Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 jaime_wolf Aug 09, 2006 21:29:54	Increasingly, I see people referring to video games to further their point. I'd like to try to set something straight. Playing video games, even D&D-esque video games does NOT make a person incapable of roleplaying in D&D. This is similar to the Stormwind Fallacy, which explains that roleplaying and character optimization are not mutually exclusive. There is nothing that should suggest that a person can't play Diablo II and play D&D and roleplay effectively at the same time. The notion that the "young generation" aren't playing "right" due to the rise of video games is ridiculous for many reasons. 1) There is no "right" way to play D&D, the closest thing to a "right" way is playing in such a way that everyone enjoys themselves. 2) Playing video games does not preclude roleplaying any more than playing D&D prevents one from being a decent person (to refer to a stigma many D&D players are familiar with). 3) Assuming that one is right simply because one older is prejudiced and bigoted. In summary, please refrain from playing the video game card any time you disagree with someone. Simply saying that the game has gone up in smoke because of all of those people playing video games and then playing D&D "wrong".
#2 kayoz_majick Nov 07, 2006 23:57:28	I would like to offer an opposing opinion to your argument/statement; 1) People who play video games (but never have played D&D Tabletop style) are going to have a much more difficult time doing more than hack-and-slash because video games by necessity tell you how to play your character with few exceptions. You gain levels and equipment mainly by going out and killing anything that moves. If you can't (or if the game warns you not to) then you aren't supposed to kill it as it is integral to the game or because it is simply an NPC, or you are in a town (read "safe-zone"). 2) Roleplayers (D&D tabletop style playing) can move back and forth between the 2 styles easily and effectively as they are used to actually thinking for themselves. There is no preprogrammed script of who you can or cannot kill. Even the DM's painstakingly detailed adventure will have to be edited on the fly by the decisions of the players going to a location not expected, or trying to kill someone for looking at them funny. I, myself, started with table top roleplaying and then moved into RPG's. Occasionally, I find myself frustrated with the lack of versatility of a video game compared to D&D. There is only so much that you can do in a video game without actually developing sentient AI and having it run a module of D&D on a video game. (I don't doubt this will happen some day, but not for years to come.)
#3 jaime_wolf Nov 08, 2006 20:15:41	A Counter-Counter Argument: 1) People who play video games (but never have played D&D Tabletop style) are going to have a much more difficult time doing more than hack-and-slash because video games by necessity tell you how to play your character with few exceptions. What you say about video games is true, however, it should not, in any way, that a person cannot roleplay. The fact that I read science fiction doesn't mean I can't read Shakespeare without thinking of it in terms of science fiction. It would be folly to say that it's not a bit harder to get used to roleplaying for some when coming from video games, but it's certainly not impossible and many have no trouble with it at all. 2) Roleplayers (D&D tabletop style playing) can move back and forth between the 2 styles easily and effectively as they are used to actually thinking for themselves. Most people understand the idea of thinking for themselves pretty well, and you really don't give enough credit to the freedom of video games. Obviously, it's not as sophisticated as the freedom of a tabletop roleplaying game, but there are many games that are quite open-ended (see Morrowind for an example) and many do require you to think for yourself. Sure there are limits in these games, but D&D is limited to a certain degree as well, you don't just do whatever you want, you have to try to do things within the ruleset. But, I digress. The meat of this quote was addressed in the response to the previous question. I, myself, started with table top roleplaying and then moved into RPG's. I mean no offense, but the fact that you, or anyone else, started with tabletop roleplaying games and moved to video games doesn't mean that it's impossible for someone to do the opposite. As mentioned, it may be harder, but it's never impossible (and some are naturally inclined towards it).
