&quot;On The Other Claw....&quot;

Yeah, bu there are GOOD bad movies, and there are BAD bad movies.

The worst are the bad GOOD movies, that are supposed to be deep and meaningful and insightful about the Human Condition, and when they're over, all you can think is, "Well, that's two hours of my life I'll never get back."

Give me a trashy horror flick any day. That's a GOOD bad movie.

From:

Where does this fall?

From:

Do you have to ask? It's a Good Good Movie. And everyone should see it.

INCLUDING AND ESPECIALLY RATS WHO GOT THE DVD FOR CHRISTMAS AND ARE TOO LAZY TO TAKE THE SHRINK-WRAP OFF.

From:

I love making people watch Equilibrium. It's so fun.

*ponders flying out to Ohio with a pair of pliers*

From:

jirris-midvale.livejournal.com

He.. he hasn't watched it yet?!

GAH! WHY?!

From:

kolchis.livejournal.com

We watched rather a lot of those once upon a time, didn't we, Athe?

:)

From:

Ack! Stop sneaking in flattery about me!

From:

ONly if you start Hosting again.

From:

araquan.livejournal.com

I've always preferred the term "adventure game" for the computer 'equivalents' (of which only one have I played with any degree of seriousness- Kingdom Heats, naturally) but so far I've yet to get the term to stick anywhere. I keep asking people, "How do you play a role in that game?" The usual response is along the lines of "Well, you go to this place and do these things..." I cut them off and keep repeating the question until they either get it or get frustrated. The latter is the usual outcome.

Mind you, I've only ever tried the pen'n'paper thing thrice. First was with D&D v2.x. That... did not go well.

From:

Bingo. MUCKs are more worthy of the term "role-playing games" than the usual "computer adventure game".

From:

araquan.livejournal.com

Yupyup.

From:

I'm not positive on my video game history, but I think we can blame Japan for that particular naming convention.

Because, heck, Japan never misappropriates English terminology because they think it sounds cool...

From:

I dunno. I think most of it is that the first forays into the genre were attempts to emulate extant table-top games. I doubt ZORK would have existed without Dungeons & Dragons, for instance.

From:

Yes, but was ZORK called a "role-playing game," is my question, or was that term coined elsewhere in the video game market?

From:

If it wasn't, I suspect that the first licensed D&D video/computer games were.

From:

shavastak.livejournal.com

What about MMORPGs?

Most of them, my current favorite City of Heroes included, are usually just adventure games, but they contain within them the possibility of a darn good RPG. You just need to get together with other players willing to do it.

I've seen it done, too. Virtue, the unofficial rp server, has been known to host roleplaying sessions consisting of 50+ people. Pretty cool.

From:

For me, the key distinction between an "RPG" and an "Adventure Game" is whether or not you can resolve a situation in a way that the designer of the scenario had not originally envisioned.

Yes, this means that tabletop games with especially rigid GMs don't count as "role-playing" in my book.

The closest an MMORPG has come to achieving this holy grail was when a HUGE number of Everquest players cooperated to take down a monster designed to be "unkillable". I was impressed.

On a slightly different level, I'm involved in this silly hobby as a way to SOCIALIZE. Sitting in front of my computer screen, even if I'm interacting with Real Life People on the other end, doesn't quite fill that need for me.

From:

shavastak.livejournal.com

I like your definition of RPG.

In some MMORPGs, at least the two that I've played, people gather and do actual roleplaying, but it's more like using the game as a chat server where you just happen to be able to see what the other player characters look like.

This difference between RPGs and adventure games is what will keep the RPG industry alive. A computer game simply cannot be open-ended. Even one that plans for many different options (Wizardry 8, for example) is not open-ended. Table-top rpgs, on the other hand, might be less realistic or simpler or slower, but they can be open-ended, which is part of what makes them fun.

BTW, I wasn't disagreeing with you; I just wanted to bring up a genre of games that was possibly a bridge between RPG and adventure. I agree with you that they're not so much a bridge as maybe a foundation for a bridge.

I prefer tabletop for real roleplaying anyway. I like interacting in real time with real people. It's more fun for me that way.

From:

Zigackly!

If Pen-and-Paper RPGs really want to compete in the market, they need to emphasize their differences from their digital counterparts, the things they do better. That's why the combat-mechanical focus of the current Retro-Gaming trend baffles me. If all you want to do is beat up monsters, computer games excel in that arena.

From:

Except they don't, as you pointed out earlier actually. You can't do creative things in a combat situation that require intelligent GM intervention if you're using a computer game.

