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Comments
I don't have anything to add besides the fact that I agree with those that don't agree with Alex. That was a weird sentence to type.
On what basis? There's an absolutely huge body of evidence proving the mechanical and conceptual links between tabletop games and video games at the very least, but I've also provided examples from sports, playground games and traditional games of the application of exactly the same skills and principles. You and the others in this thread are doing a good job of proving that you have to make different considerations across mediums, but not doing anything to convince me that the fundamentals are different.
A previous example I used was tag, with the "no getbacks" rule, which is usually something like five seconds. That's pretty much an ability cooldown as popularised by MMORPGs. RNGs are derived from tabletop dice rolls in concept, given that sports and traditional board games like chess don't use randomised numbers (although traditional card games use randomised ordering). Tile-based strategy video games are pretty common, multiplayer arena shooters find an analog in paintball, and so on. Plenty of video games, perhaps most, are adaptations of other activities for a digital medium, and that requires designers to understand that activity in its native context as well as knowledge of video game design. Being able to see and apply common principles and techniques between different mediums of game isn't just possible, it's absolutely necessary -- if that wasn't the case, then Neverwinter Nights, Madden, Halo and so on and so forth wouldn't and couldn't exist. Most video games couldn't exist, because the process of adapting a set of rules (even if they're completely new) into mechanics is so fundamental to video game design.
IJBM: when I make a post on a new topic then respond to someone else's post on the old topic and thus bowl right over my first post's new topic
Two things having some traits in common doesn't make them the same thing. Otherwise, all programmers would also be nuclear engineers, because hey, machines are machines, right?
That's a strawman.
Kind of stumped on this VLR puzzle but I'm VERY CLOSE.
I need a four digit password composed on 4 different numbers 1 to 9.
There is a counter that will tell me how many HITs I have and how many BLOWs, I have.
If I pick a number and it is in the right spot, I get a HIT.
If I pick a number that is in the password, but NOT in the right spot, I get a BLOW.
Oh, and I get 10 guesses and then the password resets.
I determined with my first two guesses that 5, 6, 7, and 8 are the numbers in the password.
7865 gets me 4 BLOWs, so none are in the right spot.
6578 gets me 4 BLOWs so none are in the right spot.
So:
7 = 2nd or 4th
8 = 1st or 3rd
6 = 2nd or 4th
and 5 = 1st or 3rd...
^^It is, mostly because I'm tired and frustrated, but...if creating stuff were so simple that being good at one creative thing made you good at all the others, you'd never run across bad works.
So your answer is of the form [85][67][85][67]. Your next guess should be 8657.
Case A: A winner is you.
Case B: All four are wrong. Answer is 5786.
Case C: You get two right and two wrong. Next guess is 8756, which will either be correct, or give all four wrong and the correct answer is 5687.
In any case you're done with plenty of guesses to spare.
Except almost none of Bioware's games in the last 10 years actually follow D&D to much more than a mildly cosmetic degree anymore. NWN2 was the last one that was definitively rooted all that much in D&D, and even it was an extremely streamlined version of it with much of the randomness smoothed out, and most of the ones before it were likewise very tame versions of it that trimmed out most of its more cumbersome features and suppressing its randomness (KOTOR eliminating Vancian Magic altogether, for instance). Similarly, Bethesda's stuff has typically been at its strongest when it departs as far as possible from classical D&D-style number derivation, because they realized having random rolls for everything made the game incredibly fucking tedious when none of your abilities could reliably do anything. Why? Same reason party games are fun with drinking buddies and utter shit in single player -- it's all well and good with a pack of friends using disposable characters that might survive a campaign or three and whose priority is hanging out and enjoying wacky stuff, but it isn't good in a solo game of 100+ hours because it reduces your strategy to "quicksave then throw yourself at it until you get good rolls and the bad guy dies first".