#4 highbulp Nov 08, 2006 22:03:43	1) People who play video games (but never have played D&D Tabletop style) are going to have a much more difficult time doing more than hack-and-slash because video games by necessity tell you how to play your character with few exceptions. You gain levels and equipment mainly by going out and killing anything that moves. If you can't (or if the game warns you not to) then you aren't supposed to kill it as it is integral to the game or because it is simply an NPC, or you are in a town (read "safe-zone"). I grant that video games are limited in scope. However, a person's inability to think outside of the video-games basic commands is not the fault of the video game. If the person can't think enough to make a creative decision other than "Attack" "Magic" or "Item," then you really can't blame the video game console for making them that way (at least I don't believe you can. Video games do not make people stupid!). The person is just uncreative, so will have a difficult time roleplaying even without the video game. 2) Roleplayers (D&D tabletop style playing) can move back and forth between the 2 styles easily and effectively as they are used to actually thinking for themselves. There is no preprogrammed script of who you can or cannot kill. Even the DM's painstakingly detailed adventure will have to be edited on the fly by the decisions of the players going to a location not expected, or trying to kill someone for looking at them funny. So you agree that while they may not be used to the free-form storytelling of D&D, they can get used to making creative decisions, right? So it's just that there's a bit of a learning curve--once they get it, they can easily move back and forth between the two styles. Indeed, if roleplayers can play video games, the two can't be mutually exclusive (which was the OP's point). They are different styles of gaming, but one isn't doing anything to hurt the other.
#5 kayoz_majick Nov 10, 2006 0:15:29	I can see where you are coming from on all of your arguments posted above. I agree with you to a point. I guess that I wasn't really offering an argument, but more of an elaboration on your argument; There will be a huge learning curve when sitting at the table for the first time. When you tell someone when they first play, that they can go anywhere and do anything they want (subject to the DM and the rules agreed upon) that they really can go anywhere and do anything that they want on said stage. I have brought many, many people to play for the first time (both a blessing and a curse, as some of you know) and after a few sessions (some more some less, averaging I would say about 5 decent 2-4 hour sessions) they start to grasp what D&D is all about; an impossibly huge stage of the mind with the primary actor seated around you, driving the plot laid down by the DM. Mind you, most of the people that I have initiated have been RPGers to a greater extent. No, it is not impossible to learn D&D after only playing video games- it is just much more difficult.
#6 zombiegleemax Nov 11, 2006 3:17:02	This is the same argument that watching violent movies makes kids bring guns to school. Sure, I am using an extreme example but it still applies. Some people are more creative than others, that is true. All it means is that those people will be "better" at playing D&D, though I agree that the only real purpose of D&D is to have fun. And the claim that video gamers are trained to think in a linear fashion is pretty insane as well. Video games can not be as open ended as a pencil and paper RPG, but that doesn't train the players in the least. For all you unbelievers out there consider this, before there were video games people watched movies, television, and read books. They all have linear storylines that the reader/watcher has no control over. I don't hear anyone complaining that people who watch movies don't RP right. In fact, video games have one distinct advantage over movies and the like, the players can make choices. You may be limited between two lines of dialog or whether or not to shoot someone, but even a binary choice is one more than books and movies give you. Making the statement that people who play video games are bad at roleplaying is completely ridiculous. It's like saying that people who play football are bad at math. While there are certain trends that may exist the two activities are mutually exclusive. In the end I believe that no matter what your background, you have a very good chance at playing D&D correctly, that is to have fun. People will play the game differently though, and I think that is part of what makes it a great game. If you still think that video gamers make bad D&Ders, so be it. Making generalized statements about a group of people is prejudice. You're not judging us on our race or sex or religion, but our games. Don't be a gamist. As for solution? If you really don't like the way video gamers play, don't play with them. You always have a choice to get new players.
