RPG: Table and Computer
It's not a secret that table RPG games are not so popular as they used to be. However a certain number of amateurs are still fond of them. What is so particular about a pasteboard box or a book with rules? It seems that all the advantages have their " younger computer brothers": no manual calculations, no bricks ( the number of which is from one to almost 20). In general, no additional efforts are needed- just relax, play and don't worry. But nothing of the kind- groups of maniacs with burning eyes run to the special shop( if there is any), buy another book, and having met in some dark place in the evening, start to crunch with pens and tinkle the dice. Why are these poor things so attracted by this desperately ancient way of entertainment? Let's try to answer this question by displaying the most similar and different features of table and computer RPG. Firstly, any RPG is a Role Paying Game, which is supposed to have a character, and a system of his development. This feature is typical for both the "brothers". The character as the player's realization in the created RPG world is very important. Your playing capabilities depend on his features. Secondly, any decent RPG is based on some world (sometimes, realistic but more often-fantastic one). The depth of the world ( The card details, atmosphere entirety, detailed development of the world components) and , so to say, the mood (optimistic and colorful or destructive and gloomy, funny or extremely rigid, strict),- all this taken together defines the audience of the game. These two points have a great meaning, they allow the player to associate himself with a certain character and being in his shoes to go through the situations which are impossible in ordinary life. All this is very good but let's return to our muttons: to the difference between computer and table RPG. Probably, trite comparison of books and films will be to the place here. The former make us use our brains and imagination, the latter give us everything ready-made. The peculiarity of table RPG, its strong and at the same time weak point is hope for player's imagination.. In the classical table RPG you'll find a text, some illustrations and? all the rest you should imagine yourself. It's true, that during the gaming process everything depends on the leader (Dungeon Master, Game Master, etc.) and on the players. The leader explains the situation, describes the characters and the events orally (yes, he does it with the help of words!!!) and the players perceive this information judging from their abilities. What are the advantages of such a game play? They are quite evident: everyone perceives the game in his own way (with the help of his imagination), but at the same time, if the game is rather good, a special "field" of common perception and mood is formed. It's not an allegation as the author has great experience of playing table RPG and so he knows all ins and outs. When the game has a success, the players seem to be in the same "information field" and sometimes they don't even perceive the events in real life. It's just like reading a thrilling book. But sometimes such beauty turns into a terrible thing. What is so horrible about it? The trouble is, the game may be a complete failure if it's leaded by a talentless and not very experienced master, or if the players turn out to be so-so (that is less critical). In such a case the game fails no matter how beautiful the original RPG world is. Everything gets wrong when after each word the master utters: "well, eh, oh?" and it takes the players 10 minutes to think over each further act. The game reaches a deadlock, a perfect illusion is breaking into the small pieces of separate sentences.
I must admit, sometimes it's all RPG developers 'fault that such failures take place, especially when the rules of the game aren't logical or overcharged with unnecessary details. May the fans forgive me, but the last time the author had to play AD&D, there was such a situation: -Player:" I want to kill that Gobline!" -Master: "throw the dice for marksmanship. Uph, you shoot in the darkness-that means, the fine should be taken into account. Well.. have you got the bonus? Aha?I'll find it, wait a bit? Oh?
throw these three bricks on D-20,?Hmmm?where is that table? OK, we are going to count all the damages and take into account his armor and the spell and that's all!" I don't say everything was exactly so, but on the whole-just the way I described. What absorption into fantastic world can we talk about if you have to remember 20 figures and throw the dice dozen times for each act! But not all the table games have such a disadvantage. Besides, we may ignore too "hard" rules. Now let's analyze what we have in computer RPG. From the first look everyt5hing is just the same-the game system, characters, the game world. But all these things are already made, you can see the picture with your eyes. Is it good or bad? It depends. By all means, it's pleasant to see "visual" character, a charming landscape, fire from shots, etc. But your own brains don't work any longer since there's no necessity in it. Besides, we won't see "our own world". We perceive things as they should be from the game developers' point of view. Their way of perception becomes ours as well. You will never be able to see the world with your own eyes and make the character really yours, no matter how hard the developers tried to improve the game. Such a situation has two consequences: 1) Tragic one: your imagination is completely blocked and you don't like the others' vision.( such a situation is typical for the most of projects). 2) Pleasant one: some painters and designers create real masterpieces and we can't but admire their world vision ( here you perfectly understand the difference between your plain brains and a talented professional's work). But are there many games like that in the second point? Frankly speaking, I know only one-Fallout. And I appreciate not the graphics but amazing style, exact place of every button, picture, character. Let's also mention incontestable advantage of computer RPG. It deals with those calculations which make so many table RPG boring. Computer will calculate all the fines, bonuses and character's features in a flash. Strange as it may seem but computer games are based just on the table systems and the developers of the former ones don't aim to overcharge machines with numerous correlations and parameters. At last we've come to a very sensitive problem of the computer RPG- opportunities provided in the game. Sometimes playing RPG on the computer you may suddenly want to act the way not offered by the plot of the game. ( to look into the hatch which is pictured on the background or to take the car you are not allowed to). I am sure that such things are familiar to every gamer. It's great if the plot and the locations are well considered. And what if they are not ( as it happens more often)? We must admit that the developers of computer games are constantly improving the gamer's opportunities in the installed worlds. But if the direction is not perfect, the game turns into hard work and it makes the player take advantage of all the improvements (even if he is not willing to). Table RPG is another matter: the action there is equal to one word, no talks linearity ( you can communicate with the leader the way you like), no plot linearity ( you can do what you like until you are killed). Full freedom of the decisions and actions provided by table RPG will never be substituted by any perfect program. Here you can act as you like.
