By Kieron Gillen on April 8th, 2010 at 4:25 pm.
Point: If only computer RPGs could match up to Pen and Papers RPGs. You know – real RPGs.
Counterpoint: Piss-right off.
You still hear this attitude a lot. Hell, back in the day, I suspect I expressed it a bit. But I was 13 years old, and an idiot. That it’s persisting over two decades is getting increasingly embarrassing. The implicit elitism and defensiveness does a lot to explain why Pen & Paper (P&P) still gets eye-raises even in otherwise all-accepting geeky circles. Nothing makes someone more willing to dismiss your opinion than you sneering at something they love.
If you ignore anything else I say in this column, here’s one reason to stop using the phrase: That it’s self defeating conservative ghettoism. You either see that as a problem or you are the problem.
Perhaps what most interests me about the continuing existence of this argument is that it’s an internal-to-gaming phenomenon directly comparable to gaming’s comparison with other cultural forms. The film and the novel see the game and looks down it, noting it doesn’t do – for example – narrative nearly as well as them, and is therefore is inferior. An old form judging a new form by its own standards, and logically, finding it lacking. As if architecture would look down on opera for not providing particularly good roofs, or similar. Meanwhile, P&P RPG devotees judge Computer RPGs by their own standards, and find them equally lacking. Like, obviously. In the same way that proto-P&P Wargamers looked down on D&D for having all this yap getting in the way of the actual game. It is different. It does different things. One is not more “real” than another. Each is its own thing, using its strengths to explore the same idea.
And while some people who use the phrase will protest, the inherent prejudice and rejection-of-another to a second-class citizen is betrayed by the language. Specifically, the use of the word “real”. This struck me as directly equivalent to the idea of Rockism in pop-criticism. This is where some forms of music – linked to its production methods – are intrinsically more authentic than others – and authenticity is a sign of merit. In short, the Byrds are better than Betty Boo because they’re from the sixties playing bits of wood and string while wearing tassels while Betty Boo came from Mars by way of Glasgow and made music out of spangles and shiny. Oh – and they’re guys, of course. There’s all sorts of nasty conservative tendencies bubbling beneath the most common examples of the attitude. Rockist leanings are the sort of thing that get you laughed at if you talk in pop-critic circles, because of the obvious snobbishness.
In other words, this article isn’t about actually preferring one to the other. You can prefer either. It’s the sneer in “real”. The “real” can go fuck itself. For a Fantasy game to come down to a question “real” is openly ludicrous.
They are simply different things. And looked at cleanly, without idea of some virtues being intrinsically better than the other, they come across pretty well as complimentary, overlapping forms. According to Ron Edwards’ old GNS Theory there’s three sorts of urges underlying pen and paper RPGs, and each creates its own priorities: the gamist urge, the simulationist urge, and the narrativist urge. Gamist is the most obvious – the idea of using the mechanics of a game to triumph. A battlefield full of foes and you; how can you use the rules of the game to win. The simulationist is about the shared fantasy – the idea that this is a place which you go and explore. A key observation, for me anyway, would be the simulationist urge is often fine with rules which add to the sense of place, which serve no other function. The rules are a device to help reach this fantastical, imaginary place. They’re its fictional physics. The narrativist is about creating a story and supporting theme. Which doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily solely freeform, but rules to help encourage the central issues of what’s the game’s about. For example, the scribbles I have for my own Phonogram RPG is firmly narrativist, with the level system subverted so that as players progress, they lose absolute power, so simulating the slow drift into irrelevance with relation to pop culture. It would make the game a tragedy as what the individuals gave up so much of their life to slowly bleeds away.
To state the obvious, computer RPGs do a job which compares favourably to pen-and-paper RPGs in two of the categories, while lagging well behind on the third. Gamist is, frankly, an easy win. In P&P games you gain a freedom of tactics – but the solidity and speed of play in basic problem-solving exercises that a computer RPG brings to the situation overpowers it. On simulationist, it’s more both ways. You lose the delicacy of touch human interaction can add to the world, but gain an enormous, robust physical simulation. While not all simulationist, P&P games lean toward realism – it’s about a consistent fantasy world – many simulationist P&P games play slowly due to the rules’ complexity. Does something float or sink? In a computer game, the answer is there and extrapolated instantly. We can see the simulation’s results and it plays out in real time. In short: Dwarf Fortress is a better simulation model than any pen and paper RPG in history. It also does it far quicker than any of them.
The argument being that the player’s leap of faith which allows you to transform the situation into something more magical – the room a kingdom, your probably-pallid-gamesmaster into a beautiful elf-maid. And yeah, you can do that. But you can also apply the same leap of faith to your experience of a videogame and imprint on the universe another human mind has created for you there. And it’s as easy. It’s much easier, because the touch of another is more distant. When you gasp at the idea of multiple layers of flesh in the new Dwarf Fortress, that’s the Simulationist urge being delighted. And for every limitation of the game you bump against, even in the less physics-based RPGs, factor a disruption of the session when another player decides to quote a joke from their favourite sitcom.
If you’re sticking to the Real RPGs position at this point, you’ll probably say “you must not have good players”. I’ve played with humans rather than imaginary hyperrobots. And if you’re genuinely overlooking the disruption of humanity in favour of what else hanging out with people means, you’re not actually talking about P&P as a game – you’re talking about P&P as a social activity. A chance to get together with friends and have fun. Which is fantastic – but irrelevant to P&P as a game’s merits and if you include it in the positive attributes intrinsic with the form, I’ll just end up comparing P&P games unfavourably to getting high on tasty booze and making out with hotties. Because that’s far better than throwing around polyhedral dice and thinking about orcs.
Well, mostly.
Or, to take that particular observation the opposite away, assume it is part of P&P RPGs. As Edwards’s later model puts it, the social contract between players is actually part of the game. Single Player Computer Games don’t have a social contract. That removes both problems (sulking folk, The Smelly Chap No-One Wants To Play With And Everyone’s Too Polite To Tell To Go Away) and benefits (glorious improvisation interplay).
They do different things. And the different things, if explored properly, can be enormously rewarding. Jim notes that in his Pen & Paper history that he stripped down the gamist elements enormously, because it was so treacly slow, in favour of the joys of the story. With Computer Games you don’t have to do that. And, running at full speed, it seems that the pure gamist elements which underlie many more traditional P&P RPGs are wonderfully compulsive systems to wrestle with. Jim views narrative in videogames as of secondary importance, and it’s at least in part as he’s aware that P&P games just do it better. But that’s a difference in the form rather than a difference in merit. He prefers computer games to be gamist as they’re better at it and he prefers P&P games to be narrativist because they’re better at that. The “real” doesn’t come into it.
In short: the common insult is that computer-role-playing games don’t have any real role-playing, so shouldn’t be called role-playing games. The only riposte is that pen & paper role-playing games don’t have any real game. Compared to computer RPGs P&Ps gamist elements are embarrassingly minor. Neither have any real better claim on the name “Role-playing games”, because the other side has a far firmer grasp on the side half of it.
“The other side” is a misnomer. Understand the joy here. We don’t need to pick sides. We can identify the unique benefits of each – and then with that knowledge be better equipped to face new things, like Sleep Is Death, and cleanly examine what they specifically offer. We get to focus on what is interesting and new… which is another piece.
In practice, the name problem isn’t a problem unless you want to pick a fight. If we’re talking about videogames, “role-playing game” is fine. If you’re in the context of real world games, it’s equally clear what you meant by the phrase. And if there’s confusion, neutral terms like “Computer role-playing games” and “tabletop” are the correct way to draw a line. First does not mean primary or “real” any more than Epic Verse existing before Tragedy in ancient Greece is any more than a historical note. And politeness hurts no-one, bignose.
And if you have no interest in what computer RPGs can do and insist on calling pen and paper the “real” RPGs, you’re the sightless man saying that no-one should care about colours. And just as blind.
08/04/2010 at 16:32 And Triage says:
i enjoy both mediums very much. they each have their own strengths. i like computer rpg’s because they can convey ideas, emotions, scenery, etc. with more ease than a DM or GM or whatever. but i also enjoy p&p sessions because you don’t have any real established boundaries that you find in video games.
they’re both great. but at the end of the day, i prefer sitting around a table with some good friends and rolling some awkwardly-shaped dice.
08/04/2010 at 16:53 7rigger says:
I agree with you there. NWN is great when I can’t get everyone together, but I still prefer P&P.
So why am I a geek for playing AD&D and not for playing WOW?
Social acceptance I suppose. But you’ll never take my Dungeon Masters Guide!
08/04/2010 at 18:05 Snall says:
7, people are geeks for both playing DD and WOW…I have only done one…though it was GURPS actually..but w/e.
08/04/2010 at 18:50 7rigger says:
So am I a doublegeek?
I’m keeping that term :)
08/04/2010 at 23:09 MajorManiac says:
I think reading and commenting on this website adds another geek point (or ‘Website of geek + 1′).
Just think how limited peoples choices were before computers and the internet. We’re all heading for Geektopia. Weeeeee!!!
08/04/2010 at 16:32 Ian Struckhoff says:
I don’t really care about the digital/computer/online versus paper/dice/tabletop divide. People who say that only one side of that can be a “real” RPG are, as you say, being arbitrary, conservative, and pig-headed.
On the other hand, I do think the term Roleplaying Game (or RPG) is far too broadly applied. An RPG is a game where you play the role of a character, and should include elements where you are required to participate in characterization– doing things because the character would, not because you want to in order to win the game.
What I’m saying, I guess, is that a there’s a difference between a “Roleplaying Game” and a “Level-based tactical combat game”. Some of that difference depends more on the players than the game itself, so any game that gives opportunities to play a role is fine by me.
08/04/2010 at 16:48 Pardoz says:
‘What I’m saying, I guess, is that a there’s a difference between a “Roleplaying Game” and a “Level-based tactical combat game”.’
Quite so. Welcome to the letters page of Different Worlds ca. 1977.
09/04/2010 at 02:25 bob_d says:
I took umbrage when I realized that in pop-culture terminology, a computer “Role Playing Game” was defined as centering around item collection and management (with an assumption of it being tactical and level-based). That’s about as far from “role playing” as you can get… and simultaneously both overly broad, but also strangely specific, in its definition.
08/04/2010 at 16:37 Karacan says:
Sorry, but I have to disagree. Note: I’m both, a hardcore Computer RPG player and a hardcore pen&paper-roleplayer. I like both for the entertainment they offer – but I am heartily sick of every single linear “press this button to advance this stat first”-computer-game calling itself a “true roleplaying experience”.
Roleplaying, to me, means: I’m in charge of the character. I define how his/her story unfolds. If I want to jump of a cliff, I have the option to do so.
Computergames naturally limit the amount of choices open to me – unless there’s a Gamemaster sitting on the other side of the screen, like what is possible in Never Winter Nights, for example, and even there the actions are limited by the players’ imagination and the profiency of the Gamemaster in the tools.
So for “roleplaying” (as in playing a role unconcerned by having it follow a specific storyline), pen&paper gaming remains superior.
08/04/2010 at 17:07 AndrewC says:
Kieron actually does cover that point in the last third. He agrees with you! And also disagrees with you, but I guess that’s why he’s Kieron.
08/04/2010 at 17:10 MartinNr5 says:
I disagree with your disagreement.
In an RPG – no matter the type – I play a character that is defined by something; be it the backstory, the stats, the way the world shapes him, whatever.
If I’m playing a family man that needs to get back to his family after fighting in the war then I won’t jump off a cliff no matter how much I as a player think it’d be funny. That’s not playing a character – quite the opposite.
For me the whole “I’m in charge” argument doesn’t fly just because of this.
If your character is a nutjob that decides his next action based on whims and what the myriad of voices in his head tells him then any random action is justified but that type of character gets quite boring after a while as he would never be able to progress through a story.
There’s little that annoys me more than a P&P RPG player who plays, say, a peaceful monk that for some reason decides to burn and plunder a village just because the player felt like it.
This is why I consider Final Fantasy be as much an RPG as any session in D&D.
08/04/2010 at 17:12 Contrarian says:
@Karacan: You’ve never had a GM (in a P&P setting) railroad you to the next objective? There are always limitations. Perhaps we need to discuss both these kinds of games in terms of a Platonic form. Both are aspiring to some sort of ideal role-playing game experience, both hit it in different ways, and different people value different aspects of this ideal role-playing game more than others. Some people (like you (judging from your admission to playing and enjoying both types of games), like me) play both, to get from one what they can’t get from the other. I have no problem with both types calling themselves RPGs.
08/04/2010 at 17:17 Jesse says:
That’s a pretty broad definition. There’s not much roleplaying going on in FF XIII, unless you count running down the right side of the hallway versus running down the left side as roleplaying.
08/04/2010 at 17:19 Karacan says:
I’m an extremely snobbish Roleplayer. ;) I had my share of railroading, and I didn’t enjoy it at all or considered it roleplaying.
It’s still all about freedom even if my character is defined by someone else – even the manual things. Why can’t I push the mine-cart that’s sitting there in the scenery for mobile cover? Why can’t I climb up the tree in the forst to get a better overview of where to go? Why do I have to go through the hedge labyrinth while I’m carrying around a huge chainsaw sword with which I could create whatever shortcut I feel like?
I love computer roleplaying games, but not for their roleplaying value. I do enjoy online roleplaying though.
Anyway, Opinions. :) I’ll stick with mine, and know it’s snobbish.
08/04/2010 at 17:20 Vinraith says:
@Karacan
Thanks, you said pretty much what I wanted to say and saved me the trouble of saying it. To me this isn’t even an argument worth having, I play PC RPG’s to try to capture the feel of PnP RPG’s (without the need for other people), so of course they’re always going to be second best. People that grew up on PC RPG’s are looking for something else, obviously, and are always going to disagree/fail to understand. It’s a matter of player history, of what your expectations of the acronym “RPG” really are, and it’s not something we’re ever all going to agree on. If the argument here is simply “be less of a dick about it” then that’s well and good, everybody could stand to be less of a dick about gaming anyway (myself very much included), but no one’s going to change any preferences with words.
08/04/2010 at 18:01 Vitamin Powered says:
@Jesse
I think it’s disingenuous to submit FF13 as an example in this debate, given that it has become fairly famous for its 30 hour corridor gameplay. Noone would want to throw FATAL into the debate if we wished to cross-examine P&P’s mechanical and narrative capabilities.
08/04/2010 at 19:37 TenjouUtena says:
Meh. This is silly. ‘RPG’ in the computer realm has come to mean a certain type of recognizable game who’s system has it’s roots in tabletop RPGs. That is the popular term for a certain type of game, and because it used to mean something else doesn’t make the before more or less ‘real’. As KG points out.
To counter the ‘roleplaying experence’ point; yes, people expect different things out of CRPGs and Tabletop. You don’t grind mobs in tabletop. Nor do you fight dozens or hundreds of baddies an hour. In most ‘games’ of almost any variety you play a role. Read the fluff for Puerto Rico or Settlers. Are you not playing Fenix in Gears of War? Each of these allows you to play the role in certain ways. You may feel more immersed by tabletop, but that doesn’t mean everyone does. And I doubt that you play out in real time the 10 hours your character rides from one point on the map to the other? Or the sleeping? How often do you roll for how long it takes you to evacuate your bowels? You choose what parts of the role you want to play in tabletop, just like in other ‘games’.
08/04/2010 at 19:42 MartinNr5 says:
@Jesse: Well, FF might be a stretch but you know what I mean.
@Karacan: Agree, you don’t have the same freedom in a CRPG as in a P&P but that is changing as well. Ten years ago you couldn’t do a fraction of the things you can today, especially so in a graphical game.
Computers will most likely never be able to match the quick thinking and ingenuity of a good GM but in another ten years I’m sure not only the hardware but how we write the software will have evolved into something we really can’t imagine right now.
And for the record – I’ve grown up on both types of RPG. I’ve actually played Zork and Kings Quest I. I played my first P&P RPG when I was 12 (an unknown Swedish game) and still play P&P today, 26 years later.
11/04/2010 at 07:12 Luckylad says:
Well I guess this is the point I add in my 2 cents. Essentially we are fighting a battle of semantics which from the beginning of time has been a battle of stalemating. One guy looks at a ball and calls it green, another guy calls it red; so who’s the colorblind person? But if you were to tell me to stop being silly and pick a side I’d say screw you and your sides. I’m off to play one and then the other and enjoy the greater parts of each game. They don’t satisfy the same needs but the same could be said for romances. One person may satisfy you physically and the other might satisfy you emotionally and at the end of the day they are both time vacuums and however much pleasure you obtain from either one is entirely up to you. So you could go, well hey I like my time wasted in such a fashion because it gives me pleasure. Someone else will tell you that your pleasure isn’t nearly as good as the pleasure your missing and in the end he’s a snob. So I guess the issue is… why is this even an issue?
08/04/2010 at 16:38 Logo says:
This article made me curious about something (I don’t play P&P Games). How good are P&P games at telling a thematic story that actually has a message and character development (other than the player characters)? Because of the emphasis on the social aspects and pacing it seems like P&P would have a harder time delivering a strong message. Meanwhile games like Planescape can ask, “What can change the nature of a man?” Are P&P games adept at exploring these same themes? Is it something that really comes down to the goals of the DM?
08/04/2010 at 16:42 Kieron Gillen says:
Logo: I dare say, it depends on the games and – as much – depends on the players. Narativist games kind of push a player’s absolute “freedom” away, in the same way that you’re able to write anything you want in a book… but only writing certain things makes sense.
There’s lots of indie-RPGs in this terrain which are worth looking at. Nose at Grey Ranks.
KG
08/04/2010 at 17:11 MrMud says:
A PnP game is only ever going to get as good as the DM your playing it with.
08/04/2010 at 17:37 Edgar the Peaceful says:
I agree Mr Mud. And if you get a great DM (for me) it beats any experience I ever had with a CRPG. I recall being thrillingly terrified during my first experience of Call of Cthulhu – the excellent DM took a pre-written module and really ran with it – feeding my fear when he saw what themes/incidents specifically had an effect on me. I was a nervous wreck that evening. Probably my best gaming experience.
Having said that, Ocean House Hotel in Vampire Bloodlines came pretty close!
08/04/2010 at 20:20 FunkyBadger says:
MrMud: its only ever as good as the GM *and* the players. Its collaborative, innit.
(Why I think its interesting that Sleep is Death has set the GM/Player ratio to 1:1 – implying more GMs…)
11/04/2010 at 07:19 Luckylad says:
Honestly I’ve played a few P&P games here and there and the problem for me falls into the players that are most often useful for a team are the same players who are also most useful as a GM. So the question usually comes down to whether you want the best GM or you want the best teamwork which is oh so frustrating when either decision is reached. If your backup GM is some gimp who likes to kill all the players on a regular basis your pretty much in for a bumpy ride. However you could have an excellent GM and watch as you and all the other players fight for who gets the treasure only to find that in your time deliberating 4 dragons have come and eaten your party. I guess, in conclusion, just try and have a fun time and think of roles that each person is good at before beginning a game. Because if anyone is unhappy in their spot there will be quite a lot of grief throughout the trip.
08/04/2010 at 16:39 Dominic White says:
So, where do you stand on Neverwinter Nights, which was basically all the streamlining and accessibility of CRPG gameplay, but with the DM system and on-the-fly scripting possibilities of pen and paper? Because I’ve had some of my best moments in gaming ever in NWN 1 & 2 because of that hybridization.
08/04/2010 at 16:39 CHEtongueEK says:
Yeah! P&P RPGs are rubbish! You tell ‘em!
08/04/2010 at 16:41 JuJuCam says:
Great article, but what brought it on?
08/04/2010 at 16:42 Kieron Gillen says:
People using the “real” RPG line a lot in the Sleep Is Death comments.
KG
08/04/2010 at 16:46 JuJuCam says:
Oh sorry I’ve been away from internets for a couple of days and missed the discussion. Time to catch up.
08/04/2010 at 16:45 Inigo says:
It’s that time of the month.
08/04/2010 at 16:47 Morph says:
Good article, though some people get annoyed about the idea of their being a GNS theory at all (not me, I agree with it, but just saying…). I enjoy both, and don’t really have a problem with the limitations of a CRPG because, as you say, it’s a game. P&P RPGs are more of an excuse to have fun with friends.
As an aside I’d totally play a Phonogram RPG.
08/04/2010 at 16:47 12kill4 says:
“But I was 13 years old, and an idiot. ”
Isn’t that about as redundant as saying “I have a double degree in English and Philosophy, but I’m unemployed”…?
08/04/2010 at 16:50 12kill4 says:
by the way, if anyone has a job for a Bach. Arts grad in Political Science, Sociology and Digital Cultures give me a yell :P
08/04/2010 at 16:50 Kieron Gillen says:
12kill4: Some 13 year olds are worryingly together. Curse them.
KG
08/04/2010 at 18:51 TeeJay says:
@ 12kill4: “by the way, if anyone has a job for a Bach. Arts grad in Political Science, Sociology and Digital Cultures give me a yell :P”
http://www.army.mod.uk/
08/04/2010 at 18:59 dog says:
@teejay – very funny :)
08/04/2010 at 19:57 Dolphan says:
I have a degree in philosophy, and am perfectly well employed, thank you :p
08/04/2010 at 22:10 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
Something against this double degree?! But then again, mine is going to be from the Faculty of Education and it’s actually English Language and Literature + Social Sciences….eat that! And our country never has enough teachers in both fields, so… :))
09/04/2010 at 01:50 12kill4 says:
@ TeeJay
Funny you should suggest that as I was in the last stage of my application for the Australian Army several years ago, prior to getting said degree, but they discovered that I have a minor heart condition called SVT in the medical examination following my officer selection board interview and I was forced to withdraw my application. talk about good luck!
11/04/2010 at 07:23 Luckylad says:
Sometimes I wish I could just quit being an engineer and write finish at least 1 of the 5 fiction novels that are half written and half-thought out. But someone’s gotta pay the bills
08/04/2010 at 16:48 H says:
I’m a big fan of both and will remain so. I once said to some gaming pundits that computer RPGs would never replace P&P because the computer just couldn’t handle the roleplaying. I was a doofus. The correct argument of course would have been that the two compliment each other and both offer something the other doesn’t.
For my money the P&P RPG conjures the imagination like nothing else; as the narrator, storyteller, even GM (I personally hate that term, GM or DM), you get to see the spark behind the player’s eyes and feed it. You get to see the reaction to what you’re telling them. You get to thrive from that. Would you see that in a computer RPG? Dunno, but that’s no reason to dismiss them.
Both have their place. To say one is intrinsically better than the other is just snobbish and counter-productive.
Good article, that man.
08/04/2010 at 19:28 DJ Phantoon says:
Unless it’s D&D 4e which is trying to be a card game with the framework of a videogame.
I mean seriously, wot?
08/04/2010 at 23:51 sebmojo says:
That’s exactly what Kieron was talking about but from the opposite direction, you nonce. D&D 4e is just as much of an RPG as anything from the ’70s, and the sneering ‘it’s just WoW with dice’ comments are purest asininity.
08/04/2010 at 16:50 Colthor says:
Now that’s real games writing.
08/04/2010 at 16:51 Eoin says:
I think what seems to rub “real RPG” players up the wrong way is the blanket application of the name RPG to just about every computer game going. It’s this dilution of what is a very personal type of game which causes them to set up barriers and say “your computer game isn’t an RPG because ….” And so the arguments begin.
I also think that there is a sense for P&P players that their hobby has been co-opted as a marketing tool.
Personally I always fell into the whole white wolf/world of darkness side of this with an interest in shared stories (narrativist) as described above and I can’t quite see this in current games simply because it’s not possible to anticipate each and every player action. Eventually you exhaust all the possible interactions you can have with the game world. The multiplayer neverwinter nights was probably closest but I never had the chance to try it out.
08/04/2010 at 16:52 Tom says:
I wonder if the relationship between computer RPGs and P&P isn’t so much like the relationship between pop and rock but between rock (and all that happened after it) and jazz. The conquering successor form secure in its power but with one occasional, guilty eye on the ancestor it toppled and then (in popularity) surpassed. The ancestor turned into a kind of heritage industry from the outside, and internally subject to its own struggles with competing purisms, wild experimentation, and the agony of public irrelevance.
In other words I see “rockism” and rockist-shaming as I understand them (and I’m not sure I ever DID understand them) as impulses within both PnP (gamist v narrativist is a good example) and computer RPGs, more than as impulses between them. Good stuff though!
08/04/2010 at 16:52 Cinnamon says:
These are those games that are about killing rats in cellars, right? Seems that people take them awfully seriously these days.
08/04/2010 at 18:19 disperse says:
@Cinnamon
Also, wearing silly hats. Don’t forget the hats.
08/04/2010 at 16:54 12kill4 says:
This article is a further reminder to me of the potential of multi-user computing, such as MS’s Surface. Integrating computer visualisation and processing into a more social, rapidly tailored design environment could prove very successful in cancelling out the flaws of both forms of RPG discussed.
08/04/2010 at 17:13 MartinNr5 says:
Like so: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/10/dungeons-dragons-on-the-microsoft-surface/
08/04/2010 at 16:55 Turin Turambar says:
Well, nothing new, i also thought of that years ago.
A videogame with the freedom and all the action & consequences of a pen and paper RPG is the holy grial of RPGs, so of course people like to dream about that.
P&P rpgs get these virtues as the “cpu” and the “AI” is something very smart and very advanced code: a human. When we reach someday a game-ai as smart and knowledgable as a human we will have our dream game.
10/04/2010 at 15:09 aDelicateBalance says:
If only you could patch the bugs out of humans :(
08/04/2010 at 16:58 Eight Rooks says:
(For some reason logging on seems to have no effect other than if I’m replying to something.)
Good article, for the most part, though
“The film and the novel see the game and looks down it, noting it doesn’t do – for example – narrative nearly as well as them, and is therefore is inferior. An old form judging a new form by its own standards, and logically, finding it lacking. As if architecture would look down on opera for not providing particularly good roofs, or similar.”
is the usual OH GOD THE WORDS ARE COMING nonsense that brings tears of rage to my eyes. I look down on videogame narratives for the most part because they’re not very well written. Not that hard to understand, surely? The creative medium that houses them is irrelevant, as is its age or technological underpinnings. The continuing insistence that part of the future of the industry hangs on this idiocy is one of the things about it that drives me up the wall. If you see a string of words, you know precisely meaning, information and subtexts they’re supposed to convey, and they don’t do that job as well as they could do, that’s the most pressing problem. The idea that ‘we can’t do that because then we’d have to tighten up the graphics on level 3′ applies in more than a fraction of cases is complete and utter lunacy.
Anyway, rant over. For now. It was actually a much better article than that had me expecting.
08/04/2010 at 17:09 Baboonanza says:
I’ll agree with you here. I do think it’s much more difficult to present narrative in a videogame, but that’s no excuse for practically every single one of them being utter tripe.
One method that works is the ‘in-game’ narrative, given to you in small chunks as you progress through the game without stopping play at any point. Valve do this very well, as does Bioshock and System Shock 2.
The problem is that in RPGs you usually get information by ‘talking’ to people. Except that ‘talking’ actually means ‘sitting and listenning to mediocre (at best) dalogue’ with no two-way interaction. This just isn’t how conversation works, and until a way around this problem is found most RPGs will be characterless and unengaging (narratively anyway) for me.
08/04/2010 at 19:25 Feste says:
But what does a game succeed on? Narrative is important to a game, but it’s not the only issue; whereas with a novel we’re only talking about narrative and as such I would expect it to do a better job. I’d sort of like to see it as a spider graph with the different forms of media expanding in different directions.
Furthermore when you look at games, packing them into one generic media-form is almost impossible. Bad writing in C&C4 is sort of by-the way, criticising it or Supreme Commander 4 for the writing is absurd; bad writing in even a single module of Dragon Age can be damaging to the whole experience.
08/04/2010 at 23:07 Mark says:
Wanna know why the writing in most games is gash? Good writers don’t want to work in games. They write novels or screenplays or plays or TV or just about anything else instead.
Games writers get a huge amount of constraints, no recognition, and their work isn’t taken seriously by anyone except a few gamers. Most of the time writing is done by designers (not hired for their writing skills) plus maybe some consultation from (normally rubbish) outside forces.
The writing in P&P RPGs seem so great because they don’t have to be expressed so literally in text and graphics that go through a dozen layers of code, artistry, shaders, camera angles, animation, voice acting etc etc before hitting you in the brain. P&P stuff by contrast utilises your imagination which is 100 times better at making you feel something. Games are just a really hard medium to try and express anything, especially when 75% of your players are more concerned with their next headshot or getting some more xp – and they probably weren’t even looking in the right direction and skipped all the dialoge anyway.
08/04/2010 at 17:01 Baboonanza says:
I can see where you’re coming from, but there are some points you don’t touch apon.
It’s indesputable that the early CRPGs were heavily inspired by pen-and-paper games but were limited by the technology and budgets of the time. The problem is that most modern RPGs haven’t advanced the genre in the directions that differentiates the RPG genre from other types of games.
You could argue that in the 3D era CRPGS have actually become either action-adventures with numbers or (almost) interactive fiction. I guess that’s fine in some ways, but in my mind a ‘true’ CRPG is more in the mold of Ultima and Fallout and should involve more (and deeper) choice in narrative and action than is currently offered.
IMO developers have simply stopped pushing in the direction that makes CRPGs most interesting, and most like PnP RGS, and that’s meaningful choice. There are games from the 80s and early nineties that give you more freedom than modern RPGs, and I think that is why people can regard them as poor step-children to PnP games.
(Note: I’ve never played a PnP RPG).
08/04/2010 at 19:58 Corporate Dog says:
See, I read this, and I go, “Huh? Fallout had more narrative (and/or gameplay) choices than, say, one of Bioware’s latest?”
I played Fallout when it first came out. Played the sequel, too. Enjoyed them both. Replayed them many times over the years. Still have the discs.
But I’m really not seeing where it had significantly more meaningful choices than, say, a Dragon Age: Origins or even a Mass Effect.
08/04/2010 at 17:03 Sunjammer says:
I have never in my near-30 years as a tabletop/p&p/computer gamer heard this opinion of p&p superiority expressed. Not even once. Is it REALLY that common of a topic? Sounds like something only the very elite of the elitists would even think to discuss to me.
08/04/2010 at 17:04 Gap Gen says:
The idea of levelling down is interesting. Has anyone done that sort of thing before?
08/04/2010 at 17:53 Devenger says:
I’ve seen it used to parody the up-up-up nature of the PnP RPG genre, but I’ve never seen it done in order to evoke serious feeling in players. Sounds very interesting, very interesting indeed. The question is, would players keep coming back, session after session, to a game where they feel their power is reducing, not increasing? How excellent a writer, or worldcrafter, do you need to be to make a world sufficiently engaging that your players are not disheartened by their continuous losses, to the point of choosing not to play?
Maybe many of us (myself definitely included) have been spoilt by constant upward progression, and would have difficulty facing things being the other way. I’m kinda looking forward to getting new powers in the two PnP games I’m currently playing… being stripped of my existing ones would really turn me off the games. (Narrativism is not an apt shield to hide behind; the implication of KG’s brief description is that players’ very influence over the game world would dwindle.)
08/04/2010 at 19:26 Feste says:
Call of Cthullhu had your sanity decreasing as you get more experienced. Your character becomes more effective but more brittle.
08/04/2010 at 20:57 FunkyBadger says:
Flower’s for Algernon: teh Game!
I’d play that. Once…
08/04/2010 at 21:13 Psychopomp says:
The Frozen Throne undead campaign did it, but that’s all I can think of.
08/04/2010 at 23:33 jarvoll says:
WoD’s Vampire *kinda* works that way, according to the vanilla rules anyway, in that the further you progress, the more and more inevitable becomes your bestial insanity (at which point your character becomes unplayable – game over). Every game mechanic is essentially based around the player’s efforts to delay this as long as possible, but even if you try to min-max against it, the chances are very, very low of *not* losing control of your animal nature, going on a frenzy and doing something that reduces your humanity (a score out of 10 where 0 is insanity and most players start on 7) almost once per couple of sessions. I played in a group that basically gave up as soon as the first player frenzied (about 45 mins in) because everyone suddenly realized the tone of this game: you are going to have a slow, horrible decline. I, personally, had read the books and so was prepared for this, and love the idea, but apparently no-one else did. WFIW, it achieves that goal really well – just a pity no-one seems to want to role-play inevitable, personal doom.
08/04/2010 at 17:05 PlayNoEvil says:
The more frustrating argument is from computer gamers who act like “gaming” is 20 to 30 years old… as if board games, card games, dice games, etc. are not all part of the same form.
08/04/2010 at 23:22 Arathain says:
The same form? Where the form is what, playing? Competitive playing? I mean, your statement can be assumed to be true, but it takes the definition of form to be so broad as to be meaningless- playground games are the same form as Half-Life, for example. I mean, looking just at videogames it’s hard enough to talk about Tetris, Dragon Age and Sleep is Death as being the same form without broadening your definitions beyond that.
08/04/2010 at 17:06 ToadSmokingDuckMonkey says:
There have been few CRPGs (as the table grognards who wrote both digital and table games mags in the 80s referred to them) that let you play a character in the world.
Sure, CRPGs figured out how to provide consequences to player’s actions. Ultima IV and many games after. Ultima IV and others, on through the early Fallouts and Deus Ex say, provided enough ways to solve problems that players at least had a choice of how to solve them, and enough choice between problems that it support the illusion that the player could choose whatever problems to solve that they wanted to.
Similarly, interacting with NPCs though some sort of dialog system was achieved early on. Inverse text parsing, going all the way back to Moria, was later adapted in many titles to “talk” to “people”. I’m not sure when dialog trees, first appeared, but they quickly became the dominant species (though sometimes accompanied by another mechanic or minigame to influence your standing with the NPC).
This is what CRPGs have always lacked. These two fundamentals. The rest of the presentation is done far better by computer, unless you consider your Gamemaster the equal of Shakespeare or Tolkien at wordsmithing. The GM brings life to the characters, and can react to the player’s actions in the world by providing a new, dramatically appropriate and thematically consistent encounter (which might be anything between “some wary guards poke their head into the room to see whats going on” to thinking about the demon prince whose plot the characters just thwarted, and what his schemes might be, ergo fuels the character’s story, the overall state of the world, and probably advances the generic evil threat to a character with motivations in the overall narrative; or, just how to deal with some characters that just decided to build a boat one day, and float down the river because someone looked at their skill list and decided to do it).
CRPGs don’t do that yet.
08/04/2010 at 17:49 mujadaddy says:
@ToadSmokingDuckMonkey (in case the Reply doesn’t work):
Hear hear. Your “boat” example is perfect. No amount of scripting can replace a good GM. Self-serving example: My PCs had decided to go the “wrong” direction and do something that, while exciting and fun for them, wasn’t going to allow them to “keep up” with the Big Bad and see what was happening in the “main” story. The priest had cast a “Howling Hurricane” at the site of a massive battle, in order to stop or at least slow the fighting. I had an “air elemental” and a “water elemental” show up and chuckle at the PCs, telling them they were missing the big picture. The PCs took the bait, and the elementals transformed them into water vapor; they ascended into the sky, and fell as the next morning’s dew in the hills above where I had tried to lead them originally.
