http://cpxbrex.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] cpxbrex.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] athelind 2009-08-08 06:17 pm (UTC)

I will slightly disagree. When I was playing Planescape Torment, I was sitting there playing it and, uh, I felt I had more options than in many tabletop RPGs I had been in. You could go and interact with NPCs, your interactions would largely determine the fate of those NPCs, you could solve virtually every mission in a way that was more open ended than many tabletop games.

While it's true that playing with human beings makes your options theoretically more limiting, for many games, most RPGs are, basically, "Walk down this corridor and kill this beast." And a fair number of computer RPGs nowadays, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, games of that ilk, are actually more open-ended than most tabletop games.

Even in a lot of action or shooter games, the stories generally are more open than many tabletop games. They have "morality" systems that change some of the story events in the games. Oh, you end up fighting pretty much all the same people and all, but the games usually have several significant stories to choose between. Which is more than many RPGs where the players don't. They can't choose to save the Republic or destroy it. They don't get to decide if the galaxy will be a democracy or a brutal tyranny.

A few thoughts, hehe.

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