Print

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

[Hawkfrost]

If you had a GM who decided to draw up pictures for everything in your D&D campaign I think it would be more likely he would limit what you can do. He would probably draw up some stuff for later and try and swerve the quest towards using those so that the effort isn't wasted.

[Sowelu]

Yeah, as a GM I tend to only use elaborate props when I'm in a place where the players can be -justifiably- railroaded.  As in, I KNOW they want what's at the bottom of that dungeon.  Or, when they went through the portal to rescue some civilians from a zombie apocalypse, they didn't know that the portal only opens once a week.

...No CRPG will ever let the player utterly derail a game the way that tabletop does.  God, I swear.  If I tried to run Planescape for my players, they would turn it into a mercantile economics adventure.  Even WITH the shades coming after them.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Why were there shades coming after them?

[Sowelu]

I haven't actually done that, but it's something my players would do.  And the shades are just the plot devices that they chuck at you in Planescape (or whatever they were called).

[nenjin]

If I tried to run Planescape for my players, they would turn it into a mercantile economics adventure.  Even WITH the shades coming after them.

If you ain't 'acthin' a scheme to separate berks from their jink, you ain't been in Sigil long enough.

That's a luxury we give DMs too. Props, maps, sub-modules (like The Carnival.) All that crap is optional for the most part, and it always earns a GM a huge vote of "thanks for all the effort" because it makes for great campaign worlds.

CRPGs....those are the MINIMUM requirements. The more you skimp on, the farther from the bar you fall. Maybe it'd be different if our friends were all making games...but I doubt it. We'd still judge video games different from table top campaign worlds because they're visual, and all our interactions are defined so we can only work with what we're given.

As an aside, this is why I moved away from newer D&D. (AD&D 2.5 for life.) It's trying to borrow from video games in the mechanics, and in terms of the visuals, trying to make the D&D experience more like a board game or a reaaaallllyyy slow video game.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I haven't actually done that, but it's something my players would do.  And the shades are just the plot devices that they chuck at you in Planescape (or whatever they were called).

Um, Planescape and Planescape: Torment are not interchangeable terms...  It's like how when you're referring to KotOR you wouldn't say "Star Wars is annoying because it's full of fake choices, like that time where you meet a that Sith receptionist and all options lead to immediate violence, even though you're heavily armed and all she has is a knife."

[Pathos]

I think star wars is a pretty cool guy. eh blows up the star forge and doesnt afraid of anything.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I think star wars is a pretty cool guy. eh blows up the star forge and doesnt afraid of anything.

I just looked up what that was from and I I still don't really find it funny.

[Pathos]

I just looked up what that was from and I I still don't really find it funny.

It was, however, pseudo-topical. So, hush.

[HideousBeing]

I thought bioware just made games about jabbering to your teammates. I suppose they do have a few roles in most of their games, but it's usually self-sacrificing heroes or retarded assholes.

Rpgs need to be called storytelling games. Also I always figured that the stat growth was pimarily there to give a feeling of progression as you move through the story, but some games (FF) do take the stat elements to some extremes.

Wow really add there, but w/e

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I think star wars is a pretty cool guy. eh blows up the star forge and doesnt afraid of anything.

I love you. At least for today :|

And that's a great point Hideous. People like to call something an "FPS-RPG" or "Space Shooter with RPG elements" when really it's just some stats added.

Just because your Space Marine has a Strength score or a Dual Wield skill doesn't mean the game has RPG elements. That's like saying if your game uses Lives it has Retro Arcade Timed Platformer (Donkey Kong) elements, or if you can eat food it has Action Maze-Puzzle (Pac-Man) elements.

You could easily make a computer game that is more RPG than Final Fantasy using no character sheet whatsoever.

[Creaca]

I haven't actually done that, but it's something my players would do.  And the shades are just the plot devices that they chuck at you in Planescape (or whatever they were called).

Um, Planescape and Planescape: Torment are not interchangeable terms...  It's like how when you're referring to KotOR you wouldn't say "Star Wars is annoying because it's full of fake choices, like that time where you meet a that Sith receptionist and all options lead to immediate violence, even though you're heavily armed and all she has is a knife."