What KG’s discussion misses is that there is ANOTHER PLAYER of the tabletop RPG — the game master — who cannot be replaced by algorithm
08/04/2010 at 18:16 disperse says:
Hmm, I think I want a game where I am the GM and the computer replaces the players. Oh, right, that’s why I play Dwarf Fortress.
08/04/2010 at 17:09 DMJ says:
I look forward to the day in which new collaborative storytelling and simulation techniques are developed that can combine the strengths of both. Then we who play this mega-game will all be the winners, and the losers will be the ones still clinging to their old-fashioned battlements trading juvenile insults based on semantics.
08/04/2010 at 17:09 PacifismFailed says:
All my opinions on this disapeared when i read “Phonogram RPG”, pretty please with a cherry on top.
08/04/2010 at 17:10 Dawngreeter says:
“Real RPG” argument is obviously idiocy, but I have deeper issues with this. Comparing tabletop RPGs with computer games is kinda like comparing amateur improvised theater to big screen cinema. It’s not that one is better than the other in certain aspects and worse in others. It’s that you do it for entirely different reason and get to do entirely different things. The fact that both very likely have “xp” somewhere in there doesn’t really make it comparable.
08/04/2010 at 17:11 Serenegoose says:
I like this article. But what then, of people who play tabletop RPGs over email, or forum?
Accursed abominations of two sires are they, and such progeny of ill-thought progenitors cannot have a happy end.
08/04/2010 at 21:00 FunkyBadger says:
That way madness, and really, really bad prose lies.
08/04/2010 at 17:12 Langman says:
Good read, although it’s not really that much of a problem. Most reasonable people would already accept that they are entirely different experiences, and I don’t come across many people in real life who are that elitist about it.
I love both CRPGS and P&P roleplaying, but my most memorable experiences by far naturally come from the P&P’ing. CRPGs can be loved and appreciated, but P&P you’re kind of living through it as it happens, with other people right in front of you. If that makes any sense.
08/04/2010 at 17:17 Langman says:
Although, obviously a good DM is often the key to decent P&P.
If you find a ‘great’ DM, hang on to him or her! They’re worth their weight in gold! Perhaps keep them hostage for P&P weekends.
08/04/2010 at 17:22 Dan Pryce says:
Having never tried P&P RPGs before (but wanting desperately to have friends who would play with – not that I’m a billy-no-mates, it’s just that none of them want to be heard invoking a +something of whatever), I’ve always wondered how the experience differed from computer game RPGs. Surely it would no be too difficult to translate the same frameworks that a P&P provides into a game? To have the game simulate the board, the pieces, the cards and everything; but be completely reliant on the players (as heroes and Dungeon Master) to make all the decisions.
08/04/2010 at 17:34 Vinraith says:
@Dan
Actually it’s not merely difficult, it’s impossible with current technology. You’re talking about creating a 100% interactive environment that always responds realistically (or alternatively, always responds the way the DM chooses) to every action any player takes. You’re also talking about 100% freedom of player action, one can try anything that springs to one’s mind in a PnP RPG. At heart, PC RPG’s and PC RPG’s are two different things, and while the latter may have started as an attempt to capture the feel of the former they’ve grown apart in a lot of ways. Personally, I look for PC RPG’s that give me any scrap of that sense of freedom I used to get playing PnP RPG’s, but many console/PC RPGers don’t value that at all (look at Final Fantasy’s popularity, for example).
The irony is, though, even if what you proposed was possible it wouldn’t accomplish much. There are already plenty of ways to play PnP RPG’s online so having a graphical client, while neat, only really changes the aesthetics. From the perspective of this old PnPer, the holy grail would be a game that somehow managed to capture all the freedom of a PnP RPG without the need for a human DM on the other side. After all, if I had one of those I’d be playing PnP.
08/04/2010 at 19:52 Dan Pryce says:
@Vinraith
That’s fair enough. Perhaps it’s counterproductive to try and fit the P&P square block into the computer gaming circle slot. At the end of the day, no one’s saying you can’t play both. I say let both be their own sperate identities.
08/04/2010 at 19:53 Dan Pryce says:
Identities? Entities, rather. Oh lord, I hope this replies properly.
08/04/2010 at 22:19 Vinraith says:
@Dan
Exactly. At the end of the day arguments like this one arise because the term “RPG” is being applied to two rather different things. They’re both great, of course, but one of them defined “RPG” long before the other came along, so it’s no surprise that people get a little testy about the term being co-opted. I’d love to see the “two RPG’s” converge into a PC RPG with PnP-like freedom, but the reality is that the strengths of PnP RPG’s are hard to translate to the PC RPG experience (and vice versa), so it’s probably best to treat them as the two different beasts they are. It’s a shame it’s probably too late to come up with a more accurate term for the PC variety, it might help quell the kind of outrage that gave rise to this article in the first place.
08/04/2010 at 17:29 mujadaddy says:
You’ve never had your pre-game discussions dominated by 1+ hours of talk about some players’ MMO experiences? You’re lucky, if that’s the case.
08/04/2010 at 17:30 mujadaddy says:
Ach, that was @Sunjammer’s comment…
08/04/2010 at 17:30 GHudston says:
“In short: the common insult is that computer-role-playing games don’t have any real role-playing, so shouldn’t be called role-playing games. The only riposte is that pen & paper role-playing games don’t have any real game.”
Is it so hard for people to imagine that we could have the best of both?
It’s 2010 and the closest we’ve gotten to taking P&P RPGs and Tabletop Wargames online is a couple of instant messenger apps of varying quality with a map and a random number generator tacked on. I love tabletop games but no longer live close enough to anyone who wants to play them, why is there no alternative yet?
Besides, why do we have to argue semantics and discuss what is and isn’t an RPG when we should just be making games with a complete disregard for genre “rules”. The goal should be fun, not “an RPG but with”.
The best games that I’ve ever played have been ones that can’t be described as “It’s an *insert three letters here*”
08/04/2010 at 17:32 the wiseass says:
Wow that was one angry article. To be honest, I don’t think the problem addressed here is a problem at all. I mean every single role-player I know, and I know quite a few, enjoys both forms of role-playing, be it pen & paper or video games. I wasn’t even aware that this trench even existed until I read this article.
08/04/2010 at 17:34 Ffitz says:
I stopped reading at “Betty Boo”.
*sigh*
Where are you, baby?
08/04/2010 at 17:40 Edgar the Peaceful says:
Well she used to live in Clapham , so you could start looking there…
08/04/2010 at 17:47 Ffitz says:
Splendid! That’s not far from me, so a search shouldn’t be too taxing. I can take one of the pictures from my shrine and use it when I stop people in the street to ask “have you seen this woman?”
08/04/2010 at 20:05 JB says:
We used to have so much fun.
08/04/2010 at 17:35 TooNu says:
I feel stupid when reading this sort of thing. The subject has bothered me at times but only when I play Baldurs Gate and think, “This is not an RPG because the story, dialogue and characters were not made by me”. So instead I think of it as a game, a truly wonderfull game but not an RPG.
RPG is just a title, what’s in a name?
And again I want to say that reading this makes me feel stupid, how on earth your brain can think up how to string this together and not melt is beyond my simpleton ways. Practice I guess.
08/04/2010 at 17:38 misterk says:
I don’t know, I suspect when people say “this isn’t a real roleplaying game” they mean something a bit more subtle. The genre as it applies to the computer games industry is ridiculous to apply, as it was something of a handle to apply to games that seemed to mimic the pen and paper roots. However, proclaiming final fantasy and planescape as from the same genre is a little bit misleading.
Regardless, roleplaying games came first, and to my mind DO have some tenants that make them so, that, if I was being a purist, do not apply to most video games. Particularly, utter player control over what my character does, and, much more importantly, says. Games can’t do this without a human on the other end, and it does stop it being something I’d call a true roleplaying game. It doesn’t stop them being good, but it makes them fundamentally different. The point being that in a pen and paper world, you exist in a world created entirely by the gm, but who your player is is pretty much up to you (while existing in the rules of the world of course). In computer games, who your player is is defined by what they say and do, which typically means, that even with the most ambitious game your character is really only one of about three or four types- baron von loony,baron von goodpants or baron von compromise. We can have computer games that circumvent this. NWN apparently does (I’ve never played with humans, don’t know how much freedom there is there), and sleep is death certainly does. I’d actually be happy to call the latter two roleplaying games, because they allow you to totally roleplay.
I’m not claiming superiority here, but to an extent, the genre of roleplaying games is a little misleading- there is a fundamental disconnect between most of the genre and pen and paper because players are detached from their characters. I love both, but they are fundamentally different on a definitional level which does kind of make me say that most computer rpgs are not real roleplaying games.
08/04/2010 at 17:40 Greg Wild says:
Having discussed this yesterday, and again today after the post went up, I think the summary is blindingly obvious:
“Real” is a relative term. If you honestly need to differentiate, do it on technical terms – PnPRPG vs CRPG. Bringing “real” into the discussion just drags it into a subjective slugfest over which you feel is better.
In otherwords: An entirely pointless exercise in which much is said, but the only thing that is decided is that an awful lot of brain power has been wasted banging your heads together.
08/04/2010 at 17:45 BigJonno says:
Interesting read, if only because it wasn’t the argument I was expecting. I’m used to debates along the lines of “Final Fantasy/Diablo/Borderlands/Anything else with stats and levels shouldn’t be called RPGs because they don’t contain any role-playing.” I’ve never really come across the blanket argument that no CRPGs are RPGs; it’s just accepted that, while they don’t have the same freedom inherent to tabeletop RPGs, at least they’re trying to emulate the whole “playing a role” thing.
I’ve always felt that the biggest problem with CRPGs is the, quite frankly, bizarre notion that tabletop systems need to be simulated, with little virtual dice and all that jazz. As Kieron mentions in his piece, the whole point of computers is that they can do all that number crunching in much greater detail than a human being and much faster. Combine it with the idea that “RPG” means “stats and levels” and you have the current situation where ME2 is apparently less of an RPG than ME1 because there are less visible statistics on gear.
When I sit down to play a tabletop RPG, I’m there to take the part of a heroic adventurer or a paranormal investigator or an incredibly mopey vampire or something. It’s about being whisked away on an adventure. The stats and levels and dice are there to add a random, dramatic element, but I honestly couldn’t give a shit about them. If there was some way to get the same feeling from a computer game, with nary an experience point or schlong size stat in sight, I’d be there like a shot.
08/04/2010 at 17:47 Dave says:
My P&P gaming experience has actually been mostly a tactical small-squad wargaming thing. Socializing is first, mechanics and tactics are second, and roleplay comes in at a far distant third.
I would still love to see a turn-based, faithful, by-the-book 4th edition D&D RPG, or one that was well done in 3.5 edition. One that simply provides adventures to play through and takes care of the bookkeeping, without trying to be the be-all and end-all of roleplaying experiences. Why? Because I can’t get my group together every time I want that type of experience. (As hard-working adults in the gaming industry, we can’t even get together online twice a month reliably.)
Everyone seems to think CRPGs need to be real-time and actiony. I miss the old SSI “gold box” D&D games and wish something like that existed for 3.5 or 4th edition.
08/04/2010 at 17:48 Dave says:
…so I guess I feel exactly the opposite way BigJonno does and yet we still are both unsatisfied with the current state of CRPGs.
08/04/2010 at 19:35 BigJonno says:
The thing is, I like “tactical small-squad wargaming things,” which is what most combat-heavy tabletop RPGs are when you strip away the fluffy bits. The same way that if you take LARP and take away the RP, you’re basically left with paintball, but with swords instead of guns and huge amounts of alcohol consumption.
The point is that the “game” part of “RPG” can be any kind of game, not just a small-scale tactical thing. I’d argue that the career modes of many recent wrestling games amount to RPGs with homoerotic, pantomime man-slapping as the game part.
09/04/2010 at 05:48 Dave says:
Heh… I used to RP, at least in my head, while playing Atari 2600 games. Just racing pixelated cars in Enduro wasn’t good enough, it had to be to chase down a fugitive or deliver some kind of dangerous something-or-other cross country before it exploded/got loose/whatever.
08/04/2010 at 17:54 Malibu Stacey says:
What makes a game a “Computer RPG” as opposed to it being a game of any other genre?
Is S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl a CRPG? Are Half-Life 1/2/? Is Portal? Is Bioshock? Are XCOM/TFTD? Is AI War: Fleet Command? Is Sword of the Stars? Is Dwarf Fortress (fortress mode)? Is Left 4 Dead (2)? Is Team Fortress 2?
08/04/2010 at 18:03 Dawngreeter says:
In computer games, calling something an RPG is usually just a shorthand for saying characters get XP and develop skills.
08/04/2010 at 18:17 Tei says:
Re: “What makes a game a “Computer RPG” as opposed to it being a game of any other genre?”
I love wen people make these questions on the internets, because Is a excuse to be pedant to the max, and start a post with a definition!.
Of course, obviusly, … CRPG are games with character progression, the character the player drive gets better with time. As oposed to games where is the player-skill that get better, these are Arcades.
08/04/2010 at 18:23 Tei says:
Re: “What makes a game a “Computer RPG” as opposed to it being a game of any other genre?”
A generic reply would be. As like any RP game. A roleplay game put the player inside a character. The player must play this character or the character he want to become. On a no-RP game, a template his given to the player, and actions, that are external to him. He can’t interpret the character, and give him different actions or motivations. Freeman want to get out that shit, and help the rebelts. You can’t roleplay a Freeman that want to help the invaders control the humans.
But this definition or difference betwen RP and not RP games is weak, because part of it is given to the player, so the player can “roleplay” inside a non-roleplay game, so is a weak definition/difference.
08/04/2010 at 23:12 Pardoz says:
“What makes a game a “Computer RPG” as opposed to it being a game of any other genre?”
A crap implementation of 30-year-old PnP RPG mechanics.
09/04/2010 at 12:15 Malibu Stacey says:
Tei you’re completely missing the point.
The games I listed are all role-playing games. I intentionally left out things like KOTOR, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Torchlight etc because they conform to the “xp & levels & stats & loot” bullshit.
In S.T.A.L.K.E.R you’re roleplaying an amnesiac in the Zone. GSC are the DM
In Half-Life 1 & 2 you’re roleplaying Gordon Freeman & VALVe are the DM.
In Portal you’re roleplaying a test subject (Chell) & VALVe are the DM.
In XCOM & TFTD you’re roleplaying a military commander & the Gollop brothers/Microprose are your DM.
Read the intro for AI War & it doesn’t need an explanation.
Pardoz gets it completely. Just because a game tries to implement the game parts of PnP RPGs, doesn’t make it a CRPG, it generally makes it a game with shitty mechanics. The fact that subsequent games of this genre are hiding, changing or removing those same mechanics just reinforces that view.
The way I see it most modern games are RPGs, whether you’re fighting 12 colossal monsters to bring your dead lover back to life, pushing a bomb to a point where it’ll destroy a structure, attempting to escape the zombie apocalypse with 3 other survivors, trying to become the ruler of Japan by defeating the other Daimyos also vying for the throne or organising a resistance against alien overlords using only your camera, a metal staff & a glove that shoots purple discs.
08/04/2010 at 17:58 Steven Hutton says:
I suppose the interesting thing here is what happens when everyone starts bringing thier iPad (or netbook, or nearest portable computer equivalent) to the D&D (or tabletop game of your choice) table.
With a decent piece of software for your laptops (and I think Wizards already offer some sort of online DMing interface deely) you can gain the benefits of a seasoned DM at the hand of the narrative AND the processing power required to do satisfy the gamist/simulationist urges of the player.
Imagine a World of Warcraft without repetitive quest text. Instead each NPC is voiced (perhaps over VOIP) by your DM as he sets up encounters and leads you through the narrative in real time.
Hell, WoW is a terrible example for this. Why restrict yourself to the (fundementally not much fun) gamist elements of WoW. Borderlands might be a better choice.
08/04/2010 at 18:05 disperse says:
OK, point taken.
Let me take a moment to voice my (elitist) point of view.
My problem isn’t with CRPGs having an XP advancement system, dramatic cut-scenes with voice overs, and freedom in the form of a branching storyline.
Baldur’s Gate II is one of my favorite games. I generally skip through the dialog and don’t role-play my character beyond thinking up a dual-class combination that allows me to dual-wield Crom Faeyr and the Celestial Fury.
My problem is with CRPGs being defined by an XP advancement system, dramatic cut-scenes with voice overs, and freedom in the form of a branching storyline.
When developers forget what CRPGs were inspired by (*ahem* pen-and-paper role playing games) they end up limiting the scope of their ambitions. Games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress have given us a tantalizing look at what could happen if the game stepped aside and allowed the player to create their own story.
08/04/2010 at 18:06 Ghiest says:
I used to love P&P RPGs (shadowrun, mechwarrior were my favourites but also played MERP and Paranoia), but most of my friends who played them with me moved away and it eventually come to the point where there was no one left really. Would love to start up again at some point but it’s meeting like minded people around your area that like 20 year old gaming systems as well as P&P gaming.
08/04/2010 at 18:13 Tei says:
1) Steal underpants
2) ???
3) Profit!
??? make P&P games superior, because you can’t play CRPG in underpants anymore,
08/04/2010 at 18:22 TheApologist says:
Quite right too, Mr. Gillen
08/04/2010 at 18:28 Mario Figueiredo says:
This is all fine Kieron. And I mostly agree. But two questions:
1. Are there no connecting threads whatsoever. I can’t draw qualitative comparisons between two genres, or the progress of some genre throughout history?
2. Does this also include accusing the new of being shallow and the old of being ugly? Or to put it in another way, do I have to ignore my own standards and refrain from commenting based on them?
…
Throughout my 30 year old history (really) as a video gamer, I’ve realized three major points of interest:
a) As I grow older my standards have constantly been changing. Not always (almost never always) in the same direction as the industry. Because the (mainstream, at least) industry is really not very interested in producing content for +40 year old farts.
b) Despite this, in every moment in these years, say every 3 or 4 years, at least one new game has been able to inspire me beyond my ability to describe it.
c) I have all reasons to believe, as we grow older the more emotionally attached we become to past experiences and, in consequence, the more value we tend to give them. Because of this, we tend to devalue present work because we simply have a real hard time battling against the “best years of our lives”.
So I do tend to agree with your assertions. But I do see connecting threads between the old and the new, the FPS and the Simulator, the Pen&Paper and the RPG, the Blue and the Green, Led Zeppelin and Tokyo Hotel. Should I ignore them? Should I refrain from drawing parallels? Should I not have any sense of aesthetics?
08/04/2010 at 18:37 Alexander Norris says:
So in essence, your point is that CRPGs are in fact, not pen and paper RPGs. I’m not sure how this qualifies as a refutation of the argument that CRPGs are less of a pen and paper RPG than pen and paper RPGs are (which is what I consider the “real RPGs” argument to be about, although I didn’t see the Sleep is Death comments that prompted this so my interpretation of it probably isn’t in line with what is being reacted to); since, you know, CRPGs not being pen and paper RPGs necessarily assumes that they are 100% less pen and paper RPGs than pen and paper RPGs are. So yes, CRPGs are not “real” RPGs – assuming you define “real” RPGs as pen and paper RPGs.
The problem is basically one of terminology. “RPG” is shorthand for “pen and paper roleplaying game,” and the people who think pen and paper RPGs are better at being pen and paper RPGs than CRPGs are think that they shouldn’t have to tag those two extra words and one conjuction in front of the term “RPG” just to clarify. They were there first, and CRPGs should bugger off and find their own moniker. All right, so it’s a little laughable, but it’s not exactly something to make an argument out of.
I originally reacted to KG’s tweet about this yesterday, and had a bit of an agitated discussion with a few fellow RPSites; in fact, the tweet drove me to near-incoherent rage given how utterly stupid the message it seemed to contain was. Based on KG’s one or two tweets about this, it seemed like he was denying that there were any meaningful differences between CRPGs and P&P RPGs, which is absolutely not true as far as I’m concerned. The two are very different creatures (which I think is something we’re all agreed on), and there are some things which CRPGs simply cannot do, notably being an RPG.
And here’s why I think that: because RPGs are not about character stats, rolling dice, or even about playing a role (if they were, wargames, boardgames and every video game ever would all be RPGs). RPGs are about collaborative story-making. Not interactive story-making, not co-operative story-making – though both of these can be subsets of the collaborative story-making – but collaborative story-making. CRPGs always get the interactive part (by nature of being video games); to my knowledge, they haven’t gotten the co-operative part yet (i.e. allowing multiple players to wield comparable power over the story and work together to make said story), although The Old Republic looks like it might; and they are mechanically incapable of getting the collaborative part right as it stands, especially given the current trend of voice-acting everything.
P&P RPGs are “real” in this sense, the sense that they are about collaborative story-making, and that CRPGs are not and therefore are not RPGs. When I play a “real” RPG, I am collaborating with other people to make a story. Even in the case of games like Agon or Paranoia or Vampire, where the nature of the game is somewhat competitive, it is still collaborative: acting against another player’s character in order to promote your own character’s interests (even if those interests are just proxy for your interests as a player, as would be the case with particularly bad roleplayers) is still collaborating with them to make a story. CRPGs completely lack this element of collaboration, because you do not collaborate with the developers; you consume the story that they made on their own, without the player’s input.
Essentially, what this boils down to is the ability to internalise (make your own) the character you’re handed. This goes beyond picking a face and a character class, and into how the game world interacts with your character. In a “real” RPG, no matter how much the DM railroads, your character’s motivations and opinions still have an impact on the game world, even if they have very little impact on the overall direction of the plot – they will change how NPCs and the other PCs react to your character, if only because there’s someone sitting opposite you who can make changes to his characters’ dialogue based on your character’s dialogue. Most CRPGs are like having an extremely railroading DM without any possibility whatsoever of having the motivations you picked for your character matter in any way, unless you happen to have picked the two or three motivations that the game chose to factor in. Without the ability for the motivations and opinions you picked for your character to have an impact on the story, the character is not truly yours.
This is entirely to do with the format in which this experience is delivered: as a video game, a CRPG has to be made in advance then distributed, and it has to be made on a budget – both in terms of money and in terms of time. This means that it’s impossible for the “GM” (here, the developer) to be there and change the story according to what you imagine your character’s internal monologue is, and it means that it is impossible for the story to take into account enough possible character motivations that the majority of people can feel the characters they create in a CRPG are truly theirs.
This isn’t to suggest that the human element is mandatory for collaborative story-telling to occur, by the way; it should be possible to create a CRPG that tells a collaborative story, for example, by having a GM involved who can modify NPC dialogue and incidental setting details on the fly based on your roleplaying… but then, I would argue that such a thing would no longer be a CRPG and would instead just be a pen and paper RPG played on a computer. The obvious example is Neverwinter Nights’ multiplayer, which was basically pen and paper D&D3.5 with a more limited set of mechanics, a 3D world and a computer there to resolve all dice rolls. Of course, CRPGs have one big advantage when it comes to gamist or simulationist systems, as pointed out: they allow people to not preoccupy themselves with the actual rules and instead focus on the story-making.
CRPGs simply aren’t pen and paper RPGs, so they aren’t “real” RPGs. That doesn’t mean they have no value at all or that you’re dumb for liking them; it just means that they’re a different animal compared to pen and paper RPGs, and should probably be called something other than “computer RPGs.”
Personally, I used to love CRPGs, but I’ve slowly become more and more disillusioned with them, to the point where I can no longer enjoy them. I have grown out of them; they simply do not afford me enough control over the aspects of my character that actually matter (my character’s motivations and ideologies can only be imagined and have no effect on the story, and for them to do so they would have to be written into the game and thus I would only be offered to choose from a very narrow selection of motivations due to simple time/money constraints). Only when they do start offering me this control – even if it’s only the illusion of choice, as described – will I be able to enjoy CRPGs again.
The irony is that Sleep is Death is a real RPG (just a narrativist one that happens to be played on the computer), whereas something like Dragon Age: Origin or Neverwinter Nights aren’t.
08/04/2010 at 18:39 Alexander Norris says:
Incidentally: assuming that using computers to play pen and paper RPGs is a desirable thing, I believe it should be possible to make a GM-less computer-based RPG (rather than a CRPG) by offering the player the illusion that their character’s imagined motivations have an impact on the game world. It’s just a matter of adapting NPC dialogue in current dialogue systems to include a player-defined aspect; i.e. the standard save the princess/save the princess for money/don’t save the princess trinity is replaced with a save the princess because A/save the princess for money because B/don’t save the princess because C, where A, B and C are written by the player at character creation, and by restricting the availability of certain PC dialogue choices based on what the player has defined those motivations as being generally indicative of.
In other words, let the player create a “conversational alignment” for their character which defines a set of response archetypes that are inappropriate for their character to say and thus which the player shouldn’t be allowed to pick, and let them write the “qualifiers” that will be pre- or suffixed to their character’s dialogue options and NPC responses in certain cases. Yes, the strings that pull the puppet are visible, but it should be enough that internalisation of a CRPG character becomes possible (at least for me).
08/04/2010 at 19:01 Mario Figueiredo says:
Your reply to your own post is priceless. My compliments!
Your post also very well reflects my views of the two genres (Yes, two. They are two different things). But as it is clear by your thoughts and Kieron’s own article, they are comparable. And to paraphrase Hamlet, “therein lies the rub”.
I’d like to just make a comment to one piece of your post however. Neverwinter Nights clearly exposed another problem with a CRPG trying to emulate a P&P RPG; Investment of Time and Knowledge. With our current technology, it demands a great deal of investment. A lot more that what you and I remember a P&P demanding of us when we were creating our own adventures.
The difficulty to create a fast paced interface for the GM was also an obvious problem. That and the fact the GM was himself tied to whatever world they created and how they scripted it. Creating content on the fly was either a challenge or simply impossible, depending on your scripting skills. So I don’t exactly agree, CRPGs emulating RPGs have the ability to free the players (and GM) to concentrate on the story. And I’m very positive we are still far from reaching that.
NWN however will have have a spot on my heart for having tried it. But I honestly think the whole experience was essentially a fiasco.
08/04/2010 at 19:26 mister k says:
(repost so iits actually a reply!)
Well exactly. I say similar things above- they are usually distinct, although sleep is death is closer to a “proper” rpg.
Now I think about it, perhaps that is the issue. Sleep is death is very close to pen and paper rpgs, by having two players on either side- player motivation and interaction are retained, which might be why some might argue that one might as well play a pen and paper rpg.
The advantages of sleep, which are yet to be articulated by merely “you can’t see the gm” (its really easy to get round that if thats your obstacle!), is that
A-theres a time limit, so improvisation is essential, which can lead to strange and unexpected detours (true of course with pen and paper, but the time limit is interesting)
B-The story is recorded in a format that does not exist for roleplaying sessions. Journals written after the fact rarely capute rp sessions, and filming it would be tedious (it could be done, but would require lots of editing and hard work to make watchable)
C-Art can be defined by the restraints. The tools for both player and controller are deliberately restricted to a particular style, which forces innovation on the story teller’s part. In short: the medium is the message.
This should probably be attached to sleep is death post, but never mind!
08/04/2010 at 19:43 Alexander Norris says:
@Mario – I had a similar conversation with Jonas Waever (of the Nameless Mod) yesterday, regarding the time/effort investment required to get a NWN campaign going compared to that required to plot the same campaign on paper, and while my original position was identical to yours, I’m now not so sure it can hold its own.
Yes, for someone who has experience as a pen and paper GM and no knowledge of the NWN editor suite (or other software required to mod the game), designing a campaign in NWN will obviously take more time and effort than designing the same campaign on paper; that said, I’m sure there are people out there more comfortable with using a level editor rather than drawing maps, writing descriptions and building encounters.
I think your second point is a much fairer criticism, though – whereas a DM can adapt the rules of the game to his players if necessary, the same level of control is absent in something like NWN. This is something I should’ve brought up in my first comment and forgot about.
@mister k – Sleep is Death is probably what I would consider an example of a pen-and-paper-RPG-on-computer done right, in that it allows for a roleplaying game to be run across the Internet, much like IM allows for conversations across the Internet, thereby making it possible for people without a gaming group to play a pen and paper RPG. In some ways, it reminds me of something like MapTool but built with being a game in mind rather than being a tool to play a game with, although I’m sure that doesn’t do it justice.
08/04/2010 at 21:20 Psychopomp says:
“because RPGs are not about character stats, rolling dice, or even about playing a role (if they were, wargames, boardgames and every video game ever would all be RPGs). RPGs are about collaborative story-making.”
To you maybe. To some people, it is about the stats, the dice, and the playing. To some of us, it’s none of things, and merely a cheap excuse to fuck around with your friends until 5 o’ clock in the morning.
08/04/2010 at 21:24 Vinraith says:
@Alexander Norris
Very well put, I couldn’t agree more. At the end of the day the problem is the definition of “RPG,” of course. If RPG is defined by the pen and paper game that originated the term (and I know that’s the case for me) then this entire “debate” is openly ludicrous. Furthermore, any attempt to redefine the term (and I have a fundamental problem with doing so) is immediately confounded by just how sloppily the term is used in the realm of electronic gaming, especially these days.
08/04/2010 at 22:15 FunkyBadger says:
@Alex: did you just define Heavy Rain?
Computer games are still a juvenile art form – they’ve got no self-confidence, they try to be things they’re not… see how many reviews use “cinematic” as praise. The purest computer games – Tetris, Nintendogs,Snake – need no such comparisons – they could only exists as computer games.
Or something.
08/04/2010 at 23:10 Alexander Norris says:
No, ‘pomp. The one common trait that every roleplaying game has is that it is about making a collaborative story. I’m attempting to define the term in the most inclusive way possible, not saying that it’s what I most enjoy in RPGs.
There are statless, diceless and even two-player RPGs, but they all have in common the collaborative story-making.
08/04/2010 at 18:42 Tyshalle says:
Personally, and while I agree with a lot of this article, this sentiment that “Real in a fantasy game is ludicrous” is, frankly, a fucking stupid thing to say. Every time I hear somebody echo this kind of sentiment I basically write them off as being completely beyond help, sort of like you would child rapists or Palin supporters.
Would the Lord of the Rings movies, which are inarguably fantasy, be less “real” if suddenly the Care Bears showed up and shot rainbow light out of their asses to defeat the dark lord? Or if Aragorn started performing Jet Li-style Matrix action? Of course they would.
Real is a relative term, but it’s something that can be judged, and judged accurately, even in a fantasy setting. Games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age probably lend a lot of their integrity to the fact that, even though they are in fantasy settings, they still feel real enough that you can set up realistic expectations for them within the confines of what you know about the real world. Realism still exists here. I can’t even fathom how this is disputable.
08/04/2010 at 18:45 The Hammer says:
That’s “realism” rather than “real” though right, Tyshalle? Though I agree it’s rather an unconnected point to make. The rest of the argument would have worked fine without it.
08/04/2010 at 21:04 Tyshalle says:
Yeah, it’s about realism rather than real, though I don’t know how to take the “For a Fantasy game to come down to a question “real” is openly ludicrous,” any other way than in terms of realism.
If he really meant that specific line not in the context of realism, but instead seriously of the “real” tone of the rest of the game, then that’s even more retarded, as every piece of fiction, fantasy or modern, is ultimately not “real.” Non-fiction, for that matter, is still in the eye-of-the-beholder more often than not, and suffers from dubious ‘realness.’
My point is, if he meant it how I took it, then it’s just a stupid sentiment. If he meant it the other way, then it suffers from being completely meaningless in the first place.
08/04/2010 at 21:30 Vinraith says:
@Tyshalle
Thank you, that REALLY needed to be said. This notion that because the setting is fantasy things like internal consistency can simply be thrown away is both bizarre and profoundly irritating. A compelling universe is a universe bound by its own rules. They may not be connected to the laws of our world, but they have to be “real” within their own context or the whole setting loses credibility and (in most cases) ceases to be interesting. Certainly it’s possible to have an entirely abstract, self-inconsistent universe that’s compelling, but that’s not what’s usually meant by “fantasy” and it’s probably best kept as the unusual treat that it is.
08/04/2010 at 18:52 Urthman says:
There’s one bit that’s disingenuous about Mr. Gillen’s article. He doesn’t acknowledge that the computer RPG people started it.
When Pool of Radiance came out in 1988, it was labeled “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” and “A Forgotten Realms Fantasy Role Playing Game.” It was a lot of fun and contained many elements borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons, but it was not by any stretch of the imagination the same thing as playing a pen and paper game of AD&D. It is no insult to say that the Gold Box games are not “real” AD&D any more than saying that Madden 2010 is not “real” American Football.
P&P RPGs came first. If computer gamers take the name “RPG” and apply it to something that’s similar but definitely not the same thing, it’s not really a problem — language changes and all that — but it seems a little lame for computer gamers to get offended if a P&P gamer says, “That’s not really what we mean by the term Role Playing Game.”
08/04/2010 at 18:57 DMcCool says:
So Kieron Gillen wrote the article I tried to write when I was 18 (put it up as the first on my blog), but properly. I was petrified my article was going to get linked to as an example of how not to handle the debate, but you know what? I stick by 18 year old me. He was alright.
I do honestly think the “CRPG as an abstraction of real pen and paper RPG” is a useful way of looking at things. Exactly because the CRPG WAS invented to ape the PnP RPG is what has made the “genre” so convulted and confused. Just because a game uses PnP tropes for its “game” aspect really doens’t imply its carried over any of the narrative or the simulation aspect of the PnP (or isn’t exploring Role-playing in a new way). Its important not to get sidetracked by “purer” translations of PnP roleplaying, or saying one mode is any better than any other (regardless of where it thrives), but lets not presuppose the majority of people making the games, critiquing them or playing them actually knows whats going on. The subject of roleplaying in computer games is perpetually confused, every day thousands of gamers across the globe argue why Final Fantasy is an RPG but Deus Ex 2 isn’t really, why S.T.A.L.K.E.R and Mass Effect are but apparently Mass Effect 2 isn’t, ad infinitum.
A lot of games are pretending to be something they are not, or at least calling themselves something they never really wanted to be.
08/04/2010 at 19:02 Wulf says:
@KG
“For a Fantasy game to come down to a question “real” is openly ludicrous.”
You have no idea how often I’ve expressed that to people only to get blank stares and anger, it always amazes me how people do that, no matter what the context. Gamers aren’t immune to it, either, because you get elitist pissy gamers getting annoying that a fantasy game doesn’t have realistic combat filled with blood and gore.
What?
My point is that I agree: There is no true representation of anything involving fantasy, since it is fantasy and not reality that pretty much implies that just about any and every approach is correct. If a Universe has a sea-like space in which one can breathe and witness space whales–like in Treasure Planet–who gives a flying fuck whether that’s realistic or not? Or whether it’s a proper representation of fantasy or not?
It’s fantasy for chrissakes. The same applies to D&D versus videogames, when representing a fantasy setting, there is no one, true, proper way to do it. Every way is equally valid due to it being fantasy.