Besides, the standard of the game can be easily changed. For example, I can tell you from my own experience that once I started the game as a guard (pure RPG adventure) and finished as an emperor (RPG+tactics+strategy). That's it. It's for you to judge what is better. What and how to play is also for you. But I'd like to say (from my own experience again) that table RPG develop our brains while computer ones don't. A friend of mine being an active table player suddenly began reading books( he didn't use to do it since his childhood). He started to read not classical masterpieces or since fiction. That was fantasy. But anyway he began READING, and that's the point. Another my friend got used to computer and became a real fan and gamer. Now I constantly see black areas under his eyes and our communication is bothered by a turned on PC. Of course, these are separate examples and the author must admit, he is addicted to computer RPG . But nevertheless it's table RPG which gives us the opportunity to communicate and improve. That 's what all the author's life experience tells about. P.S. I'm ready to an open discussion of the topic. You are free to write your thoughts to me. By the way, an interesting question: does anybody see the opportunity to combine the two kinds of RPG described above? What if there is the golden mean? What if there is? About the Author
Efimov Peter is a game designer of White Elephant, a great collection of shareware games. Please, visit his site http://www.elephant-games.com for only best games for you and your children!
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Malicious Advertising
Advertising is a necessary irritant in the world today. You can't drive down the street without coming across an ad, either a billboard suspended over a road or a large poster plastered down the side of a bus. If you walk into a shopping centre it doesn't matter where you look, you see an advertisement of some kind. Even the tables in the food court now have ads embedded in them, and on my last trip to Melbourne I noticed that they were starting to embed flat screen TVs into the tables to deliver the full commercial experience to your meal. If you jump on the Internet you have to contend with pop-ups and banner ads, with some advertising agents being ruthless enough to write malicious code that embeds the ad into your computer so that you still receive the pop-ups even when you're not at the original site.
Evolution of Gaming : Graphics vs Gameplay
If you are old enough to remember the early days of computer gaming you know there were a lot of great games that were fun because of the exceptional gameplay and not just the graphics. Gaming started to become a little more popular in the 90s once people started buying computers. In the early 90s games like Maniac Mansion, X-com 1, and Civilization were extremely hot because of their addictive unique gameplay. Today gaming is mainstream and marketed towards a mass audience. In order to market to everyone, many games these days focus on the graphics and special effects rather than unique gameplay. You see many games that seem to be carbon copies of each other with slightly different twists.
Reviving Old Computer Games
Remember the good old days of gaming, when there were only 5 pixels in the protagonist and your imagination could turn them into a heroic figure of Schwarzenegger proportions? When the enemies and the heroes were distinguished by colour and you only needed one button on the joystick? Well times have changed and technology has moved on. Pulling my old Commodore 64 or Atari out of the back of the cupboard and setting them up often takes more time than the nostalgic pang lasts. I've also noticed that some of my old disks are starting to age and become corrupted. Enter the Internet.
Why We Play Games, Part 2
Last week we started to get into the motivation of the gamer. We discussed challenge and its ugly stepsister competition, two of the most common motivators. Today, we look at two more on the way to forming an overall model for what moves us.
$20 Buys a Lot of Game These Days
Watching the evolution of sports games has been like watching a retarded child grow up to become a handsome and brilliant Master of the Universe. Now I'm not saying ESPN's NBA 2K5 is the pinnacle of sports gaming, but I will tell you why it comes pretty damn close ? especially for all of us basketball fanatics. Before I go on, let us talk a little bit about the "Corky" Thatcher friendly games of the past.
Codename Revolution - Nintendos Next Generation Gaming System
Over the past year or so plenty of hype, mystery and controversy has been raised over the new Nintendo Console. Systems like the Xbox have taken the lead in gaming with offering capabilities such as online multiplayer. When Nintendo showed off their new system at the E3 Expo they showed gamers that they truly intend to revolutionize the video game community once again. But until Nintendo "officially" gives us the details, we can only speculate and wait.