You're drawing a false dichotomy here, between combat mechanics and electronic gaming. There is no way that electronic gaming can ever compete with the ability of an intelligent GM to provide for player creativity in overcoming obstacles.

CoH can never compete with a good GM running Champions, DC Heroes, Mutants and Masterminds, FATE, or any other good superhero RPG.

No matter how good the WoW combat system may be, any paper-and-pencil fight in 3.5 has the potential to be even better at awarding creativity and ingenuity by players who get into combat.

This isn't saying that I like combat over everything else; far from it. But i am saying that you are trying to split a difference which doesn't exist.

From:

See my comments about "spontaneity", below.

From:

jirris-midvale.livejournal.com

I think you hit the nail on the head *why* I don't like D&D. When it's all said and done, it's all about beating the crap out of monsters. Seriously, I think the most fun I had with D&D was playing the arcade game.

From:

Well, not always.

You can say it usually is, but it's not really true that it's always so.

(And it's even less true for many d20 games which aren't D&D.)

From:

araquan.livejournal.com

It depends entirely on the group with which one is playing... Which is why my own experience was rather negative.

Of course, it wasn't negative just for reasons associated with game mechanics. These people were just too... serious. *shudder*

From:

So are MUCKs roleplaying games?

Or is there a difference between games with roleplaying (WoW RP servers, maybe), games for roleplaying (MUCKs and MUSHes), and roleplaying games (D&D), in your opinion?

On a slightly different level, I'm involved in this silly hobby as a way to SOCIALIZE. Sitting in front of my computer screen, even if I'm interacting with Real Life People on the other end, doesn't quite fill that need for me.

That might be what works for you, but be careful about presuming that it's wrong for other people to have other goals.

The whole "whether or not you can resolve a situation in a way that the designer of the scenario had not originally envisioned" criteria, for example, presumes that the main factor in a game is about problem-solving within the world. For me, it's often about developing and playing interesting characters, with little regard for actual "scenario design" by a "designer" who "envisions" things.

I never design scenarios and envision resolutions, as a GM. I never plan out "what will happen." I only create situations and playing pieces which then get moved around by the players, and the goal is rarely to resolve problems (a la solving a WoW quest) but instead one of "let's see what happens."

In my online-run D&D 3.5 game, one PC told an attacking NPC, "Surrender! We will treat you well as our prisoner!" and I looked and the battle wasn't going well for the NPCs anyway (who had started the fight), so I shrugged and said, "Okay." And the NPC surrendered. Which totally fucks the game, in a deliciously wonderful way, because players are thrown off by having an intelligent and unfriendly captive among them.

It certainly wasn't a scenario I set up, nor was it one that threw off my pre-ordained scenario. I had no idea what would happen when I put the pieces together and threw them into play. I like it better not knowing, in fact. That's why I GM -- to be surprised by players.

If I want to socialize, primarily, I'll skip the game and we'll go out for pizza, or play a board game, or watch a movie, or otherwise hang out. So far, though, I have found that many gamers aren't people I necessarily want to hang out with all the time. We come together for the gaming, and that's the basis of the relationship. Gaming is our shared hobby; we're not there because we necessarily like each other as much as we like the activity we're doing together.

From:

So are MUCKs roleplaying games?

I don't know. Maybe "role-playing environment" would be more accurate.

That might be what works for you, but be careful about presuming that it's wrong for other people to have other goals.

I didn't intend to suggest that. Bear in mind, however, that my comments here concern my thoughts and feelings about RPGs. It's all about ME. Me, me, ME!!

*Ahem.*

Perhaps I should rephrase that bullet point as "computer adventure games don't fulfill the same need for me that a tabletop RPG does." Though I still hold with my original statement: Computer games just ain't RPGs.

The whole "whether or not you can resolve a situation in a way that the designer of the scenario had not originally envisioned" criteria, for example, presumes that the main factor in a game is about problem-solving within the world. For me, it's often about developing and playing interesting characters, with little regard for actual "scenario design" by a "designer" who "envisions" things.

I never design scenarios and envision resolutions, as a GM. I never plan out "what will happen." I only create situations and playing pieces which then get moved around by the players, and the goal is rarely to resolve problems (a la solving a WoW quest) but instead one of "let's see what happens."

EXACTLY!!

It's that spontaneity that's the big difference, that element of surprise. In a computer game, you don't have the option of winging it.

For me (he says, being very careful to include the disclaimer hereafter), the best game experiences always involve surprise. The GM can surprise the players; the players can surprise the GM; the players can surprise each other. I've had situations where I've managed to surprise myself, where I found my character doing something that I never would have anticipated outside the game, simply because it's right for him.