/exasperated
09/04/2010 at 01:21 GHudston says:
@Wulf
There are also those of us who want realism in the context of the universe that we are currently experiencing. I suppose “immersion” or “believability” could be better words to use, but I like “realism” for some reason.
I don’t buy the “it’s fantasy!” argument for a second. That only really counts up until the setting has been established and what constitutes “real” in that setting has been put in place.
09/04/2010 at 12:26 Cunzy1 1 says:
Someone clearly hasn’t tried the PnP Lumines then.
10/04/2010 at 04:00 Wulf says:
“There are also those of us who want realism in the context of the universe that we are currently experiencing. I suppose “immersion” or “believability” could be better words to use, but I like “realism” for some reason.”
Okay, believability I can buy. It’s like Star Trek, create the the laws and lore of the land, fashion the world and create your own rules, and then stick to them. Sticking to the rules of a world, even a fantasy world which has different rules than ours, adds believability. This does not need to be realistic. Floating islands aren’t realistic, but if that world has well explained ore magically charged with levitation properties that caused the phenomenon, then who gives a toss?
To cite realism in the face of insanity is just silly, not the good kind of silly either, but a very narrow-minded kind of silly that doesn’t embrace big dreams. A very flat and dull kind of silly. Perhaps the word I’m looking for here is normal. It’s a very real world, normal way to look at fantasy, and that just robs fantasy of what makes it fantastic, wondrous, and absolutely bloody beautiful.
So you can keep your realism, I’ll have my believable fantasy and be happy with it. Really, does escapism mean nothing to you?
“I don’t buy the “it’s fantasy!” argument for a second. That only really counts up until the setting has been established and what constitutes “real” in that setting has been put in place.”
If the reason is well explained and it fits into the lore of the world then–yes–it is fantasy, of course it’s fantasy, that’s what it bloody well should be, and until you fully understand the nature of the fantasy world the author is weaving, you’re in no position at all to question it. If they give you a decent explanation then that’s all that should matter, it works for immersion and believability, they can turn the world inside out as long as it doesn’t defy or contradict what they’ve done previously. A clever writer can create a world that evolves every minute.
And really, what you’re talking about is ‘reality’, and you can’t bring reality into fantasy, with a plane that isn’t our own you have to let the author paint it for you, and if the author claims this or that is possible, and it doesn’t contradict their own work, then what’s the problem? Believability, yes, but not realism! Never realism, because realism is the bane of imagination. Let the authors have magicks, technology, different realms, and whatever else they want. It is fantasy, it is not reality.
You know, I’ve encountered this attitude before where people demand realism in things, where they say that if a sword cuts a person there should be a lot of gore, and that magicks should only use the elements (fire, water, earth, and air) and should be able to call upon nothing else, and it really irritates me, because that’s sucking the soul out of fantasy, that’s robbing it of its potential. Let yourself go along for the adventure and you’ll have a hell of a time, or you can be a prissy, uppipty, elitist nitpicker.
And yes, when I’ve asked people like this for their opinion on what a fantasy realm should be, I almost always get the same damn response: Basically a variant of medieval England, perhaps a bit gritty, and with the odd Dragon and other elements nicked from Dungeons & Dragons thrown in for good measure. And that’s boring. That’s incredibly dull. It’s tedious. It’s unimaginative. It’s not fantasy.
Go and play The Whispered World, that’s a great depiction of high fantasy right there, at least what I’ve seen and played of it thus far, and you might understand me then.
But here’s a hint: Fantasy should be fantastic.
13/04/2010 at 11:40 GHudston says:
@Wulf
I hope that you didn’t see my last point as evidence of me being “a prissy, uppity, elitist nitpicker.” I could not be further from that.
I was simply trying to express that a lot of people, myself included, often mistakenly say “realism” when they mean “believability”.
I actually could not agree with you more if you paid me!
08/04/2010 at 19:15 Lyndon says:
Bravo!
08/04/2010 at 19:25 FernandoDante says:
The problem here is that, when the author says “You still hear this attitude a lot”, he doesn’t tell us what he’s referring to. He doesn’t mention if the troubled attitude is the “real RPGs” one or the “piss right off” one.
08/04/2010 at 19:25 mister k says:
Well exactly. I say similar things above- they are usually distinct, although sleep is death is closer to a “proper” rpg.
Now I think about it, perhaps that is the issue. Sleep is death is very close to pen and paper rpgs, by having two players on either side- player motivation and interaction are retained, which might be why some might argue that one might as well play a pen and paper rpg.
The advantages of sleep, which are yet to be articulated by merely “you can’t see the gm” (its really easy to get round that if thats your obstacle!), is that
A-theres a time limit, so improvisation is essential, which can lead to strange and unexpected detours (true of course with pen and paper, but the time limit is interesting)
B-The story is recorded in a format that does not exist for roleplaying sessions. Journals written after the fact rarely capute rp sessions, and filming it would be tedious (it could be done, but would require lots of editing and hard work to make watchable)
C-Art can be defined by the restraints. The tools for both player and controller are deliberately restricted to a particular style, which forces innovation on the story teller’s part. In short: the medium is the message.
This should probably be attached to sleep is death post, but never mind!
08/04/2010 at 19:29 Berzee says:
You say “conservative”, as if conserving things is bad? >_>
It doesn’t seem like the right word for the situation.
08/04/2010 at 19:53 Wulf says:
The dictionary definition is:
“A person who favors maintenance of the status quo or reversion to some earlier status.”
This is incorrect and harmful if the earlier status was flawed, or the status quo is incorrect/unfair. I think that’s what Kieron is getting at.
08/04/2010 at 20:56 Berzee says:
I know that it means wanting to maintain things (or conserve them, as I said =).
But Kieron seems to be using “conservative” as an *intrinsically* negative word, as if everything new is good and everything old is bad. It’s pointless to say “conservatism is bad/good” or “progress is bad/good” without talking of WHAT is being conserved or progressed toward.
He can correct me if he only meant that it was bad conservatism because of the arrogance it’s conserving. The wording is such that I could well be wrong about it =) Just be careful how you use it, or else it will become a word that simply means “stupidly behind the times”, and we will no longer have a good word to use for “does not support these new changes”.
08/04/2010 at 19:32 Wulf says:
Here’s a post I made elsewhere, cleaned up a bit to work as a standalone post here.
Of all the pen & paper systems I’ve tried thus far, I like World of Darkness the best, and other systems seem limited in comparison. The reason for this is that as a GM I always felt that D20/D&D really limited what I could expose my characters to, I got inventive with D&D on times, and in one campaign I even managed an ever-loving die-rolling mindfuck. And yet I still felt limited, because I didn’t really guide anything, neither did the players, the dice had the power and it was largely down to chance.
A lot of people I’ve talked to find this overwhelming, that they find the rules are actually smothering and suffocate their character and their position in the story, that they can’t fully express themselves because they’re locked within the boundaries of the ruleset. If someone tells you that pen & paper is only limited by the imagination and they’re talking about D&D or any similar D20 system, it’s my opinion that they’re lying or they just don’t have the imagination to really fuck over the game in a way the rules can’t cope with.
This is an issue for D20, it has a very static ruleset, the ruleset has expectations of the player. Does this make sense? The ruleset wants you to do this, the ruleset needs you to be that, and it’s very difficult to break out of, sometimes it can be a prison for creativity, not a bastion. World of Darkness is a completely different concept, because the rules in a World of Darkness game tend to play second fiddle to the story. It’s a they’re there if you need them dealie. The World of Darkness approach unchains the pen & paper player.
More than that, the World of Darkness approach is very simple and intuitive, it’s easy to understand. You can look at a World of Darkness character sheet and immediately understand what’s going on. You aren’t overwhelmed by numbers, you’re instead overloaded by the creativity of the player. I dig that. And there are many concessions and different approaches that allow for a lot of movement within World of Darkness, it’s not at all a static system, it’s a very fluid system, and one that can account for creative players. This is why I’ve encountered fairly boring stories in D&D, but some absolutely, mindbendingly, awe-inspiringly fantastic ones in WoD.
And you know what helps contribute to that?
Okay, I’ll say it, brace yourself…
The majority of D20/D&D players I’ve encountered aren’t that imaginative, nor are they great actors. In fact, I’ve had the best successes by introducing really flamboyant people whom I have hope for but know aren’t roleplayers to World of Darkness. They’re scared off by the very restrictive approach of D20/D&D, it’s just too many numbers for some people, but they can deal with the Lite approach of World of Darkness better. You’ll still have the odd bad actor, but generally this brings in new blood, imagination, creativity, and for me it’s brought about some of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had with pen & paper.
Who are the target audience of Sleep is Death?
Probably the same people that I tried to draw into World of Darkness. I can show them the game, I can explain that there’s no stress or pressure, they’re just playing a game and acting their character, they can have fun with it. And in this case, there are no rules and all they have to worry about is how I’ll react to their choices. Thankfully, my friends know me to be an even-handed and creative person, so I wouldn’t scare them off (I all ready have interested non pen & paper playing parties).
The point I’m making here is that I can get people who are normally scared off by the nerdly numbermunching of normal pen & paper involved, and these are the people you want involved, especially if you know them to be a bit eccentric and prone to acting. In fact, they are the best possible people to have as players for a game like this, and by showing them that it is just a game in which a story is told (much like ruleless IRC storytelling, but with the added appeal of graphics) I can likely get their attention.
It’s nice as well that it runs on low end computers and that new art assets can be created easily (which I’m currently doing), this means that people don’t have to worry about whether their prehistoric machines can handle the game or not, so it’s open to just about anyone that has some kind of a computer (and most people do, these days).
To cement this point, read the previews. Look at what happened with Alec, and with all the people who were involved in a story with Rohrer. These aren’t people who would normally sit down for a game of pen & paper, and yet they can create a story which would match (and in some cases outdo) the stories provided by seasoned pen & paper players. New blood is always a good thing, and sometimes the most creative ideas come from people who just like to have fun with writing and playing, rather than getting bogged down with systems of rules.
That’s why I’m sold on Sleep is Death. However… it’s totally going to depend on how creative you are and the people you know.
As an addendum, I’ll note that I am aware that there are pen & paper RPGs which are even more rules lite than World of Darkness, such as Fighting Fantasy, but because World of Darkness is more of a modern day setting it seems to appeal to people more, rather than asking them to pretend to be a Dwarf in a horny hat, or a man in tights. Even a werewolf seems to be a better concept to a creative concept than the aforementioned. And the thing with Sleep is Death is that I can create the scenario, I can make it an interesting one, and I can appeal to the right sorts of people with it.
And that’s why I think that Sleep is Death is every bit as valid as a pen & paper RPG.
08/04/2010 at 22:26 FunkyBadger says:
Irony being you actually roll loads more dice in Whitewolf games than in DnD derivatives. As with every system, the only constraint is your imagination (although WW did some interesting things in trying to bolster the roleplaying side with theeir mechanics, encouraging teamwork in werewolf and, especially, the shadow-player idea in wraith).
08/04/2010 at 23:06 Devenger says:
I’ll vaguely copy over my previous comment. And work on it a bit.
@ Wulf: I wouldn’t say World of Darkness is rules-lite. WoD is a good deal further along a (gamist or simulationist)-to-narrativist sliding scale than D&D, but that doesn’t mean you can’t go further yet. Have a look at The Pool ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/13967641/The-Pool-an-inde-RPG ), or Wushu ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wushu_(role-playing_game) ) – you can go MUCH further. This isn’t always a good thing – different groups need to strike a different balance, in order to have the most fun.
Also, I’d suggest a game system is merely a vehicle within which a GM can run a game, as opposed to the game itself. A bad GM’s game will not be saved by running WoD (in fact, it could be disastrously bad; White Wolf is notorious for making their games accessible to inexperienced or bad GMs). A good GM can run a stunningly good game within the d20 system, in the same way that they could do stunning things with some system they wrote on the back of a napkin (well, they could do okay).
I’m not criticising you – I agree, WoD does what it does very well, and is a blast to play with the right people. But it’s important to not over-simplify what is a highly complicated relationship between game system, and fun.
09/04/2010 at 00:15 Wulf says:
I did note in my addendum that I realise what both of these replies were going to say, so I read the future and there they are.
…yeah.
There are different ways of approaching it, but as was said, WoD has a different approach that makes the rules feel less smothering and suffocating than D20, that’s how I feel and nothing will change that, and for that reason I see it as having a far more benign and friendly ruleset than D20 or the vast majority (not all, but the vast majority) of what I have played.
The end result is that people are encouraged to act and roleplay more, rather than letting the dice decide the outcome for them.
Here’s a funny juxtaposition: Despite the amount of die-rolling in either game, D20 is actually more like a videogame than WoD, D20 is closer to Neverwinter Nights than Sleep is Death, and WoD is closer to Sleep is Death, but neither of them are ruleless. The point I’m making is that in White Wolf’s games, people are less inclined (and less encouraged) to let the die roll decide everything for them, and that’s exactly what I remember of White Wolf. It encouraged more creativity. Whereas in D20, you fight a bunch of skeletons, and everything’s decided by die-rolls or virtual die-rolls inside of a computer. This is where I make a distinction between D20 and World of Darkness. I thought that World of Darkness was a step in the right direction: Away from being a videogame written on paper, and toward freedom.
Now the point I’m making here is that others have gone even further with this, and contrary to other opinions I actually think that that’s a good thing, because the less you’re bogged down with rules, the less rules you have, the less you have to depend on the roll and the fall of a die/dice, the more you can actually do with a story. There is a direct correlation between less rules and more freedom. I’m not saying that World of Darkness is the most free, I never was, just that it was a step in the right direction, away from D20.
Now Sleep is Death is new, interesting, and exciting, it has the opportunity to completely blow away D20, because D20 is still a limited videogame, whether it’s on a computer or on paper, it doesn’t matter. Every edition of Dungeons & Dragons for example became more like a videogame: 3 was more so than 2.5, 3.5 was more so than 3 (including massive World of Warcraft-like weapons in the art), and 4th is the height of this idea. This is where I think the insecurity of pen & paper players comes from, they don’t want to admit that: That D20/D&D is a computer game without the computer. It has all the same mechanics and systems, whether dice or computers handle the mechanical parts is irrelevant.
World of Darkness is less a computer game and more of a roleplaying experience.
The other games mentioned above take it a step further than World of Darkness, I’m sure. And the thing is that to do improv and really having a fun time with roleplaying and acting, you don’t need dice, they just tend to get in the way of everyone involved. If you have decent people anyway, and you can trust them to be reasonable without having to patronise them with a nanny system like dice, which is just as restrictive as a computer game.
And thus I think that the highest form of roleplaying is freeform, or with a very light set of rules. I’m likely going to do both in Sleep is Death, some freeform, some with very light rules, maybe a bit of WoD if I ever feel like it again, or perhaps I’ll check out some of the linked instances of even more lite versions than that. I don’t know. I might even invent my own incredibly light, dynamic, freeform system. And that’s fantastic, this is exactly what Sleep is Death invites the player to do.
Sleep is Death is no different than roleplaying in an RPG IRC channel, or roleplaying in person, I realise that, of course, I totally do. And all of this is just my opinion. You could hold a freeform RPG session in person, indeed you could, and that’s great. But one thing I will always protest is that if a person is talking about D20 when they’re talking about computer RPGs, and they’re saying that D20/D&D > computer RPGs, then I’ll contest that because they’re exactly the same things, just with different mechanical parts.
09/04/2010 at 18:36 FunkyBadger says:
Wulf: you make the mistake of asuming everyone reads all of your posts before commenting on the first annoying thing in them.
You like WoD better than d20, that’s fine, but there’s no mechanical backing to your argument. The bottom line is good players are good players. Or even “actors”, dahling. (Question of fact: how many expansion “splatbooks” are there for the various incarnations of WoD? I’ve seen plenty of shelves full of them, ooh, I really need to know what level 10 Auspex does etc.)
Played plenty of enjoyable games of d20, WoD, Cyberpunk, Cthulu, Amber etc. with plenty of good players and GMs, most who play whatever game is on. Seen plenty of awful WoD, d20, Cyberpunk nerks as well. Interestingly enough, the worst players tend to stick to a small number of games, the better players are willing to experiment. (Beginner’s get a lot more leeway on this, of course but once you’ve got your feet wet there’s no excuse for not branching out).
09/04/2010 at 18:53 FunkyBadger says:
Its another common misconception that limits are bad for creativity – the truth is actuall ythe other way round, limits encourage creativity, and inventive, tight storytelling (short-stories are harder to write than novels). You get examples of this in all media, artists with complete “freedom” tend to go all to shit, c.f. any of Prince’s albums after Diamonds and Pearls or any of neal Stephenson’s or Anne Rice’s books…
08/04/2010 at 19:53 Quirk says:
We’re talking about fundamentally different types of game, surely?
The lines are blurred by the original D&D being the model for the modern computer RPG. It simulated combat extremely badly, and had comparatively little thought put into playing any bits of the game that was not a sequence of hundreds of those poor combat simulations following hard on one another’s heels. Modern computer RPGs similarly force the user into hundreds of battles in combat systems which often, frankly, look like poor relations of the things XCOM or Jagged Alliance were doing over a decade ago (or, if in real-time, Diablo). Between the battles is a drip feed of “story”, and the chance to run round people’s houses taking all their stuff.
Occasionally a computer RPG does the “story” bit well enough to be great despite the limitations; the story is compelling enough, or has enough options built into it, that it’s worth slogging through the combat to get to. However, even then, it’s not got the freedom of a modern narrativist RPG, it’s not collaborative story-telling, and it doesn’t tend to react to the player when they fill a role better or worse. And if you’re picky and have to have role-playing in your RPG, then yes, the only “real” RPGs are the second sort – unless we’re considering titles like Masq and maybe Heavy Rain.