#7 Tempest_Stormwind Nov 11, 2006 12:30:51	Just to lend support to Jaime, I started in video games and later moved to D&D. I started with flight simulators (the first video game I played was Afterburner in airport arcades), and moved on to puzzle games (Lemmings in particular, which I still play to this day). Adventure games came next (the ORIGINAL Prince of Persia games, Legend of Zelda, Metroid). It wasn't until about 1997 that I discovered console "RPGs" (via Final Fantasy 7, FF4, Chrono Trigger, and so on), which stole my life for a number of years. Eventually, I moved back to slightly more active games (the Tales series of RPGs, Super Metroid (there was a time when I was ONE MINUTE behind the world record speed run for that one)) and eventually to nothing but platformers (I played every single Mega Man game, including the X series, in one summer). When university hit, I was pulled into fighting games (I'm still a tournament-level player with Ivy in Soul Calibur 2, and my skills at every Super Smash Brothers game made to date are rather well-known), while still dabbling with slower-paced RPGs. I even picked up a few FPS titles at the time, although only one of them managed to keep my interest (and that was Republic Commando, mostly because it had a stronger focus on tactics and story than most other FPS games at the time). I've made it a point to pick up obscure video games that happen to be pure *fun* or just plain interesting -- Katamari Damacy comes to mind immediately, but so does Beyond Good & Evil. Currently, I own a lot of video games, and play several of them frequently (particularly Zelda games (go collector's edition disc!), SSBM, SC2, Metroid Prime (which I consider an Adventure title more than a Shooter), and old SNES RPGs), and I've even used some of them as inspiration on certain D&D games -- one world I worked on could be thought of as a cross between Beyond Good & Evil and The Wind Waker. ...wait, what's that? D&D and video games? Yep. Turns out I got into D&D a little under ten years ago, shortly after I discovered Final Fantasy Tactics. I didn't have the best DMs when I started -- one was little more than a rules machine (meaning we had to come up with the story entirely on our own), while the other one of my teachers was so heavy into RP he REFUSED to let the rules for social interaction have any bearing on the game (you try playing a convincing liar (because you want to play the silver-tongued rogue) when you can't actually lie convincingly yourself, and you'll see the importance for this sort of thing. Kind of like how saying "you, the player, can't throw fireballs, therefore you can't play a wizard", isn't it?). Most of the local DMs are closer to this last one, in that they're so heavy on the RP that it becomes impossible to play anyone but yourself. And I ask, why call it a roleplaying game if you're shoehorned into the same role you play EVERY SINGLE DAY in the real world? Hell, even Final Fantasy -- where you don't so much play a character of your design as go through a semi-interactive story -- has more flexibility than that. And for the longest time, I found more solace in video games than I did in tabletop gaming, because the local DMs sucked. (They still do, incidentally... I've met ONE good one, who has since moved away.) Under those conditions, I probably never would have enjoyed D&D at all. But then I got involved with a single DM (in England, actually... having met through a mutual friend on a forum. Viva OpenRPG!) who was absolutely AMAZING, and showed me the wonders of the game. If one of the players hadn't committed suicide (she was a star of her school's basketball team and had her legs destroyed in a car accident), we probably would still be playing that game. ...Rest in peace, Melissa. Needless to say, though, until that happened, I learned about the wonders of true roleplaying there, with the freedom to do whatever I wanted mechanically (within reason). It was a blast. I'm currently both a heavy roleplayer and a powergamer. I make complex characters with rich backstories and personalities, who happen to be very good at what they do. I enjoy acting out their interactions with the party, and their capability in combat. I work with both my fellow players and my DM when creating the mechanics AND the personality of my characters, and the results are rather impressive (imagine a team that not only feels like a true *team* rather than a ragtag group who met in a bar, and happens to compliment each other mechanically. From what I gather, this is actually *rare* on these boards, and yet I wouldn't play D&D any other way). I know how to keep the two separate, and I also know when to use the best elements of one in the other (i.e. my mechanical knowledge of D&D allows me to spot synergies and nifty tricks in video games, and my knowledge of a broad array of VG mechanics and storylines gives me inspiration for certain elements of whatever homebrew stuff I write -- a few areas of Untapped Potential actually started out that way