Increasing Rates of Climb in Fighter Aircraft Like the New Joint force Strike Fighter
We know from studying aircraft like the F-8 Crusader, in which my dad had the fortunate to fly while in the US Navy stationed in Puerto Rico, that when the wind was tilted upward on the aircraft that it had a lower takeoff speed and much higher initial rates of climb. At which point the wing came back to position and it was a pencil shaped rocket with wings. Now then let us take the newest discoveries in wind tunnels about life, weight, thrust and drag. We know that the reletive wind pushing on the bottom of the wings forces the aircraft up.
Review - Sony PSP
I'm fairly certain there are folks at Nintendo feeling some serious self-loathing right about now. You see, back in the mid-90's Nintendo contracted Sony to develop a CD-ROM drive for the Super Nintendo. As the project progressed, a number of factors (one of them being the spectacular failure of the Sega CD and its' followup the 32X) led Nintendo to can the project. Sony was left holding the bag, with a CD-based gaming system but no one to sell it to.
Free Games For Your Pocket PC
Admit It-You're Often Bored
Computer Game on Mars; Design for Communication Device
Powering up hand held wireless devices in the field for Business Uses, Educational Issues, Monitoring Sensors for Security Purposes or Blue Force Tracking for military troops in the field for net-centric warfare is possible even in the most remote locations can be possible using simple principles which will provide small amounts of energy. There are a few new innovative ways to do this, which appear to have been overlooked. One is to have an inflatable sphere or beach ball with inner reflective skin, which is reflective on the inside, which can take on light waves or UV from the sun or energy in the form of waves that can be sent energy from afar, by chemical laser, regular laser (beach ball would have the reactionary coating and chemical), directional sound waves, microwave, etc.
Securing Your Accounts With Well-Crafted Passwords
In the past I've never really paid much attention to security issues when it comes to user names and passwords. Frankly I figured it was all a lot of overblown hype. This led to an unfortunate incident that involved my website being attacked, apparently by a skillful youth with a propensity for mischief.
SMS Gaming - Text Paging Games that can be Played by Anyone
Using the Physical World as a Game Board: This is not a Kinky game! SMS stands for Short Message Service.
Review: Samurai Jack -- Code of the Samurai
Fans of Genndy Tartakovsky's "Samurai Jack," which wrapped last year on the Cartoon Network, enjoy the quirky storytelling and stunning visuals, also the martial arts sequences. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the online gaming industry turned the time-traveling samurai's adventures into video games.
Laying Smart Dust With Smart Munitions
We believe that we need to make the Smart Munitions even smarter and incorporate their decent to the target to include the release of smart dust. We believe this is important as more often than not the battlespace includes urban areas where non-combatants and citizens not involved in the conflict reside. It is important to be all knowing with real time information available to those involved in the net-centric leadership positions.
Blast From The Past - Retro Games Are Hot Again
Miss the brainlessly simple and extremely addictive games from the 80s? Find out which game developers feel the same. Dozens of teams are creating new games based on the old classics. Here are just a few of them.
Games To Encourage Thinking Skills
There is no doubt about it, using computer games is a great way to encourage children to expand their realm of thinking. Your options for entertaining your child may seem numbered. Many people allow their children to spend quite a bit of time in front of the television. But, what good does that do? If you want them to learn something while they are zoned out, you are completely lost. But, if you flip on the computer, download a great game, you may actually be able to encourage them to learn more and you will encourage good thinking skills as well.
Zuma Deluxe Style Games Evolution
As I think most of gamers who play in shareware games know game called Zuma Deluxe. This game was extremly popular some time ago and still popular now. It's now a classic game!
Indie Games that Made It to the Tops of the Charts this Year
1. Platypus
http://www.deprice.com/platypus.htm
The Future of Submarine Games
In the last six months, the demise of sims has been pronounced in abundance. Print mags and sim webzines have been telling you sims are being cancelled left and right Jane's A-10: Cancelled. Wolfpack II: Cancelled. Silent Steel II: MIA. M1Tank Platoon 3: Cancelled. Fighting Steel Deluxe: Cancelled. Jane's Attack Squadron: MIA. Thunder Over Europe: MIA. The list goes on.
Counter Strike, The Beginner of Broad Band PC Gaming
This is the world of 21st century, the century of technologies. Every thing is fast now a days and as far as the Computers and games are concerned, they are at the top of all. Every one these days like playing games and some of them love it. Well few years ago PC gaming was not so advance and usually was single user based and if any one wanted to play with any other player then one must have an extra input or any compatible playing device .
|