08/04/2010 at 19:55 Wulf says:
@Quirk
Read about Sleep is Death, also read about Neverwinter Nights player modules (many of which were quite chatty and involved little combat).
Living in the present is good, living in the past is not.
That is all.
08/04/2010 at 19:55 MadTinkerer says:
Counter-COUNTER-point: Sleep Is Death.
Not to mention the fact that Interactive Fiction has been relying on the human imagination for graphics from the beginning, the Game Master mode of Neverwinter Nights, the way Mass Effect series has finally resurrected the idea of continuous epic narrative where your choices matter to the whole universe, and… well let’s face it: there’s plenty that PnP games do easily that are tougher to pull off in computer games, but enrich the medium when done well. Not to mention all the individual “RPG elements” that are sprinkled throughout the entire medium: Team Fortress 2 has classes, player inventories, special weapons, magic healing powers, wizards that cast fireball (Soldiers), sneaky rogues (spies), et cetera.
ADDITIONAL COUNTER-COUNTER POINT THAT DRIVES ME MAD: If you actually know anything about how PnP RPGs and CRPGs developed in the early days, like simply reading early Dragon Magazines, you’ll realize that there was an extreme amount of cross-pollenisation of ideas between them. This was in part because D&D was itself an extreme cross-pollenisation of ideas from various fantasy series (and a healthy dose of sci fi) and started out as an entirely “gamist” game that was originally meant to be played similar to what we now call Team Deathmatch. Dungeon Master was a term coined because the term “Referee’s Guide” made it sound like a book for a physical sport rather than a game supplement, but for years “referee” was the term. The whole Serious Roleplaying thing came a decade and a half later, in the early 90s.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is: They’re NOT really completely different things at all. the real problem is that most people don’t realize this.
08/04/2010 at 19:59 Wulf says:
I agree, and I’d also push the point that no matter what the iteration or revision, they’re all equally valid as RPGs. What is better or not is personal preference, but to say that something is objectively not something when it clearly is is foolishness.
08/04/2010 at 20:00 Wulf says:
It’s really like saying: I have a tree, your sapling is not a tree, it is a sapling and that’s completely different, and your sapling will never be and can never be a tree!
08/04/2010 at 20:08 MadTinkerer says:
That last bit got a little too incoherent so let me give you an example of what I mean: The original structure of OD&D tournament play was almost identical to what we would call “instances” of a MMORPG, but played with physical props and moderated manually by people. As I mentioned earlier, it was very team-oriented, coming just short of the idea of having one team play “the horde”. the guys managing the tournament would keep track of who succeeded at what and update the overarching game-world accordingly.
But there’s also things like what the PnP guys were writing about early computer RPGs. Ultima I had goofy sci fi elements because that was the mostly-fantasy-but-some-goofy-sci-fi-elements phase D&D was going through before the major sci fi RPGs came out and set down clear genre boundaries. But vice versa: for later versions of D&D (and other TSR games), Gygax borrowed some elements that were first introduced in CRPGs and publically thanked the makers for the ideas!
It’s not that PnP came first and is therefore best. That’s not the truth at all, and the assertion drives me crazy.
09/04/2010 at 21:25 Urthman says:
No. I played AD&D in the 80s and I played The Bard’s Tale in the 80s. I enjoyed them both, but they were no more the same thing than playing Larry Bird & Dr. J Go One on One was the same as a game of half-court basketball in my driveway.
If I’d said “Let’s play basketball!” My friends would head for the door, not the Commodore 64. And if they said “Let’s play D&D” I’d grab my rulebooks, not the Gold Box.
08/04/2010 at 20:01 Joey says:
Man, I just didn’t really think Phonogram was that great. I love themes of nostalgia, and it was an interesting universe. But overall it just left me feeling bored (Note that I only had heard half the songs/bands before reading and made a point to check them out afterword. Also, I’m a Yank).
08/04/2010 at 20:08 Joey says:
Having just played through my very first Star Wars D20 campaign (it being my first role P&P RPG experience at age 25) I can say that I very much enjoyed it and would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys CRPG games. I do think it is dumb to say one is strictly better or more real than the other. I do think it is silly to be an elitist about either side as well. I do, however, think I’ve gotten many more reproachful looks from friends, family and acquaintances when speaking of playing a P&P RPG as opposed to a CRPG. The socializing that goes along w/ P&P seems like it would deem it “healthier” than sitting home alone for hours on end playing a CRPG by yourself, but the stigma runs deep. I’m not really sure I understand why at this point either.
08/04/2010 at 20:15 Wallace says:
Now, I like computer RPGs, but I also like pen and paper RPGs.
But which is better?
There’s only one way to find out…
08/04/2010 at 20:19 Haywire says:
I just simply want to express my appreciation for editorial content from the fine fellows of this site
08/04/2010 at 20:20 user@example.com says:
A Phonogram RPG could only be more awesome if it was a Phonogram RPG written by Kieron Gillen & Jenna Moran. The sheer absurd pretentiousness of it might cause a singularity, but it would be an awesome, hilarious singularity, with little occasionally-snarky silly nanofiction in the margins.
08/04/2010 at 20:40 Dante says:
I’ve never played a PnP roleplaying game, but it seems fairly obvious that their strength lies in the idea of a human overseer who is able to respond to you in a real time, improvisational fashion. It also seems obvious that CRPGs provide something PnP cannot, the addition of art, vocalisation to visualise the narrative experience and make it a truly absorbing spectacle.
Preparedness and improvisation both have a lot to offer in a writing sense also, only the luckiest players in the world are going to have a DM who can improvise writing of the quality that companies like Bioware can produce in planned, scripted narrative for instance.
In the end I think we’ll see this distinction rendered somewhat moot, as things like the new D&D online system and Sleep is Death show PC and PnP meeting in the middle, I think eventually we’ll be seeing full scale sleep is death games, where it’s possible to tell a whole D&D style game through the lens of an PC game, with a computer assisted DM.
Of course then both sides will still argue over which is the real RPG, so it’ll probably only get worse.
08/04/2010 at 21:12 Jad says:
A lot of the argument around this is people not realizing that they do not have a monopoly on language. Language changes and different people have different definitions of shared words.
Many of the people on this website are British. I am American. When I use the word “torch” I feel that I am unambiguously referring to some flammable materiel on the end of a stick that has been lit on fire. Others may think I am talking about a metal-and-plastic device that has batteries in and shoots light out one end from a light bulb.
I’m sure you Brits would be annoyed if I argued that Americans were right because “torch as fiery thing” clearly came before “torch as battery-powered thing” and that you should all adopt “flashlight” as a separate term because clearly a word cannot grow different meanings over time. You might argue that at its base “torch = light” and I’ll shoot back and say no, “torch = fire” and we’ll go round and round never getting anywhere because we have different interpretations of the word and different contexts.
Most of us have grown up and realize that torch/flashlight, lorry/truck, etc. arguments are stupid and we just accept that people are different and that we have to be conscious of our audience at times.
RPG means somewhat different things to different people. Deal with it.
08/04/2010 at 22:01 Dreamhacker says:
It’s not a question which game system is the more REAL one. Heck, Roleplaying games DO NOT EVEN HAVE A DEFINITION EVERYONE CAN AGREE ONE.
I enjoy computer RPG’s because of what they offer in terms of imagery, motion and directed visual storytelling.
I enjoy Tabletop RPG’s because of what they offer in terms of boundless freedom, socializing with friends, acting and creating a shared story.
08/04/2010 at 22:46 Jimbo says:
Real Tennis is still better than your new fangled grass rubbish – which, I might add, is played exclusively by bounders.
08/04/2010 at 23:16 WTF says:
Brief commentary as I am tired.
@KG – Rattled a cage did I? Oh well.
Also @KG – sorry, but you are wrong. PnP RPGs > CRPGs. I, unlike you, do not have a forum in which to present my views so you win by default I guess. Hardly a conclusive proof, particularly as your argument is so full of holes (ranging from your experiences of PnP RPGS onwards)
One last point to note: I have not run a PnP RPG in over 15 years but what I did back then still reduces even the greatest CRPGs to nothing. I embrace the hope that one day I will have the same level of experience I had back then in a computer game, but I fear it will not happen for a very long time, if indeed it ever does.
Absolute last point: Those of you who think that “PnP RPGs” involve dice, paper and a rulebook have a *staggering* amount to learn.
08/04/2010 at 23:56 Wulf says:
Are you aware that that came over as incredibly elitist, snotty, and egotistical? Given that kind of presence, I don’t take you to be a reasonable person, and you haven’t convinced me that computer RPGs can’t give the same experience as pen & paper ones, and I’ve had a bit of experience too. Hell, I might even be older than you, which would be funny. But I’m more about equality than elitism.
09/04/2010 at 00:47 Stromko says:
The validity of WTF’s opinion was harmed by the fact he hasn’t played in so long. Firstly, rose-colored glasses, right? I’ll never have as much fun as I remember having with Ultima 6 and 7, Ultima: Underworld, and X-Com: UFO ( Enemy Unknown) some 15 years ago, that doesn’t mean all games nowadays are shit.
Secondly, if it’s so damned good how could you stop playing? I know it can be rather inconvenient getting together to play P&P roleplaying games, or do you just think a new GM and players couldn’t hold up to how you remember it? Do you think you’re too old to play P&P roleplaying games?
I daresay anyone that has stopped playing that long doesn’t have that high opinion an opinion of P&P roleplaying games, they just have a lot of fond memories. It’s a little weird then to say that P&P games are better than computer games, coming from that perspective.
09/04/2010 at 07:45 WTF says:
@Wulf – “elitist, snotty, and egotistical”? Oh my. Well if that’s how you feel. Doesn’t really change anything though as the 20+ players I ran games for every week still bitch to me about the fact that I no longer do so (the reason being that no one in that original group now lives anywhere near anyone else). Having run thousands of hours worth of games including 6, 12-hour, horror themed ones in which I had groups of grown men and women too afraid to leave the room to go to the bathroom, I think I know my own worth as a story teller.
As to rose tinted glasses – no doubt there is an element of that – that’s just human nature – but the reason I no longer RP has nothing to do with a lack of motivation on my part: I simply cannot find the players. While I occasionally stumble across people in various social circles that profess an interest in such things, they are never able to actually turn up and give it a go. More often though if I am ever to mention the concept of RPing to people I know I am either met with horror – “you sit and TALK in front of other people for hours?!” they cry before scurrying back behind their keyboards – or I am met with scorn and ridicule, even if said people are gamers. Computers have, in the minds of most, replaced the function of traditional RPs – they cannot see what worthwhile experience they could possibly get from sitting around with others, employing their imaginations alone that a few hours in front of Mass Effect could not provide.
Now, to attempt to counterpoint all that, I must stress that I am not saying that computerised games are incapable of ever being better than traditional RPs – they have just utterly failed to get anywhere near so far. As some one who has been frothingly passionate about computer games for over 30 years, I am desperate for the day to arrive when we have a truly free-form RP delivered on a computer system, but I am cynical that it could ever happen. The leaps we would need to make in gaming design, AI and any number of other things just seem unlikely..
So, have I convinced you that traditional RPs are better than computer ones? No, but then I am not trying to. I gave up flogging that particular equine many years ago. Computing is far easier, far more accessible and far less scary to the average recluse that inhabits the internet,so traditional RPs simply do not stand a chance, particularly in a world where any game with experience points or even the slightest choices in dialogue are, utterly bizarrely, labelled as RPGs. I shall simply sit back, enjoy the games we have now, but none-the-less pine for the games I used to run and play years ago while still holding out that tiny hope that players can be found or that a quantum leap in games authoring can take place.
09/04/2010 at 09:24 misterk says:
Good grief wtf. I am sure you were a fine gm in your day, but asserting something does not make it so. If you mean for a particular task, rpgs are better.. then yes, yes they are, as Kieron indeed admits in this very article- the power of interactivity has yet to be captured. Are there things computer games do better? Yes, and I will actually include telling a story here. While games cannot tell a truly interactive story as pen and paper does, they can still tell a story. I’ve played and ran many rp games, and while our stories have been personal and interesting, I’m not about to claim I can meet the best of another genre.
Yes, pen and paper>cprg for interactive story telling currently, and probably forever, but that doesn’t make them better. Your objective function values interactive story telling the most, and thats fine, but claiming that everyone else is wrong is more than a little silly.
08/04/2010 at 23:23 MajorManiac says:
Expertly written MrK. :)
This follows a simple pattern in human phsycology. We always run into conflict with those who are most similar to us.
Mac/PC owners, StarWars/StarTrek Fans, Tellytubbies/ In the Night Garden Fans….etc.
08/04/2010 at 23:38 Spacewalk says:
You can play D&D in a blackout, you can’t play Elder Scrolls x or whatever in a blackout. Pen and paper wins.
08/04/2010 at 23:52 Wulf says:
I have a laptop with an amazing battery, I overturn your claim with evidence to the contrary, because I can use my computer in a blackout.
Therefore they’re bloody equal.
09/04/2010 at 00:26 Spacewalk says:
Batteries aren’t forever. This is why you should never use a laptop to run your game, it will just die on you and then you’ll have to make the rest of the game up as you go along. Because computers hate humans, it’s a proven fact.
09/04/2010 at 00:39 Stromko says:
Do we really want to be searching the wastes of post-apocalyptica for laptop batteries and diesel generators just to keep our habit going? Even if we’re blasted back to the stone age, we can still get together to tell stories, make lines in the dirt, and roll colored stones around.
Though I suppose when the bombs fall we’d rather all be playing the real-life post nuclear roleplaying game, I hear the graphics suck.
08/04/2010 at 23:57 Dan says:
@KG: I liked the first chapter of Phonogram. Very good. Will buy.
09/04/2010 at 00:23 Stromko says:
The special nature of a pen & paper roleplaying game, to me, has nothing to do with the game itself. That you’re together with your friends in real life, sharing food and stories, is more important than whether or not you can tell your character to jump off a cliff.
09/04/2010 at 00:30 Stromko says:
The special nature of a pen & paper roleplaying game, to me, has nothing to do with the game itself. That you’re together with your friends in real life, sharing food and stories, is more important than whether or not you can tell your character to jump off a cliff.
That said, once you and your friends are in the same room it is much much easier to play a pen & paper roleplaying game. I had a LAN party with my D&D group once, and it was so-so compared to our usual gatherings. Not everyone had a good machine, not everyone was able to connect to the network properly, and so there weren’t many good games to play. That isn’t true for everyone, god willing if we’d had a bunch of machines to play L4D with that would have been riotously good, but, we didn’t.
There’s just something to be said for getting away from technology and relying upon pencils, papers, and human interaction from time to time. I would never give up PC games for tabletop games, tabletop games tend to be boring 90% of the time that you’re playing, but, they’re a very rich experience in whole.
09/04/2010 at 00:53 drewski says:
It was always, I think, the lack of “game” in p&p RPGs that annoyed me. I was never really into the “role playing” – much to the annoyance of the GMs I played with – but defeating the technicalities of the “game”, now that interested me.
Hence going to CRPGs where I don’t have to worry about whether or not my True Neutral elf would save the drawf or not, and whether or not I’m “playing my character properly” – I can just take whatever choice I feel like at the time, and get on with killing orcs.
09/04/2010 at 01:15 Dagda says:
First, Ron Edwards is to RPG design what Freud is to psychology- someone who’s done an admirable job of raising the visibility and (in some ways) respectability of his chosen field, while doggedly insisting on theories that mix some basic, essential insights with a whole lot of bunk. (http://dagda-mor.blogspot.com/2008/06/on-gns-theory.html has more detail if you want it,)
Second: Mr. Gillen, I don’t disagree with most of what you’ve written. As an attempt to quell the “my sub-area of interest > yours” geek squabbling, it’s an excellent piece (with a most noble goal). But your analysis of what a roleplaying games are strikes me as a tragic oversimplification, because it overlooks the one element of the experience that only a roleplaying games (in the literal sense) can have- an element that far too few game developers in any medium try to focus on (Ice Pick Lodge and Eric Chahi being two notable exceptions).
If I just want to roleplay, to participate in a narrative as a character that I or someone else invented, I can do that as a freeform exercise- no need for a bunch of rules and mechanics. If I just want to play a good game, there are board games and video games that offer better tactical challenges in a much more direct fashion. If I want that gameplay to include “rpg elements”- which is a label for the strategic gameplay of character advancement and optimization- then titles like Torchlight distill that far beyond what any pen and paper rpg has done. (http://dagda-mor.blogspot.com/2010/03/just-what-is-rpg-genre.html) And if I want to “play” in the other sense- exploring and poking at a virtual world in a way that’s not unlike a child playing with a toy- that doesn’t need to involve stopping every few minutes to shoot at some wandering mutant, nor does it require that I be a character in some deep storyline.
So what’s left, after you account for all of the above? Are rpgs just a combo platter, giving us smaller servings of those elements together in a single package? Or is there a chemistry between some of these ingredients that creates something new?
Screenwriter David Mamet tells us that good stories have drama- the quest of a hero to overcome those things which prevent him from achieving a specific, acute goal.
Game designer Raph Koster tells us that good games have fun- the rewarding sensation we derive from overcoming interesting challenges, those things which prevent us from achieving a specific. . .anyone else getting a sense of deja vu?
The unique power that’s found in the experience of playing a roleplaying game is what happens when the game is the story. When the challenges a character faces and the ends they seek begin to overlap and merge with those of the player. It’s not an easy feat to pull off, of course. Each medium is in a better position to leverage certain techniques to that end- video games can do more to make the challenges visceral, while tabletop games can give players more of a hand in determining their character’s goals (thus requiring less work to get them on board with the character’s motives).
To steal a line from a drunken Jack Sparrow: That’s what an rpg is, you know. It’s not just a story, and your character, and the levels and the xp; that’s what an rpg needs. Usually. But what an rpg is… what a role-playing game really is, is you living the story.
09/04/2010 at 01:22 Jochen Scheisse says:
This is rethorically very fit, Kieron.
However, I am still not interested in 95% of Computer RPGs because they are not the real deal. I will exclude those games that exhibit a real desire to actually try and include the narrativist side (the Fallouts with exception of 3 and Arcanum for example, or Bloodlines). However, most cRPGs don’t, and they are glorified Adventure Games with a levelling system tacked on.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy those other games. Diablo 2 is excellent entertainment, maybe the best Roguelike to ever be made. It’s still not a role playing game, just because it has min-maxing.
Kind Regards,
Scheisse
09/04/2010 at 12:52 Malibu Stacey says:
I couldn’t agree more. I won’t play most “CRPGs” for the simple fact they’re shitty games. That goes double for games which try to tack on RPG elements for no reason (e.g. Modern Warfare 1/2).
Games with great narrative are what I see as being the computer equivalent of PnP RPG’s (for examples see practically all of VALVe’s output, Bioshock, etc). Same goes for games which give you the framework of a game & allow you to fill in the narrative (e.g. S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Dwarf Fortress, most strategy/4X games). Maybe that’s just how we used to play PnP RPGs, either the DM had a story he wanted you to experience or he let you define the story as it progressed.
09/04/2010 at 01:27 Jochen Scheisse says:
PS: Release the Phonogram RPG as an Unknown Armies Mod, so it gets made faster. I want to play a fucking phonomancer.
09/04/2010 at 01:50 Trithemius says:
Truth!
09/04/2010 at 01:50 Trithemius says:
I enjoy roleplaying primarily for the narrativist stuff in it; but there are some roleplaying games that are games, and which are fulfilling of gamist priorities. I find that with computer roleplaying games so much of simulation is running in my head rather than in the game – and this often isn’t because the designer has tried to do this in a conscious way, it is because I am trying to generate something additional about the experience. The last game I played which seemed to want to create this internal simulation consciously was Morrowind… and I am not even sure that they were doing it consciously…
My WTF on this topic is wargaming. I enjoy wargaming for its gamism, but computers can make it a lot easier. However, they also can make it terrible. I cannot play a good Patrician Roman army in a wargame with an out of the box product – it relies on modders to do it. I find I have insufficient flexibility in many computer wargames – even if I love the fact that they are mechanising all the tedious die-rolls.
And finally, sometimes Kieron I greatly prefer talking with my mates in animated tones to getting blasted; way to slide in an old stereotypical comparison into the midst of an otherwse earnest consideration of a new stereotypical comparison.
TRITHEMIUS
[preferred Mass Effect to Dragon Age]
09/04/2010 at 02:07 Saul says:
Hear hear! Sleep is Death sounds amazing, and I thought many of the comments were misdirected.
09/04/2010 at 04:31 Ardoris says:
Living in a world of immense divisions, and I mean immense…I think we can safely say that computer games and P&P’s try to strive for the same overall goal…and that is to enthrall the person playing it. I think that we, as multifaceted humans, tend to desire to be something we’re not. It feels good because we know that, regardless of what will happen to this character, it’s who we want to be. In both computer and table top RPG’s, isn’t this basic principle achieved? I mean, assuming you’re using the term RPG right, it may seem silly at all that we’re dividing these two contemporary forms of role-playing. Lets just form them into one big picture.
Departing from the whole corny thing, time to release my pet peeve. I’m sick of table-top players dismissing computer games. I mean, is it just for the sake of being the devil’s advocate?
From the previous comments on this forum, and from many of my friends, it’s clear that many people play both computer RPG’s and table-top RPG’s. Because, once again, we’re striving for the same goal: to be someone else. To do something out of the ordinary. A terrible analogy is a farmer wth a cleaver staring at a chicken and a pig…the chicken says “but I’m a chicken!” and the pig says “but I’m a pig!”….the farmer replies: “regardless, you’re both for dinner.”
Told you it was a terrible analogy :)
09/04/2010 at 04:33 G Morgan says:
No.
It’s PC Gaming that fails in the ‘Gamist’ category vs. PnP RPGs, because PC RPGing is almost entirely concerned with either modelling a game system that was outdated in 1982 (D&D) or even more facile variations on the theme. Armor class? Hit points? Levels? All ‘Chainmail’ remnants of the first RPGs evolving from wargames, and all laughably crap.
With the processing power of a PC, we could have RPG systems that beggar the most nuanced and advanced tabletop RPG. We do not.
And that’s without getting into the rest of your ‘arguments’, Kieron, or the cost-to-play and cost-to-create barriers (both which massively favor the tabletop RPG, the latter of which make it difficult for PC RPGs to be experimental or artistic). Have PC RPGs become their own ‘genre’, with their own rules, official and unofficial? Sure. But it’s an increasingly stunted genre, and one that was created in emulation of PnP RPGs.
09/04/2010 at 06:51 the_fanciest_of_pants says:
As an avid consumer of both, I find it weird that this is even a common enough statement that it needs to be argued down so thoroughly. Clearly the two mediums are very different.
I, personally have never said “Boy, why can’t PC rpg’s be more like P&P ones?” but I have expressed joy at PC rpg’s or games of any genre where the boundaries/tactics/possibilities in general are as broad as possible.
I get a real thrill out of solving a problem in a distinct way, a way that perhaps has never happened or been considered before. I guess that’s why my interest is immediately piqued when I hear something is “open-world”.
I also love strictly linear PC rpg’s, and would hate to play them in a P&P format; there’s nothing more boring then a linear story being shoved down your throat by an inflexible DM, but some of my fondest gaming memories involve getting whisked along with the story in say, Baldur’s gate II or Planescape, even non-rpg’s like the half-life games and of course countless others.
Maybe I’m just not one these elitist p&p snobs you’re writing about. I have just as many anecdotes to tell about computer-games as I do p&p based ones, and I’d be hard pressed to give either up.
09/04/2010 at 06:55 etho says:
Counter-Counterpoint: If CRPG’s could do all the things tabletop RPG’s could do, they would be better in all ways, rather than just some.
I agree that tabletop RPGs and CRPGs need to learn to coexist peacefully. Both are great, and both are excellent at doing a different set of things. Neither one is “better” than the other, any more than reading is “better” than writing. And that’s the way I see it, basically. Tabletop RPGs are a creative, cooperative thing where you are helping tell the story. With CRPGs, the story is being told to you. But neither one is more “real” than the other. Or it’s like the differences between cooking a delicious meal vs. getting a delicious meal in a restaurant. The process of acquiring the meal is different, and you may prefer one to the other, which is OK. But at the end of the day, the important thing is, you get a delicious meal.
I’m hungry.
09/04/2010 at 08:06 Meatloaf says:
I ran across a PnP RPG recently that I was immediately annoyed by. However, with a bit of consideration, I realized that it was a brilliant system for those folks who love themselves some narrative – but aren’t so big on overly-complex simulations or exploitable systems that encourage min-maxing and the sort. It’s called The Window, and it’s lovely. Very minimal ruleset., easy to learn, available online for no moneys. Check it out.
http://www.mimgames.com/window/rules/
09/04/2010 at 09:02 john says:
Generally the writing on this site is pretty good, but the sneering arrogance of some of the writing here is repellent;
“nasty conservative tendencies”
“without idea of some virtues being intrinsically better than the other”
Just because you have leftist moral relativist political views it doesn’t follow that you can simply dismiss other points of view simply by expalining that they are “conservative” or contain some form of positivism, thus excusing you from actually engaging with them.
“And if you have no interest in what computer RPGs can do and insist on calling pen and paper the “real” RPGs, you’re the sightless man saying that no-one should care about colours. And just as blind.”
That’s funny, so I guess when it suits you that whole “no one way is the right way” “no one view is the right one” crap is quietly defenestrated and suddenly you’re just right and everyone who disagrees is just wrong?
Pathetic
09/04/2010 at 11:45 bill says:
er, what? Your post makes no sense. It’s a rant about nothing.
Worse than that, it’s a rant about nothing because you somehow got offended by a post about P&P rpgs and CRPGs both being good. *brain melts*
09/04/2010 at 16:45 WTF says:
@Bill
No John’s post makes perfect sense and it was something that concerned me greatly about Kieron’s writing. He is prone to do this from time to time on given subjects and it is always disappointing when he stoops to that level.
09/04/2010 at 18:43 FunkyBadger says:
Its the New New New New Games Journalism.
09/04/2010 at 10:09 wiper says:
Homer is /totally/ more real than Aeschylus (apart from the lack of any concrete historical evidence of the former, of course). Who’s way realer than Chariton (who, in turn, makes Cervantes seem positively fake).
Bloody science graduates don’t know shit ’bout livin’ in the Real World of literary history!
09/04/2010 at 11:02 The Sombrero Kid says:
As a medium of expression, a board game is inferior to a computer game because there’s nothing a board game can do mechanically that a computer game can not, that fact that those games don’t exist is the only reason the board game industry exists at all.
The physicality of board games is to the game industry what record hiss is to the music industry, sure some people who’ve grown up with it prefer it because the nostalgic value of it but really it’s a barrier to enjoyment and if computer games wanted to add it back in they could much like if people wanted to add hiss to their mp3s they could do that.
09/04/2010 at 11:37 bill says:
P&P RPGs aren’t really board games, but I’m not sure i’d agree even if they were. Board games are a focus of a different sort of social activity from what you usually find in computer games. Most fundamentally, in video games everyone is staring at the screen, in board games they’re staring at each other.
09/04/2010 at 11:42 The Sombrero Kid says:
depends on the game.
09/04/2010 at 11:31 bill says:
Reading the Penny Arcade Diaries has shown the way that a good GM, who uses the rules purely as an optional tool to create a good story/adventure, can create some really amazing experiences.
Personally I was never a big P&P roleplayer, though I did like reading the source books and thinking up adventures, but i rarely used them as I didn’t have anyone to play them with. (and games with other teens tended to just be attempts to get the best loot and level up quickly – just like CRPGs).
For me, I can’t say CRPGs have ever been my favorite genre, mostly because I find them all far too confining. Ever since I played my first CRPG I’ve dreamed of a time when there are decent AI gamesmasters, and their job is to react to the player’s actions logically and to create an adventure. Essentially a REAL sandbox RPG.
Recent advances in physics and lighting have brought this slightly closer, but basically the CRPGs we’re playing now are the same as the CRPGs we were playing in EGA…. there is a (mostly) linear story (broken into lots of linear quests) and the computer works out the stats, while we (mostly) fight.
I can’t help but remember the richness of Warhammer City, where every street, shop, shop clerk and location had numerous story possibilities. Instead of lots of quests, there were lots of facts, motivations and scenarios, and the DM responded to however the players approached them. The ONLY way I can ever imagine a CRPG reaching that level is to have decent AI GMs. (unless, like Sleep is Death, everything is hand crafted by a real GM on the fly – but I can’t see that working. )
At this point MMOs might become worth playing as well. What WOULD be really interesting would be getting a load of P&P roleplayers to design an MMO.
09/04/2010 at 16:47 Del says:
I can already see the dices rolling.. :D
09/04/2010 at 16:32 Del says:
Can any of the today’s RPG’s really be even considered as “RPG”?
Sure.. We have roles that we play, and we have a game to play.. But honestly, what about the whole story these days? I keep seeing more and more good “Games” but there’s definetly no RP element in them anymore, even if they claim to be RPG’s..
Let’s take the allmighty WoW as an example.. It claims to be MMORPG right? Well honestly, is there ANY backstory to YOUR character other than how much you have played, have you completed all the quests you should have and how long it took for you to grind that gear you have now? That’s not roleplaying to me atleast, even if everyone talks about the game as a MMORPG..
Sure, there was some post stating that “if he wished his character to jump off a cliff, he could do that”, and it was counter argued that maybe the jumping off the cliff wouldn’t fit the character background. But honestly.. WHAT FUCKING BACKGROUND? Is there such thing anymore to the RPG games? Yes there is few, for example.. Mass Effect has a storyline behind the character BUT, you are always forced to play Commander Shepard, no matter what.. What about the other characters, why can’t you play any of them and make them to change the way the story goes?
Sure it might be quite messy pile of pretold adventures we are getting these days, but honestly where is the actual RP element today, the fact that you REALLY can effect how the story goes? Or what has happened to your character in past and what might happen to it in future with it’s share of random events on the way which might drastically change the gameplay everytime you start another game.. Isn’t that what the D&D was originally all about? You never know what will be happening, but you still have proper control over the situations. Bring that to some RPG game, and consider me hooked.
09/04/2010 at 18:02 Yanko says:
Funny thing that no one remembers Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption and it’s multiplayer-with-DM mode – which was really really cool but few people had interest in it.
And yeah, obviously Sleep is Death is a step onto pen&paper (although limited to 2 players).
Anyhoo, biggest thing about p&p: it has literally no limits (as the DM can simply say “ok, fuck the rulebook” at any time he wishes) and the social interaction is a big big thing, it’s actually the coolest thing about p&p.
But fighting over the naming is just plain waste of time. It’s like those situations where 2 completely different things have the same word for them (according to master google, it’s called “polysemy”). And they are, in fact, two completely different things, computer RPGs and pen & paper RPGs, even having similar features. You can always prefer one to the other, or you can simply have fun with both kinds, and be way happier than extremists.
09/04/2010 at 19:01 apa says:
What IS common between CRPGs and tabletop is that both worlds have the same discussion going: games as art. At least in the nordic/scandinavian scene there are examples which are quite far from the traditional D&D roots. Most traditional players won’t probably even consider those real RPGs :) (“what? no dice? no levels?! where’s the GAME?”)
Also, I’d like to know if anyone has played anything with the Wushu ruleset and how did it work out?
09/04/2010 at 22:09 Justin Alexander says:
To sum up–
CRPGs have far better graphics than tabletop games. They can also offer meaningful solo play and, thus, an on-demand experience.
TRPGs offer limitless flexibility, creativity, and the potential for true player collaboration in the creative process.
Both forms have their advantages.
09/04/2010 at 22:15 Bart Stewart says:
I like a bit of cheek in my reporting on games and gamers. Happily, RPS has provided plenty of that, and usually aims it where it’s most deserved.
But this polemic isn’t cheeky or even snarky; it’s just plain unnecessary, and in two ways.
Firstly, berating people tends not to be an effective form of persuasion. If you’re sure you’re right, you don’t need insults; facts and logic should be sufficient to make your case.
And secondly, it’s wrong.
Not entirely wrong, no. Of course there are ways in which CRPGs still resemble their ancestor tabletop RPGs (TRPGs for short). Of course both of these forms of gameplay feature some amount of interactive story and world-building and action and rules-following, which distinguishes them from other kinds of games. “Real” roleplaying is possible in both forms of RPG.
But it’s very wrong to imply that there are no real and meaningful differences between these two forms of RPG, which people are free to consider “better” or “worse” depending on their innate playstyle preferences.
Bringing up Ron Edwards’s original GNS model was a step in the right direction for this discussion. That model doesn’t just describe gamestuff — it’s a model of what gamers want from the games they play. In other words, it’s a playstyles model, like the Bartle Types or Nicole Lazzaro’s “emotional” gameplay preferences.
Assessing TRPGs and CRPGs using that model makes the differences between them clear: tabletop RPGs were generally balanced across the spectrum of playstyles, while CRPGs — lacking the human DM — have become highly unbalanced in being about rules-based mechanics over everything else because computers are good at that and poor at simulating and story-telling.
The awfulness of computers at generating stories as good as a human GM can provide is obvious, but a word about simulation is in order. “Simulation” is not just about physics. It’s not just — or even primarily — about modeling low-level behaviors like parabolic motion of moving objects in a gravity field. Simulation in an RPG is about the world. Specifically, and as other commenters here have pointed out, it’s about making all the pieces of the gameworld fit together in a logically and emotionally coherent way. The immersiveness we feel in a good simulation isn’t the product of any nerdish obsession with implementing the proper equation for angular momentum or what-have-you. Immersiveness comes from consciously designing all the core systems of the gameworld — physics, cartography, economics, history, social interaction, art and audio, storytelling — to function smoothly together as a consistent high-level system that accomplishes the designer’s overall goals for that gameworld.
Which means that simulation, like narrative, is a game activity at which computer-mediated RPGs remain abysmally bad. Compensating for this by emphasizing rules-based mechanics doesn’t make these games not-fun. A good CRPG, whether single-player or MMORPG, absolutely can be fun to play. But they are — because there is no human who is actively providing enjoyable narrative or simulationist support to every group of characters — primarily fun for the people who inherently prefer action-oriented and rules-based play.
In other words, gamers who prefer an Achiever/Gamist kind of fun quite naturally find today’s CRPGs/MMORPGs congenial because those DM-less, DikuMUD-inspired games naturally emphasize the rules-based, numbers-driven play that computers are capable of being programmed to enforce. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But what about the rest of us gamers? If it’s OK for Achievers/Gamists to prefer CRPGs, why is it wrong for Explorer/Simulationists and Socializer/Narrativists to prefer TRPGs, and to say so?
For those of us for whom “fun” is primarily a function of simulation-immersiveness, or of engaging stories featuring interesting characters, CRPGs are mostly a disappointment. And that’s even more true for those of us fortunate enough to have played tabletop RPGs like D&D and Paranoia and Traveller for many years with creative and perceptive gamemasters.