From:

What do you call "dungeon fantasy"? Because my d20 games almost never involve dungeons, so I'm curious to what extent you are actually talking about fantasy adventure/quest fiction rather than dungeons.

More elaboration?

From:

You don't need to actually go underground to get stuck in the "Dungeon Fantasy" rut. The peculiarities of "wandering monsters", arbitrary alignments, and cheap and easy magic that should have massive social impact but never really seems to are among the many peculiarites of the genre. "Character level" keeps players all too cognizant of their game attributes.

Most -- not all, but MOST -- "fantasy adventure/quest fiction" is a genre that arose in the post-D&D market. You can see D&D's roots in the high fantasy of an earlier day, but it quickly established a genre of its own, with its own cliches. Third Edition, revolutionary as it was, didn't make D&D more the "source material" -- it made it more like D&D.

The Lord of the Rings, for instance, doesn't really resemble a D&D game, and you'd be hard-pressed to use D&D as a Middle-Earth Emulator. With the exception of the Big Epic Battle Scenes, which more resemble a wargame-scale minatures game than an RPG, most of the "encounters" are resolved by Running The Hell Away instead of Slaughtering To The Last Disposable Nonhuman. "If Gandalf's such a great wizard, why doesn't he just toss a fireball at the Orcs and Teleport Without Error to Mount Doom?"

The tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser come closer, but even so, many of their most entertaining tales would have been short-circuited if Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes had tagged along with Our Heroes, instead of leaving them to the wizard school drop-out's half-remembered Magic 101 classes. In the Conan tales, Real Men Used Swords, and magic was almost invariably the province of the decadent, wicked, and unwholesome. The further back you go, the more true that becomes: the Arthurian cycle, Greek and Roman myth, the Epic of Gilgamesh....

On that note, I realized that a few weeks ago, after listening to Raffy bitch about D&D's screwy magic: D&D magic originally tried to emulate a genre where Wizards were mysterious figures, plot devices who'd appear, provide some more-or-less useful bit of insight, and then mysteriously vanish. Then it made the Wizards "player characters" who were always around, and had no real constraints on their actions.

This is not to say I dislike magic-using protagonists or player-characters, and yes, you could attempt to emulate any of these models simply by downplaying or eliminating magic as a PC option -- but the rules are skewed in that direction, and the gap will be noticed.

Counter-examples of "fantasy adventure" that predates D&D but shows more kinship would be welcome -- I'm mostly tapped. Elric of Melnibone, John Carter of Mars, Narnia -- none of them seem more than superficially similar to the peculiarly inbred subgenre that so much of modern fantasy has become under D&D's influence. Gordon R. Dickson's The Dragon and the George almost comes close, but the differences between it and its half-dozen post-D&D sequels are striking.

From:

Well, especially as we're talking about D&D's magic system, there's Jack Vance.

Which also is the source of the original "rogue" archetype in the game.

From:

I confess I've never been able to get into Vance -- though I think The Mouser is as strong a contender for "source of the ~~thief~~ 'rogue' archetype" as Vance's characters, right down to the ability that 3d Edition calls "Use Magic Device Skill".

In fact, I should admit that I've never been primarily a fantasy fan. I read Lieber and Moorecock -- and loved them -- because I played D&D, not vice versa.

I'd say the primary influences of the big, epic, over-the-top AD&D1 game of my high school years were Michael Moorecock, H.P. Lovecraft, and Jack Kirby's Fourth World Saga.

From:

Actually, it's arguable that Cugel is the source as well. The Gray Mouser is a better fit for the 3e rogue than the original thief.

Read Vance's Dying Earth stories (collected recently in a nice thick meaty omnibus) and you'll see that a lot of things, from the magic system to the thief character class (why can they use scrolls?) to ioun stones were stolen directly from Vance by Gygax.

Shamelessly, even.

There are plenty of magic-using protagonists as well in the stories.

From:

BTW, have you tried making a 24 hour game yet?

I probably should give it a whirl. I'm not doing anything else productive with my time. ^_^

From:

Is that like a 24-hour comic, where you try to come up with a complete game design in 24 hours?

Are we talking mechanics, or setting?

From:

Yes, it's exactly like that.

And it's mechanics and/or setting, usually both, whatever you like.

It's a neat exercise, apparently. You might enjoy it. Do a web search on it, there are some very nice (and some crappy) mini-games out there as a result.

Several of my acquaintances on LJs and muds have tried it.

From: