the only game where you can really do anything is DnD.

Not really the case either if you actually play it.

Actually, depending on the level of skill and rules lawyer that players have, and how cool the DM is, it's technically possible in D&D to nuke the entire universe, or run at a speed that lets you circle the globe in like 20 minutes, or even have Kobold NPC groups that level up and become the ultimate enemy.

[dragnar]

I guess the only game where you can really do anything is DnD.

Not really the case either if you actually play it.

Actually, depending on the level of skill and rules lawyer that players have, and how cool the DM is, it's technically possible in D&D to nuke the entire universe, or run at a speed that lets you circle the globe in like 20 minutes, or even have Kobold NPC groups that level up and become the ultimate enemy.

Or even worse: Iron Heart Surge

[Neonivek]

While I've had very crazy games as well (I've dropped airplanes onto my players. Ohh they lived) where the players were crazy too (Pyrokenetic Kitten) it still perplexes me of how many GMs make their games overly mundane. Hense why I reject the explanation that DnD is all that open.

Actually I wish I could make games like I used to... It was back when I thought dropping airplanes onto players, creating enemies with Six flexable extending swords, transforming players into trees as a defense strategy, creating time duplicate evil versions of them from the future, knock out gasing the entire building the players are hiding in, transforming one of them into a Anubite, Allowing a chain reaction of fire and water to blow up an entire floor the players were on, Creating Everything eating Termoths, Ghosts girls who threw balls that made the players get hit by trucks, and assasines who sung them to death... were all acceptable.

[Default Settings]

Hense why I reject the explanation that DnD is all that open.

The thing is, if you are limited by the rules as long as the players agree  the game master can easily change them or make up additional ones for new situations.
Obviously, you'll never get this flexibility with a computer game.

Also, some of you guys should check out Exult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exult which allows ULTIMA VII to run on modern computers, it's a great game for exploration.

[PaperJack]

why make a great game when a meh game sells just as well ?

[Shades]

why make a great game when a meh game sells just as well ?

Because it takes far more creativity and effort and you make much less money on your returns... oh.. right.. I see..

I just want to play good games bad game designers should get a three strike then execution rule.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

I guess the only game where you can really do anything is DnD.

Not really the case either if you actually play it.

Actually, depending on the level of skill and rules lawyer that players have, and how cool the DM is, it's technically possible in D&D to nuke the entire universe, or run at a speed that lets you circle the globe in like 20 minutes, or even have Kobold NPC groups that level up and become the ultimate enemy.

I once cursed gravity.
Literally cursed. Stuff all over the world started floating away and it was up to our party to save the world.

[eerr]

How is it that a company with a million-dollar budget, staffed with professional artists, game-designers and programmers, can't turn out a product that can hold a candle to Dwarf Fortress - an obscure and largely uncompensated effort by one man, his brother and a cat?

I think you're right in that this has everything to do with market research and revenue generation. For some perverse reason, the target demographic is willing to pay hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars per capita per year for these hopelessly shallow click-fests.

People's resources like memory, time, and skill(development) are limited.
Maybe they cannot afford the gigantic brain-investment to play Dwarf Fortress?
It is quite costly.

Said memory, time, and skill(development) are put forth into helpful pursuits like work, family, and health.
You know, those things which are supposed to be more important than videogames.
With those investments made, and dedicated,  They can't go running around to learn anything other than a shallow click-fest.

[Timst]

Well, morality isn't always black & white (seriously guys, Fable is never a good example when it come down to RPGs). In arcanum for instance, there's several time you're practically forced to make an evil move, just because the good way is way too tedious / unpractical (but still feasible).

One of the first choice on the game is how to cross a bridge guarded by bandits. There are three possibilities :

The "Good" one : pay a ridiculously large ransom. You'll probably need several hours of hunting for loot to collect enough money to bribe them.
The "Neutral" one : Attack them. The problem being that they're way more powerful that you are, and they'll kill probably kill you if you don't spend a lot of time grinding levels beforehand.
The "Evil" one : help them destroy some villager's wares. Easy, quick, but of course, villagers will hate you for this.

As you can see, the both non-evil solutions are tedious, if not impossible to do in a realist frame of time.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DumbIsGood

This seems to be a general theme across rpgs.

[Draco18s]

I guess the only game where you can really do anything is DnD.

Stop playing a game that causes cancer and instead pick up a game where you really can do anything.

ShadowRun (where hacking into the bank's security system, shooting the guards, and stealing the gold never felt so good).

Oh, you can still go dragonslaying if you want, but I don't recommend it.  They're like D&D dragons on crack, and that's just the small ones.  The metaplot important guys (who have names and are older than religion) tend to have game breaking powers (above and beyond ignoring most of the rules for Magic--they're still subject to how much of it they can throw around at a time and take drain damage for doing so, but they know all spells and they're free to invent new ones on the fly*).

For a power comparison: a starting points SR character can beat up a modern swat team without breaking a sweat.
A "low on the totem pole" dragon can beat up a starting points SR team without breaking a sweat.
A great dragon can beat up whole countries (though usually they don't, its not very profitable, and besides they're trying to be humanity's guardians).
Non-great dragons are subservient to great dragons, for the most part.  There isn't a lot of information on them, actually.  They're not metaplot important (eg. literally running the world) and are of such sheer power that your main characters in fiction aren't likely to meet up with them often.  Great dragons take the spotlight because they are like hurricanes: a force of nature, manifested.  A great dragon donates $100,000,000,000 to cancer research?  People notice.

*Inventing new spells does have rules (and normally takes weeks), but in the official fiction great dragons seem to not be bound by them.  Though they're still not allowed to teleport or raise the dead.  No one is allowed to do that.