This is why “Sleep Is Death” was so immediately fascinating for people who think that CRPGs lack depth compared to TRPGs: bringing the human world-builder and storyteller into one of today’s tremendously good action/rules-driven CRPGs/MMORPGs could make those games much better, perhaps even better than the old tabletop games. How cool would it be to have all the storytelling and simulationist power of a tabletop RPG while still enjoying the benefits of letting the computer enforce all the myriad gamerules?
Bottom line: people are wired differently, and enjoy different forms of play. Tabletop RPGs are not “better” on an absolute scale than CRPGs/MMORPGs… but they remain relatively more fun than today’s computer-based RPGs for the people whose internal wiring leads them to enjoy worldiness and storytelling as much as or more than action or rules-following.
Why beat up on those folks, who are our fellow gamers? Someone who asserts an absolute supremacy for the form of RPG they personally prefer is wrong, but surely we can do better than to flay them for confusing the personal with the universal.
09/04/2010 at 23:37 Justin Alexander says:
I find people who are incapable of intuiting the meaning of the word “realism” in this sense to be intolerable pedants of the worst kind. Even referring to them as “pedants” is too kind, since an actual pedant would be familiar with the definitions of the word which apply here.
(1) All fantasy takes reality and applies magic. Whether either magic or some other form of the supernatural is not altering reality, there is also an expectation that it’s rules will apply.
(2) If you prefer, you can replace the word “realism” in this context with the word “verisimilitude” and then shut the fuck up. You are not being clever. You are not making a positive contribution to the conversation. You are merely being an annoying and disruptive troll.
When Superman flies we have no objection because Superman’s ability to fly is consistent with the rules of the fictional universe in which he exists. If Lois Lane or Perry White were to suddenly leap into the air and start flying as well, we would expect some explanation for why these normal human beings were no longer behaving like normal human beings.
If this concept is too difficult for you, remedial courses are available upon request.
10/04/2010 at 01:04 OldRat says:
Indeed. The discussion about this usually uses the terms internal and external realism. Internal realism is how the setting works. Simple as that. The setting’s realism. External realism is, simply put, our world’s realism. Internal realism is based on external realism, and only differs where noted, not otherwise.
For example, the oft-cited example of “There’s dragons, stop bickering about realism” doesn’t work, because the existence of dragons is part of the setting’s internal realism. But that in itself doesn’t mean any character can now start jumping fifty feet in the air and shooting laser bolts out of their eyes. The dragon’s existence does not in itself compromise all other similarities with external realism. Same with magic: unless the magic actually works in a way that allows it, and is being applied in some way, then magic cannot be used to explain why a character just jumped fifty meters or breathed fire.
Or, say, you have a scifi setting with nanomachines. Unless the character actually applies those nanomachines and gets the result they’re supposed to create (or at the very least aknowledges that they’re malfunctioning and doing things they’re not supposed to do), he cannot simply go “NANOMACHINES!” and do whatever.
Fantasy and whatnot still follows logic and realism. Both are altered, but neither should ever be broken. Because that’s retarded.
Consistency is the key. The setting needs to be consistent in what is allowed by the internal realism and what is not. If there’s no consistency, it’s impossible for the player or the reader or whatever to be involved or immersed in any way. If no action results in any logical results, and if nothing seems to follow any logic, then what the hell is the point?
So no. Magic does not make fantasy or tabletop games or whatnot unrealistic. It simply alters the reality. If the realism is utterly broken and kicked in the face until it vomits shattered teeth, then you have a point. Otherwise no.
10/04/2010 at 01:06 OldRat says:
And of course I was supposed to reply to Justin Alexander, d’oh.
10/04/2010 at 02:49 Geekoid says:
Real role playing is acting~
Seriously, I though this attitude died a decade ago.
As an aging gamers* I find that my group has just gotten tt he point where we don’t tolerate drama or smelly people. If someone ahs drama in their life, they respectfully keep it from the game, or take it elsewhere. Smally people we wold jsut say ‘Gaming not gamey’
DO say ‘real’ is ludicrous in a fantasy game is to ne intentionally myopic to what they mean. REal as in authentic, not real as in reproduces reality.
Theya re different things, so there really isn’t a comparison.
*Put my dice down, you damn kids!
10/04/2010 at 17:26 manveruppd says:
Wow, this debate has really taken on a life of its own! I gave up reading when i found myself reading two comments which were vehemently disagreeing with each other and realised that I agreed with both of them. :)
I’m only commenting to make a minor point in favour of CRPGs. I’ve both led and played in plenty of pnp RPGs, and believe that the most important ingredient for a fun game is to have a great GM. There’s loads of other stuff that goes into it, but the GM is the lynchpin. My line of thinking is, how many of us would have been lucky enough to have played an RPG with a GM as good as, say, Chris Avellone, were it not for CRPGs? Some people are just too good for an audience of just 6, and their talents as a GM shine through even in a more restrictive medium. :)
10/04/2010 at 20:29 Ben says:
Playing a “pencil and paper” RPG requires you to be a better, uh, class of person than a CRPG .
“Pencil and paper” or “desktop” roleplaying – whatever you want to call it to minimise your own pain and lack – needs imagination and quick wits and improv theatre skills if it’s going to work out. The tendency to disparage trad RPGs is directly related to the fact that they have barriers to entry, and it is easier to take against them than it is to acquire the necessary skills.
10/04/2010 at 21:03 jalf says:
I call bullshit on that. Playing a pen and paper RPG doesn’t require anything more complex than the ability to subtract from your hitpoints when you get hit.
Of course, for *good* PnP RPG experiences, you need to be a somewhat social person, you need to be creative, you need to be interested in the game and so on.
Just like you need a lot of things in order to have a *good* computer RPG experience. (ability to use a mouse, willingness to read text/listen to fluff, reflexes in some cases, patience in others, an understanding of the combat system and so on.
Seriously, it’s very few people I’ve formed negative opinions of, but several of the top spots are occupied by PnP RPG’ers. (in one case formed *because* we tried to play DnD with him. He was the only one who usually played PnP games, he knew the rules, he DM’ed… And he threw a tantrum within the first 30 seconds. Never picked it up again. Everyone else were positive, excited and creative. He was just a dick.
So please, don’t tell me people who play PnP RPG’s are by definition a “better class of person”. Sometimes, they’re just so deranged and antisocial that they don’t *care* if they’re bad at it.
But hey, if your elitism makes you sleep better at night….
10/04/2010 at 21:43 Wulf says:
I’m with jalf, but I’m going to call double-ultra-mega-bullshit.
The reason for this is that the “seasoned” roleplayers (usually the D20ers) aren’t actually very good at all, from what I’ve seen. This includes RL experiences, online in IRC, and reading scripts from sessions, and what I get is that they’re very unimaginative. I usually get better experiences if I can get the attention of an eccentric, bombastic person who doesn’t roleplay, they can be anything from a halfwit to a bum, and I’ll get better results with them in regards to theatrical acting, imagination, and improv than I would from a seasoned player.
Why? The answer should be obvious to anyone who’s ever talked to an elitist, toffish D20er: They’re nerds. They’re not actors, they’re nerds. They’re not creative, they’re nerds. They’re not innovative, they don’t do improv, they’re nerds. And they can’t think outside of the rules that their game has imposed on them, they can never really hit a DM with a scenario that the DM would have to struggle to get out of. This is why DMs are usually such evil bastards, because they know their players aren’t clever enough to get out of the scenarios they put them in, they can rule and break them.
What do I get from an eccentric, slightly crazy type who doesn’t normally roleplay?: philosophy, unusual scenarios, different approaches that the rules can barely handle, incredible bouts of creativity, and new approaches that keep me on my toes.
What do I get from a seasoned roleplayer?: pretty much a formulaic game, because they know the rules and they stick to them, and they’re more like MMORPG players than anyone could ever expect.
What do you think matters to a D20 player more? The chance to act out a particularly poignant scene, or a an enchanted +2 longsword? If you guessed the latter, you’d be correct, because that’s exactly the experience I have with them. Where their elitism comes from, or their delusions of actually being able to act I’ll never know. All they want is to kill the Dragon for the better loot. Truth be told, I had better experiences with gamers in Neverwinter Nights multiplayer campaigns than I did with seasoned roleplayers. They’d apologise for not understanding the rules too often, but they shouldn’t have, they were amazing and the things they brought to the table were just joyously unexpected.
And that’s the thing with fresh blood, when you have someone that knows the game very well, they know what they want, they get stuck in the same formulaic quests, they level up their characters, and it becomes no different than a game. In fact, I think the barrier of entry for D20 is actually a hell of a lot lower than it was for Neverwinter Nights, because when you had an intelligent, creative, ecccentric gamer there, they raised the bar really high, and they did things that would just make the minds (and pencils) of the “seasoned” roleplayer snap in two.
No, they might not be playing exactly by the rules, they might not be behaviourally conditioned to do exactly what you think they will, but that’s what makes them all the more interesting, they’re wild and untamed, and a lot of fun. If something they did really added to the story and made things more fun for everyone involved, who gives a shit if it bends the rules a bit? But a so-called seasoned roleplayer can’t bend the rules, because that’s unimaginable.
This is all anecdotal, but these are my personal experiences. There are no ‘barriers’ to pen & paper except for an inferiority complex of the elitist players involved.
10/04/2010 at 21:54 Wulf says:
Forgot to mention…
@jalf
I know exactly why that DM threw a tantrum: Usually D20 players are incredibly weak-willed, formulaic, loot-and-level obsessed players who simply obey the DM, because the DM is the DM, and usually the DM has fun fucking around with them. This is a D20 ‘tradition’. However, if the DM is dealing with creative, non-uniform, inventive minds that can come up with solutions to the problems the DM poses them with, they’ll throw a wobbly.
The thing is, the DM is very, very set on telling the story he wants to tell and won’t allow anything or anyone to reshape it in any way. This has been my observation with every seasoned D20 DM, it’s pretty much a global thing. I don’t like that. If I tell a story, I want to tell it collaboratively with my players, I wnat to involve them, and if I’m on the other end of things then I want to be involved. I guess I’m just not of a high enough ‘class’ to have the kind of smooth and empty mind that’s required to just obey the DM.
Yeah, I have a huge beef with so-called seasoned D20 roleplayers, but only because they’re some of the worst and some of the most rigid I’ve ever come across, who all seem to think of the rulebook as God.
10/04/2010 at 21:57 Wulf says:
Addendum.
Okay, I just wanted to add a bottom line to this, then I’m done. It basically all sums up to: I’d rather have a player who wants to be a talking rock, a 900 year old Dragon, a motorbike possessed by the spirit of its rider (whose ghostly visage shows whenever it’s in motion), or a being of consciousness summoned up from the dreams of others rather than just yet another bloody formulaic human paladin.
11/04/2010 at 18:41 dethgar says:
Ugh, I think it my malcontent and utter hatred for human beings(the ones I know personally) that prevents me from enjoying P&P/Tabletop RPG’s. The same goes for MMORPG’s, though the ignore function usually works well, unlike in real life where they continue to babble on or argue about some minor detail that no one cares about, but must start and win an argument to prove their alpha intelligence. People in general ruin life.
11/04/2010 at 18:44 dethgar says:
It’s*
See, the person that designed this un-editable and unpredictable comment system proves part of my point.
11/04/2010 at 23:10 Miko says:
It’d be nice if the term ‘RPG’ had never been misused to describe a computer game in the first place. Computer RPGs aren’t ‘real’ RPGs because.. well, they’re not role-playing games. And that’s that. I love CRPGs but they could just as well be called Not RPGs.
It’s a bit similar to Beyonce, TLC, et al going by “R&B” in the 90s, as if they were the Rolling Stones or someone, when they were actually in an entirely different genre that happened to have almost the same name.
12/04/2010 at 06:32 Anonymousity says:
@Karacan To me it comes down to choice and consequence, I don’t necessarily have to be able to do anything I want at any given moment, but it’s essential that I have some effect on how the plot rolls out and how certain objectives are completed. Taking that in mind I understand the limitations of computers, so while to me grappling hooking and climbing up through that open window might seem easier than stealing the key to the magical door from the harbour master, it’s not so easy to do with a computer game.
30/05/2010 at 12:00 ente says:
muahahhaha….
whatever you all said, I guess you all don’t see yet the most realistic game on the planet, right?
if so, you maybe have to take a look at here
30/05/2010 at 14:23 Spinks says:
Heh, coming in at the end here.
I’ve come to think that CRPGs and pen and paper RPGs just have different definitions of what it really means to play a role. If you look at an MMO for example, playing a tank or healer or dps is mostly about combat and what skills your character has available. Computer games, for better or worse, have focussed HARD on combat and they provide a really fast paced, exciting and immersive combat experience. Computer games don’t always give players much choice of roles – sandbox games come closest to just letting you work something out over time. But the gameplay does enable you to genuinely /play/ a role.
Playing a cleric (for example) in a D&D game would also involve some improv acting, and although it’ll affect what your character does in combat, there’s a lot more emphasis on what it does out of combat also. As well as what sort of person that character is — the rest depends a lot on the GM and other players but could also include cutthroat church politics, people from that character’s background dropping by to interact, et al. RPGs also don’t always give players much choice of roles, a GM will often say ‘I want to tell a story about X, so please make characters that would fit in with that.’ That’s no different from something like Alpha Protocol, except that you can negotiate your character with the GM until you get something very tailored to your preferences that you both can work with. This is more the traditional /role playing/.
Does that make sense?
05/08/2010 at 21:49 josh says:
I will end this debate once and for all!!!
The REAL RPG is a Rocket Propelled Grenade the military uses!
;)
On topic, i also like and play both. Or all three, whatever variety enumeration there may truly be. PC RPG, Console RPG, PnP RPG, Tabletop Wargame with RPG elements, whathaveyou…
I have NEVER played PnP D&D, Gurps, Palladium, anything!!! Didn’t have the money, and my parents worried about them when i was young, so…. I made my own ;)
I think, if there were a debate of real/unreal, it wouldn’t be across a clearcut line such as PnP/computer, but rather concerning what constitutes as a Role Playing Game. The age old debate of whether or not Zelda is an RPG, or Mario, or Monopoly, or….
I was thinking, Role Playing is obviously important, and if you are playing, then it being a game goes without saying. This simplistic view is what leads to the dissagreement about such games as Zelda and Mario. Zelda… i’ve seen plenty of debates on that one to know not to touch it, but Mario is more easily defined i think.
There seems to be a specific formula that people judge by, requirements for a game to be an RPG.
Classes, Races, Powers, Abilities, Vast array of weaponry and items, characters with defining characteristics that make them unique and separate from the player (thus the need for the player to role play), some form of growth or experience in order for characters to improve and become stronger/more special, and a story or motivation for action within the imagined game world.
I’m sure i’ve glossed over plenty.
Mario has the array of items, unique abilities, is unique from the player, and has motivation within the game world and usually has a goal driven plot, if not a story. But Mario doesn’t get stronger, though the player may become more skilled.
So this leads me to believe there is another important element to RPG’s, the character attributes. These determine the Character skill, which helps separate the Character from the Player, requiring the player to work within the means and strengths of the Character, instead of the players means and strength.
This is what separates, in my mind, Mario and Monopoly from the “Real” RPG’s. Mario and Monopoly rely completely on the Player’s skill. So does Zelda for that matter, even Zelda II which is considered by some to be the only true RPG of the series.
The problem with all this is that there have been, over the years, RPG developers who have tried to create games that vary from the typical formula. If they leave out something we view as important to the definition of what an RPG is, is it still an RPG? That might depend on what gets left out, or it might not.
Is a game that requires and involves no role playing whatsoever still an RPG if it has all the other elements of one? (i would be tempted to say no). And is an event an RPG if it involves role playing and nothing else? (i would say no, that is called acting/theatre).
Here’s a question, do you consider FF Tactics to be an RPG? Someone mentioned Final Fantasy before, so i bring it up now. In the case of your typical, enumerated FF games there is some amount of role playing involved, but very little. In FF Tactics there is even less than normal (i’ve not played FFT Advance so i cannot speak as to its merit on this matter). When i play these games, i relate it to reading a choose your own path adventure book. The paths are set, you get to pick them, but there is really only one way through successfully to the happy ending. There are characters, they are separated from the player, they have attributes for the player to rely upon, but they are treated more as characters in a book, not characters that you have complete control over. We see them develop, grow, become strong, have emotions, interact with each other, live and die. We feel for them, we are connected to them emotionally, but ultimately, we aren’t in their shoes nearly as much as on PnP or even MMORPG’s. The characters sort of happen to us, instead of the other way around.
To me this was most apparent in the FFT game, where the majority of the game was tactical maneuver, with short, sometimes lengthy cutscenes in which i just sat back and watched the story unfold, given no decision to make that affected the development of the plot. Perhaps that is an aspect of the player, to not see this as role playing, and not an aspect of the game, in which case there have been plenty of games i’ve played that were role playing games in which i did not role play when given the opportunity. A design flaw, or a player flaw? both?
I’m not going to say that makes these not “real” RPG’s, but perhaps less of one. Not weaker, just less.
Touching briefly on MMO’s, even though their style of role playing is mostly through combat classes, you still have the freedom of choosing the character you play, the people you play with, and the quests you go on. That’s more than what you get in solo RPG’s, and some PnP RPG’s, depending on who’s running.
And as a final note, i once again defer to the military for the true definition of RPG. O.-
Peace dudes and (knowing this hobby, hopefully some) dudettes.
God bless.
05/08/2010 at 23:38 josh says:
DISCLAIMER:
If anything i said was wildly off topic, rambling, nonsensical, or offensive, i apologize.
My defense is having only slept 2 hours in the past 24.