Character creation? Again, NWN2 was the last one, and that was 2006. Dragon Age still...kind of keeps character creation similar insofar as a bunch of stats arbitrarily go up to 18, but the randomness is all removed because "rolling" a character -- the thing that makes a unique tabletop character that was never likely to last more than a couple campaigns -- is wholly obsolete in a video game where people would rather not roll dice for an hour just so they don't get gypped by it for the next 100+. Really, Bioware's character creation over the last decade -- as well as most other WRPGs -- have been focusing way more on elaborately crafting cosmetic appearance that will have no long-term penalty, and then picking a couple prepackaged broad characteristics that'll define your general abilities rather than obsessively tweaking stats that might screw you in the long run.
Order of combat is an altogether obsolete concept in WPRGs because it's in (sometimes pausable) realtime. Stuff happens as fast as it happens. It can't resemble tabletops anymore because it's not even a thing.
They're extremely different skills. Writing a novel has to take advatange of careful, evocative language to immerse the reader in a setting, where a comic book has the setting passed off to artists and the writing has to focus largely on natural-sounding dialogue and extreme conciseness in what little narration is present. The writing voices involved in each are drastically different, and while there's some overlap in basic proficiency and wit, the foci involved are barely within sight range of each other.
...did I misread and make a wordy post about something that's already been covered, are people just still talking about the previous topic?
As far as I know, KOTOR was based on Star Wars d20, which takes the basic mechanics of D&D, but includes its own significant rules alterations. I don't know if Force powers were represented by Vancian Magic or not, though, but the point is that it's possible BioWare just used the Force power rules from Star Wars d20.
There's a difference in context here, though. Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate an other BioWare tabletop game conversions thrived on their random numbers because the gameplay was based around them. Bethesda weren't thinking at all about that, making random number generation the primary mode of calculation for a game based on real-time action.
D&D is just one example, though. There are tabletop RPGs that don't have stat randomisation at all, or if so, note that it's the secondary option rather than the primary means of building your character. I think Fantasy Flight games tend to keep some stat randomisation, but World of Darkness doesn't use it, nor does Riddle of Steel. Moving away from randomised stats is an example of moving away from D&D, but not tabletop RPGs as a whole -- simply because tabletop RPGs have a much more diverse range of mechanics than their video game equivalent. Most innovations concerning character creation possible in a video game RPG have probably been tried and tested numerous times in the tabletop realm already.
I would argue that the best novel writing is as translucent as possible. While it's become popular for writers to find a voice that makes them stand out, the cost of that is often being constantly reminded that you're reading a book. Really great writers prevent their readers from perceiving individual words or sentences and create their works as holistic experiences. Comic books do a similar thing -- they just use artwork to cut out the middleman, it taking the place of environmental and activity-based narration.
I would say it's silly to call any style of writing the "best". Translucent writing has its place, but so does writing in books such as, say, Name of the Wind, as mentioned above.
Translucent writing has its place, but calling it the "best" is a rather grievous disservice to the likes of one hell of a lot of authors that add a tangible joy and meta-camaraderie to reading a book. I could start a list with Pratchett and end it with my deathbed after a long and happy life.
YOU CALLED?
Good lord this debate.
So I'm playing Machinarium. It's excellent so far and I haven't encountered any 'oh how am I supposed to figure that out?' puzzles. There's also a very good conservation of storytelling. I love it when stories depend on implications rather than flat-out exposition. Silent Hill does this quite well too, albeit with character depth rather than plot.
inb4 "deathbed" turns into a term for Discworld Death slashfic.
Dark Souls Dark Souls Dark Souls Demon's Souls Dark Souls
In P&Ps, too. That is just kept around for tradition's sake, because D&D did it. Same for classes, which is really annoying, but that's another topic. Point is, good, modern systems use a point buying system. Which is something computer RPGs can (and do, of course) use as well.
Class systems have their place, but it's true that they're erroneously taken as a default rather than one option among others.