Because 'fake choices' never happen in all RPGs, even Pen and Paper RPGs.

[nenjin]

Actually...virtually all RPGs have fake choice of some kind. Even Planescape: Torment.

Any game with dialog trees has fake choices, and it's usually the end-of-dialog-tree options. "Goodbye" versus "I should like to kill you in the morning." "Later" versus "Go to hell."

Those are actually swiftly becoming a red flag to me. I know they're intended to make the player feel like they have some say in dialog responses....but it's a shallow trick that has been used for decades now, and it no longer does the job. Planescape actually changed your alignment based on how often you said "thank you", or some of the other responses.

And that's a great point Hideous. People like to call something an "FPS-RPG" or "Space Shooter with RPG elements" when really it's just some stats added.

Having played equal shares of FPS and RPGs...I disagree. There are just very few 'purist' FPS out there anymore. Purist meaning, there is no customization, or alteration, or basic game play values. Guns do a flat amount of damage, players don't get new abilities or the ability to tweak weapons over the course of game play, and there are no real actions beyond what you can do with your weapons.

I actually have a friend who won't play FPS from the last 10 years or so because "it's not just about your ability to shoot someone in the face anymore, there's all sorts of other mechanics at play."

So FPS with RPG elements is a truthful statement to me for the most part. It's just becoming redundant to say since almost all FPS now have them.

It's really a matter of scale. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is a RPG with FPS elements, where there's more RPG than FPS. Borderlands is a FPS with RPG elements. Those who aren't fans of a specific franchise tend to focus on the format rather than the content at first glance though.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Oh no nenjin, I was saying that a "Role-Playing Game" is more than just having a Strength stat.

So it's silly to say a First-Person Shooter has Role-Playing Game elements unless you are actually role-playing: making decisions on what your character will do or say.

For example, let's take System Shock 2. It's an FPS with a horror sci-fi theme, and because equipment is scarce and monsters jump out at you and there are some puzzles, a lot of people call it a Survival Horror FPS. It's sort of midway though, because the Survival Horror elements are a bit weak, in that you can actually go through the game blasting everything. Not like, say, Dino Crisis 1 or Resident Evil 1 or Silent Hill 1. Those I would say are Survival Horror because the elements of SH are strong: horror, terror and surprise, puzzles, limited supplies.

Now System Shock 2 also is said to have RPG elements because you can upgrade skills and attributes. And sure, your decisions here can affect the flow of the game (are you stealthy or strong? Melee or missile? Physical or magic? Techie or not?). But that character choice is on the same level as deciding whether to go after the Pink Keycard before you grab the Light Red Keycard in some Doom-like. It's not a decision your character makes to influence the game, it's just your approach to playing.

A great example is Super Mario Brothers. In this game, you can choose to grab coins, or not. You can go through a side passage, or not. But it is clearly not a Role-Playing Game. I haven't heard a single person seriously call SMB an RPG. That's because no matter what you do, you always go from castle to castle missing your Princess until you defeat the boss at the end and win. That's the game. Your choices have no effect on that.

But in what I would call an RPG, at the absolute minimum level, would be a game with multiple endings based on your choices throughout the game. If you don't have that, if you can't affect the outcome, you are just being led along by the nose.

Now the stats and skills and stuff are just the trappings of an RPG. They're superficial. Every game has points. Heck, in SMB you get enough coins and you gain an extra life. Tracking your stats does not make it an RPG.

And just to head off the inevitable fallacy, it is not and RPG if the game gives you a predefined character to play and you have a couple meaningless choices along the way, or you choose at the end whether you'll take the bad ending or the good one. Because if you agree that, for example, Final Fantasy is an RPG, then SMB is just as much an RPG.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I think people call Final Fantasy games RPGs out of habit.

People are like, "If this isn't an RPG, what is?!"

Just because the early video games grabbed the word and twisted its meaning, now we're stuck with holdovers from an ancient era, like "save points" and "hit points" and excessively linear gameplay.

I figured all you DFers would have little patience for games as straitjacketed as FF.