Quote from: estar;863772You not getting my point. You are right, tabletop is a different experience. But you miss my point that those gamers were not looking for the tabletop RPG experience in the first place.

Those gamers were looking for the experience offered by PC Games. Except it is 1980 and those computer games don't exist, hell for gamers at the they didn't imagine it could even exist.

However what they do know that circa 1980 they like to play AD&D because they get to bash monsters (or each other all day). This isn't theoretical. I seen and played with this type of gamer in my hometown in northwest Pennsylvania in the early 80s. Frankly they were a bit of a pain in the ass to those of us who wanted to get on with doing more with our characters.

Then when the computer games started hitting they started disappearing from tabletop and started playing Rogue-likes, and later Diablo for their fun.

So for them the PC Game was the better experience than tabletop RPG with all the world building and roleplaying with NPCs "bullshit" pushed to the wayside.

And why PC games became dominate is because on one hand they are more accessible in terms of time and availability and on the other hand they eventually began to look spectacular.

I think Estar is right about this. I also think the accessibility and availability are another factor. So you have people who were basically always looking for a diablo like experience and now they can get it, so they don't need table top RPGs, but you also have folks who may prefer table top RPGs but find the ease of playing diablo or WoW just is better for their schedule or lifestyle (I know a lot of former gamers in this latter category who simply prefer the flexibility but will occasionally meet with table top groups to get something that the online video game experience doesn't give them).

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;863769Agreed. Even something as open ended as Morrowind still lacked what a p&p rpg has. The only way computers can hope to match that is by having an AI that can respond dynamically to anything you throw at it.

The initial appeal of CRPGs and MMORPGs was accessibility, the ability to play whenever and to do it quickly without a lot of setup. Then later spectacular visuals got added in.

Both of which Tabletop RPGs can't compete with. But where tabletop has the advantage is in the flexibility of the human referee and the tabletop campaign. In my view that is tabletop's singular advantage over ever other form of roleplaying. That what tabletop needs to sell and improve on to compete.

For example you could fly in a CRPGs but it has to be added by some distant programmer or modder. If the CRPG doesn't support flying then it will never be there for the gamer. But with tabletop the human referee can make the change right there with just a ruling. When the idea is extended to all that characters can do in a campaign I feel it gives a compelling reason to play tabletop in of itself.

One of the main appeals of the OSR for me is the emphasis on building tools for referees to use to run and create campaigns.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863778I think Estar is right about this. I also think the accessibility and availability are another factor. So you have people who were basically always looking for a diablo like experience and now they can get it, so they don't need table top RPGs, but you also have folks who may prefer table top RPGs but find the ease of playing diablo or WoW just is better for their schedule or lifestyle (I know a lot of former gamers in this latter category who simply prefer the flexibility but will occasionally meet with table top groups to get something that the online video game experience doesn't give them).

I will add that Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo are not the same experience even as PC Games. As PC Games matured and diversified each alternative pared away some of the core audience of tabletop. Now in 2015 we are left with only with the things that alternative forms of roleplaying can't do. The face to face gaming, the human referee, etc.

And I feel that is a good thing similar to what happened to wargames and board games. Boardgame/Wargame imploded much worse than RPGs but now in the midst of a renaissance for the past decade because a new generation of designer figured out how to take advantage of the things that computer games can't replicate, as well as addressing the limitations of physical games.

Last weekend, I was helping out as an assistant scoutmaster at a boy scout camp-out that my youngest went too. The kids know that I play D&D and wanted me to referee. So I worked it in and ran a game.

Due to time limitations (Only got an hour to play) I managed on get one encounter off. I saw the kids were enjoying the novel experience but weren't quite getting the point. I am sure I was being viewed as the "Dad" who pulling out some interesting but old toys that were not as exciting as the new stuff.

But then came a moment where they ran into a ambush by a giant troll. One scout was quick thinking and decided to charm the troll. I blew the saving throw and suddenly the troll was that character's best friend. The next scout in the initiative order was the cleric who on a whim healed the troll from the damage it already took in the fight. Now the troll was the party's best friend.

At least for the next hour.

At the moment, I could see lightbulbs popping off of everybody head and them thinking "So that what it is about, I can do anything my character could do." Afterwards they started becoming very creative about things they wanted to do as their characters. They didn't always succeed but they found those results fun as well.

It moment like these is why I think that what vital for the survival of tabletop as hobby, the imagination and flexibility the setup allows compared to anything else. Tabletop doesn't need to be like anything else, it needs to be more like itself; players interacting with a setting as their characters with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Quote from: estar;863782I will add that Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo are not the same experience even as PC Games. As PC Games matured and diversified each alternative pared away some of the core audience of tabletop. Now in 2015 we are left with only with the things that alternative forms of roleplaying can't do. The face to face gaming, the human referee, etc.
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I don't play video games much but I have a gamer friend who pretty much sticks with Blizzard products. He plays Diablo, WoW and Star Craft (may have that last name wrong) pretty regularly, but what you say matches what he says. I think he goes for diablo to get the dungeon crawl experience, he goes for WoW to get more of a campaign experience and maybe do some RP with people online. Star Craft seems to be scratching more of the board game itch. The one element that seems to be missing for him is the flexibility afforded by a human referee and more direct interaction with other people (though as he explains it, a certain amount of that interaction is possible----but it is very different).

