Quote from: Insufficient Metal;459000"Liar Assault: The Destruction of Kevin Siembieda."

I see what you did there... :rolleyes:


RPGPundit

Quote from: Nicephorus;459429...they've really given up a key part of what makes roleplaying different from boardgames and computer games.

I disagree strongly with the equating of board games to computer games.  A pure board game (such as, for example, the beautiful and fun co-operative Ghost Stories) is an entirely different experience from an online computer game, and it frustrates me that role playing games that increase their board game elements (as 4e always has and continues to do) are consistently talked about as though they must have computer game elements, with the unspoken assumption being that computer games and tabletop role playing games are the only two categories worth talking about.

It is possible to give up everything that makes roleplaying different from board games (Wrath of Ashardalon) without giving up many of the key parts that make all tabletop games different from computer games.

There is nothing innate about boardgames that make them impossible to replicate via computer.  Which is why there's barely any such thing as a hex-and-chit wargame anymore.  

Also, people aren't calling 4e out for having computer game elements because they've somehow confused them with boardgame elements, they're calling 4e out because it has computer game elements.

4e is based on nothing so much as MMO gameplay.

I would submit, first of all, the board as something innate about board games that cannot be replicated by a computer.  Also, the table.  Anyone who has tried playing real role playing games online knows the difference the physical table itself can make.

It is true that tactical computer games are much more popular than tactical hex and chit board games, but if your thesis is that board games have all become obsolete, you will have to do better than that.

4e is competing directly with WoW and trying to incorporate elements of WoW to the extent possible, but in so doing it has become more like a board game, not more like a computer game.  Figures, tiles, cards, and even the emphasis on the square units of distance are all common board game elements not found in most modern computer games.

I know of no boardgame whose actual mechanics are unreplicable by a computer.

I'm not talking about you wanting to hang out with your buddies, or liking the feel of the dice between your fingers, I'm talking about actual mechanics.

They don't exist.  And that's why the boardgame market outside the mainstream is a boutique industry, because it's not actually needed to play the game.  

There is nothing inherent to boardgames that actually REQUIRES the social or physical artifacts of play.  RPGs require other people to play well, because they are a game of limitless imagination, that's what makes them special, makes them interesting.  Boardgames are an exercise in responding to preconfigured rules, something that a computer can enforce just as well as a person.

I think if WotC is really smart they'd embrace this competitive strain and go Realm v. Realm play, a la Dark Ages of Camelot or something. By kicking in cultural/terrain loyalty and intraplayer competition, they could generate mucho dinero off of the player frictions. They talk as if their arena optimized builds matter, so might as well go the whole way and play a living campaign of simulated "gang wars." It'd be like harnessing nerd rage for its energy generation potential!, except it's just for the money.

Who knows, that's probably their plan right now. It's just this is the first test phase of a greater master plan. *cough* Well, that might be expecting too much, perhaps.

Quote from: Glazer;458862What interest me most is (bearing in mind the current thread on storygames): if you take part in a Lair Assault session, are you role-playing, or doing something else?

I think the main difficulty here is that RPGs arose as a form of wargame, and this appears (from the somewhat vague description) to be slipping back toward a single-figure-per-player wargame.

That does not necessarily mean a sudden absence of role playing. A wargame can involve role playing!

There's a little something extra in a scenario that involves activities besides combat. It could be enough to give many AD&D tournament modules a "not just a wargame" appeal. Probably the original Napoleonic Braunstein scenario would also get billed as a "role playing game" today.

Many games, especially live-action ones -- mysteries being popular with a more "mainstream" demographic -- are in no danger of getting labeled as wargames because they lack the bellicose aspect.

However, I think it was in the campaign mode that the new form really unfurled its colors. An afternoon of gladiatorial contests may be a mere wargame, but developing a gladiator's capabilities and career over the long run brings out a new emphasis on the character.

Quote from: Esgaldil;459803I disagree strongly with the equating of board games to computer games.  