So, just beat Journey. Calling it a game doesn't really feel right, since the closest thing it ever actually gets to a game is some mild platforming. I guess I could call it an experience. For the earliest part of the game, I was alone, and then I met somebody, who soon disappeared. Not long after that I met someone else, and we stuck together through thick and thin until the last level, where we became separated to such a degree that we could no longer find each other. I have the feeling that the entire thing would have a profoundly different feel if you never met somebody to travel with.
The definition of the word "game" is mostly arbitrary anyway.
Also, I'm now playing Bioshock Infinite. It's pretty interesting so far, seeing deified Founding Fathers and racism and junk like that.
A bad option among many, IMO. Point-buy and skill-based systems are IMO superior to randomized generations and class-based systems.
Each have their place, much like most elements of games and such.
I prefer free build systems as well (what you call point-buy), but even I have to admit that classes have strong application in some contexts. Games based on teams can make really good use of them, for instance, which is why they work reasonably well in both multiplayer games and games where you control a party of characters. As an extension of that, though, I'd say that a free build system works better in almost any kind of solo context.
They deified John Wilkes Booth, too.
I feel weak.
I got stumped on Chapter 5 of Hard-Classic mode of FE13 and decided to make a new file on Normal-Classic.
President of Squeenix Yoichi Wada is resigning.
^^Hard-mode is pretty evil in the first few chapters, but the difficulty levels off after your characters start promoting/reclassing.
In other news, I have decided that higher-level play on Legendary in Skyrim is utter bullshit.
Pushmo, FE level pack, other 3DS game, or save my 3DS money ($7.00).
halp
Okay, having now read the bulk of the discussion on the last page, I have the following to add to it:
Videogames provide a much more simulationist experience than tabletop games. In tabletop games, you're far more aware of mechanics, and they're much more conceptual. Generally speaking they're also not in real-time. This makes for a much more intellectually-oriented gameplay experience, in most tabletop games, including many board games and pen-and-paper RPGs. On the other hand, videogames can process things in real-time, meaning that there is a stronger emphasis on internalized skill, rather than just explicit analytical skill.
Since these engage two different mechanisms of mental processing, game designs can greatly differ between these two media. Incidentally, I think this difference in mental processing is related to my post about how players often approach computer-based WRPGs vs. pen-and-paper RPGs.
Only at a very basic level.
This is like saying that playing the piano and the organ are similar; yes, learning basic finger technique such as articulating each note cleanly is useful, but the kinds of technique you need to apply to the each instrument differs significantly.
On the organ, the force you use doesn't matter at all, and notes persist only as long as you hold them, and you also get multiple keyboards to work with, as well as instrumentation changes in mid-piece, and sometimes you cross two keyboards with one hand. On the piano the impact of finger on key is everything (it controls dynamics and quality of sound), the notes start dying off immediately after impact, and you only have one keyboard (with much larger range) to work with. On the organ you also have a large number of pedals that produce their own sounds, which you use both feet to operate; they'll need to move around dexterously. On the piano, you generally only use one pedal, operated by one foot in a simple up-and-down, and it doesn't produce its own sound but just lengthens the sounds that you play with your fingers.
Also, writing music for organ vs. piano. The organ's wind-based nature does much better with a massive cluster of sound, sustained over a long period of time. Doing that on piano emits a messy blast with at best lots of reverb. On the other hand, the piano, being a percussive instrument, does much better with quick hits establishing rhythm, as well as cleverly articulated writing that might sound like a jumble on the organ if not written carefully. So "writing for keyboard" is basically similar but otherwise very different. Not to mention that piano is usually written on two staves for two hands and organ is usually written on three staves for two hands and feet.
I disagree; I can tell when an attack deals roughly 520 damage, when it's dealing, say, 510 once and 526 another time and then 523 a third time and 518 a fourth time.
The only question is exactly how you want to design your randomness regimes. Do you want it really random (such as 1d20) or less random (such as 5d4)?
Hmm, sounds interesting.
Based on my appreciation of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Kiddy Grade, I can tell you I appreciate heavily-implication-based storytelling, but to what extent, I still haven't worked out.