Quote from: estar;863783Last weekend, I was helping out as an assistant scoutmaster at a boy scout camp-out that my youngest went too. The kids know that I play D&D and wanted me to referee. So I worked it in and ran a game.

Due to time limitations (Only got an hour to play) I managed on get one encounter off. I saw the kids were enjoying the novel experience but weren't quite getting the point. I am sure I was being viewed as the "Dad" who pulling out some interesting but old toys that were not as exciting as the new stuff.

But then came a moment where they ran into a ambush by a giant troll. One scout was quick thinking and decided to charm the troll. I blew the saving throw and suddenly the troll was that character's best friend. The next scout in the initiative order was the cleric who on a whim healed the troll from the damage it already took in the fight. Now the troll was the party's best friend.

At least for the next hour.

At the moment, I could see lightbulbs popping off of everybody head and them thinking "So that what it is about, I can do anything my character could do." Afterwards they started becoming very creative about things they wanted to do as their characters. They didn't always succeed but they found those results fun as well.

It moment like these is why I think that what vital for the survival of tabletop as hobby, the imagination and flexibility the setup allows compared to anything else. Tabletop doesn't need to be like anything else, it needs to be more like itself; players interacting with a setting as their characters with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

I had a similar experience the other night, when one of my players had, almost on a whim, performed a ritual to the demon emperor and it worked. The consequence of the ritual was he started losing control and turning into an ape-like demon at night, rampaging and killing (something where he would slowly gain awareness and control over time). It was the sort of thing that really required the hand of a GM to bring to life, but also it ended up being this sudden digression in the campaign where everyone was wholly focused on the emerging problem this character presented to the party. We spent about 1.5 hours of fun gaming dealing with that (finding a way to keep him from harming people, tracking him down in the woods when he ran off and went on his first rampage, etc). And this was all the more complicated because it was in the middle of them already on their way to do something else. I think that kind of thing would be very hard for a computer to do well at this stage.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863784a certain amount of that interaction is possible----but it is very different).

For me what drove the point home, was managing and running LARP events and LARP chapters for a decade. Then with Neverwinter Nights I managed what was a MMORPG for a year with a large group of friends (mostly from the LARP). Combined with my enjoying computer games since the TRS-Model I in the early 80s, I got to experience all the major forms of roleplaying as they developed.

The key thing is that roleplaying game have diversified tremendously. There not just distinct experience but nuances within nuances. A recent development in the past three years are survival games like Rust and DayZ. They got little bit of first person shooting, a little bit of CRPG character building, a little bit of minecraft style world building.

Then there is stuff like Pirate Puzzle, which is kinda of like a MMORPG but with pirates and puzzles oriented towards kids. From what I understand stuff is resolved through solving puzzle. You want to dig up treasure, solve a puzzle, fight another pirate ship it handled through solving a puzzle.

Then there are sandbox games like minecraft which are designed to be a collection of tools to manipulate a world with some constraints.

Crusader Kings 2 is a wargame but it handled through you playing a individual character that is the head of your dynasty. However the point isn't to advance your character, although there is some advancement, the point is to advance your DYANSTY. When you die, you switch to playing your heir and continue from there. This can play out over centuries. One scenario starts in 767 AD and ends in 1453 AD.

It just crazy amount of choices there are out there.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863784The one element that seems to be missing for him is the flexibility afforded by a human referee and more direct interaction with other people (though as he explains it, a certain amount of that interaction is possible----but it is very different).

Barring some breakthrough, I think there are some fundamental limits on what can be done with A.I. I feel we will not see sentient computers in our lifetime. However we become very good at capturing human knowledge and exposing it effectively through software. For tasks there will software that will seem almost human like. But tabletop RPG (or any of the arts) won't be one of them.

Particularly in the sense where a interested gamer can sit down in his home and create somebody to use with other gamers. Creating a WoW, or a Skyrim is out of reach of a individual gamer who want to run a campaign while it is very doable with pen & paper RPGs.

What will happen in our lifetime is that worldbuilding and support tools will become very good, user friendly and affordable. That the future of tabletop will be a blend of the virtual and paper. The same with war/boardgames.

Quote from: estar;863779Both of which Tabletop RPGs can't compete with. But where tabletop has the advantage is in the flexibility of the human referee and the tabletop campaign. In my view that is tabletop's singular advantage over ever other form of roleplaying. That what tabletop needs to sell and improve on to compete.

Absolutely, and I think it goes further than tools for the referee. It provides a level of interaction that you can't get with AI right now. To use my own example, I remember very well one situation in a Dragonlance game (I know, I know) where the group had to infiltrate an enemy location guarded by two Ogres. I figured that since ogres were supposed to be rather dumb, we should try to trick them rather than fight them. We were around a corner in a passage way, so we started a verbal exchange where we tried to impersonate how an ogre talks to tell them that we just came back with some great swag that included food but there was just enough for one more ogre. Yaddy, yaddy yadda, they ended up knocking each other out as they fought over who got to get that portion.