J Arcane pretty much covered it but I wasn't saying that boardgames and computer games were equivalent.  Rather, they share the common feature that they make use of solid, nearly unbreakable rules.  The beauty and difficulty of rpgs is that they can have fuzzy rules.  You can put yourself in your character's position and think in the moment, creatively thinking up a new solution.  In boardgames and computer games, you are limited to working within the predefined set of options.  By focusing mainly on builds in their adventure designs, recent incarnations of D&D downplay the unique aspect of rpgs.

The mechanics of a board game can be simulated by a computer, but not replicated.  The mechanics of card games, role playing games (given Skype etc.), athletic games, or dice games can all be simulated by a computer, but that does not make them equivalent to computer games.  As for authentic board games being a boutique industry, the same can be said of role playing games.  MtG is much easier than most board games to simulate on a computer, and physical MtG play is a larger industry than all role playing games combined.

Board games require other people to the exact same extent that RPGs require other people, and meeting people face to face is no more necessary in an RPG these days than it is in any other game.  The human interaction in a game such as Chess or Diplomacy is as necessary, rewarding, and open-ended as the human interaction in any RPG, despite the fixed nature of the rules (Don't be fooled by the silence of chess players - the game itself is a language).  Benoist's statement is as true of any game as it is of any role playing game - the game is not the rules, the rules are not the game.

Except for the part where that's not actually true and all and has nothing to do with what I said.

RPGs are a freeform experience.  They are mutable, precisely by nature of their role as an imagination space.  What I can imagine and make happen in an RPG is limited only by my imagination and the what the GM and the other players allow to happen in that space.  The possibilities are effectively infinite, which is why no computer can ever truly replicated them, at least until such time as we program the first sentient AI.  

Boardgames are not.  You play a boardgame by the rules, rules everyone agrees to and follows, because the whole point of the exercise is thinking within those rules, and strategizing against the other players.  But because the rules are finite, those rules can be simulated by computer easily, without requiring the physical artifacts of a board or dice or cards.  Chess is exactly the same game whether my friends and I play it on a physical board, or on an app on my iPad.  

As long as I am playing Chess with another person, the experience will be exactly the same whether I use a board to do it, or a computer.  And even against a computer, the challenge is no less real.  Serious chess players practice against a computer all the time, and software is available that is capable of beating even the best masters, because like almost all boardgames, the number of possible moves is finite, and thus easy to master by computer given time and processing power.

But even playing RPGs with another person using a game like NWN, is a fundamentally different experience, because I am limited in so many ways by the nature of computer interfaces, in ways that no tabletop or IRC session ever would be.  Even virtual tabletops like Fantasy Grounds or the like can get in the way, when there just isn't the right piece or the right premade map to fit what I or the players are imagining.  

Because imagination is missing.  Imagination is the fundamental element of RPG play, the thing that defines it relative to all other games, and makes it singularly unique and never truly replicable, at least without dramatic advancements in technology that we may not see for another hundred years.

Esgaldil apparently really means, "I know you're factually right, but I don't care because I don't value that fact as much as you do."

Someone else might say the same of, "The mechanics of a board game can be simulated by a computer, but not replicated." It is for a start, I think, poorly phrased. "Mechanics" is taken in a physical sense we don't normally use in this context. We don't normally mean reading codices, drawing maps in pencil on quadrille paper, arranging metal figurines, or coloring in dice numbers with crayons when we write of "RPG mechanics", either.

Components simulated, not replicated, would make more sense. Yes, it is with computers that industry replicates the physical components in factories, but one can get the point that those components are hardware.

The point is factually right, but some people don't care. The digital images and sounds of boards, pawns, dice, cards, etc., serve the same functions as their equivalents. Touching, smelling and tasting them is just not such a high priority to these people.

Nor do I see how, on this level, there is any distinction. Having a "cyberspace" environment in which we play D&D together is not fundamentally different from having such a place to play other games.

The level on which there is a pretty objective difference is in the incompleteness of the rules and what this bodes for the prospect of replacing human players -- especially the Game Master -- with "artificial intelligence".

This subject came up about 30 years ago, when personal computers were just beginning to spread. My uncle predicted that they would soon spell the end of personally moderated RPGs. I demurred, and suggested that he did not grasp the freedom that players enjoyed in the latter.