You can't get that with a computer game unless it's already scripted.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;863791You can’t get that with a computer game unless it’s already scripted.

Agreed, and it gets worse. If the script is found to suck, it already baked into the software. Oh well. But for the human referee if things are not working out he has alternatives ranging from slight tweaks to jettisoning the problem elements altogether. Tabletop Campaign can be dynamically changed to produce a more fun or interesting experience in the hands of skilled referee. Which is why I advocate the solution to tabletop's ills to is make better tabletop referee both in terms of technique and tools.

A bit tongue in cheek but what would be the health of the hobby if we could magically clone copies of Gygax, Arneson,  Bledsaw,  Mentzer, Kuntz or (insert favorite awesome referee) to handle everybody's campaign.

If the answer is "A lot better" then the  solution is to quit trying to fix shit through rules and working on making better referees. Which is my opinion on the issue.

Quote from: estar;863793If the answer is "A lot better" then the  solution is to quit trying to fix shit through rules and working on making better referees. Which is my opinion on the issue.

I wish I had had the resources back then that are available now, in terms of books, etc. It would have probably made my only attempt at GM'ing a success. I just wasn't born with the talent, I guess. I sure could have used some mentoring or hand holding-- or at least enough slack to mess up.

Quote from: estar;863762And this experience had a big part in shaping my attitude to using different rules to for the various campaigns I run in the Majestic Wilderlands. I just don't attach the importance that some people do to using a set of rules to set the feel of a campaign. I understand the point especially Vreeg's point about how the setting with come to fit the rules. But I designed an "interface" within my Majestic Wilderlands that allows me to slot in completely different sets of rules with minimal work. Note it minimal work not no work.

Right now the latest set of rules to get the treatment is Fantasy Age by Green Ronin. To date it has included AD&D 1st, Harnmaster, Fantasy Hero, GURPS 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions, D&D 3.X, Runequest 2nd, Mongoose Runequest, D&D 4th, D&D 5th, Fudge/Fate*, and OD&D (which got turned into a published supplement).

It depends upon the system and the setting as to how easily they can be matched. Role Playing in Middle Earth doesn't work well with AD&D's magic system, which is a large proportion of that game's published rules. How much do you tweak magic in D&D and Runequest to get them to work in your campaign?

The impact OO Programming has had on my game design is to encourage iterative design and having requirements for game mechanics. It persuaded me that writing lots of rules before trying them out generally fails, rules which never come up in play should be dropped, and that clever ideas for the sake of it are a bad idea.

Quote from: Tod13;863770Unless your mixin (parent class) is abstract, you can still unit test it separate from the inheritors.

The problem is testing the derived classes without having to retest the parent class, which is pretty close to what you went on to say.

I agree that the human GM is the tabletop RPG's unique selling point, but I also agree that there used to be a whole bunch of people in this hobby for whom that wasn't actually important - and those people are better served by videogames by and large.

Frankly, I think this is to the betterment of the hobby - the unimaginative hack and slashers who don't give two shits about characters or setting or human interaction are gone, and the people who are left have more compatible expectations and goals.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;863803It depends upon the system and the setting as to how easily they can be matched. Role Playing in Middle Earth doesn't work well with AD&D's magic system, which is a large proportion of that game's published rules. How much do you tweak magic in D&D and Runequest to get them to work in your campaign?

For D&D (whatever edition) I generally leave the spells alone and mess around with how spells are cast. Similar to the difference between 3.X Sorceror and Wizard. Both use the same spells but memorize spells differently.

For Runequest 2nd edition, the magic system wasn't a good fit and too much work to come up MW flavored cult. I supposed I could have done more but after a short run I moved on to another system.

For Runequest 6th, Mongoose RUnequest, and Basic RP, they have a variety of magic system including a BRP Classic Fantasy version so it is relatively easy to use.

The primary limitation on mages in my setting is the fact they are a scholarly profession, so are naturally limited by economics. That and cultural factors allows me to tolerate variations in the exact form of magic.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;863803The impact OO Programming has had on my game design is to encourage iterative design and having requirements for game mechanics. It persuaded me that writing lots of rules before trying them out generally fails, rules which never come up in play should be dropped, and that clever ideas for the sake of it are a bad idea.

The problem is testing the derived classes without having to retest the parent class, which is pretty close to what you went on to say.

Pretty much agree with this.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;863769Agreed. Even something as open ended as Morrowind still lacked what a p&p rpg has. The only way computers can hope to match that is by having an AI that can respond dynamically to anything you throw at it.

I'm skeptical as to how much we can approach the creativity of a person with something less than a person. Once you have a person, that's likely to involve similar conveniences and inconveniences regardless of whether the physical substrate is meat or semiconductors. Look at the issues that get heated in the hobby, and they mostly have to do with the fact that it involves people!