before becoming distinctly D&D, actually). I wholeheartedly support the premise in this thread. I would like to add my own addendum to it: People have subjective experiences. They will prefer whichever things they find more fun. Therefore, for the "old school"* crowd who want to convince people to come to D&D from video games, you have to make D&D as appealing, if not more appealing, to that crowd than the video games themselves. It's not inherently superior to video gaming, and even if it was that wouldn't guarantee it being more fun (hell, card games don't have the billions of polygons you'd find on a PS3, but they're still played worldwide...). Maybe the reason that these people aren't finding D&D fun is because you're trying to appeal to yourself, as opposed to appealing to them. ...AFTER they're hooked, feel free to expand on it from there. I am not a very good DM. I'm not creative enough on the fly to play countless NPCs on demand and adjust the world to react to my PCs. However, I did manage to hook a few Final Fantasy nuts on D&D quite simply. How did I do it? Simple. I removed a few of the obviously broken things (i.e. things that the CO board has known about for ages), allowed the PCs (and significant NPCs) to be gestalt characters, and banned multiclassing. I helped the players with character creation as well, although I had them come up with a unique "class" name for each of their combinations (the best of which, in my opinion, was a soulknife/warlock gestalt, focusing on movement and stealth invocations, who called his character a "commando"). I then played them through a short military campaign, where they were the elite warriors sent to do the impossible so the main army could advance. The game was a bit more linear than classic D&D (focusing on concrete goals, but I left the exact tactics completely up to the PCs), and with slightly more shoehorning in character creation and leveling up (similar to FF in that regard; you're merely "level X" and that's your powers for the level). I focused on flashy effects, and encouraged the PCs to act as if the environment was real, not a tileset. Essentially, I took the Final Fantasy railroading paradigm, and gave them freedom of movement within it. And of the four players I had, three of them now love D&D and have moved on to become stellar players under other DMs. (The fourth was a plant, actually -- a friend of mine who already liked D&D and typically DMed. He was in the team to show them, firsthand, what *roleplaying* should feel like and to demonstrate the true freedom of action. The other players, being used to video game hand-holding, needed a leader to rally around, and my friend provided them that.) If you present Ye Olde Schoole Dungeons ande Dragones, withe yonder tavern and the Princesse of the Northe, or just another slow-paced Tolkien clone, or something without clear goals, as an introduction to D&D... then expect the players (who are used to video games) you're introducing to dislike D&D. Quick corollory: The friend I mentioned above, who played the party leader? He's first and foremost into D&D for the social experience. He was a tabletop gamer before picking up his first video game controller. The only video games that he'll play on his own are all strategy games -- and most of those are merely online versions of board games (guy's a genius at Settlers of Catan, for instance). We can, occasionally, hook him into playing Super Smash Brothers, but that's for the social element, not anything else. He flat-out refuses to play console RPGs, claiming they must all suck after playing D&D. (Note: This is NOT true, and most have more compelling characters or stories than those I've seen with most local DMs... including his own, actually). Just as providing D&D "as-is" to a VG-only crowd will be problematic unless you make it compelling, providing video games to a hardcore D&D fanatic will prove equally futile unless they appeal to what he likes. ...That reminds me. I need to see if I can hook him on Final Fantasy Tactics. In conclusion, I fully support Jaime_Wolf here. There's nothing about one that makes it impossible to play the other. (Only the initial hook phase might be difficult -- and if you claim *that's* impossible, you're just not using your imagination.) *I'm under the firm belief that if you describe yourself as "old school" and honestly think it's a good thing, you're deluding yourself. An 'old school' only exists when something new (the 'new school') is perceived to exist -- note that it doesn't actually need to exist, just be perceived to exist -- and the 'old school' is defined by their opposition to the 'new school,' as opposed to any single unifying characteristic of what the 'old school' might be. A better term for this sort of behaviour is "grognard." Think about that for a second. Back in D&D's early days -- Keep on the Borderlands, Against the Giants and the like -- pretty much all of it was hack-and-slash, occasionally with the odd tongue-in-cheek adventure on top of that (Expedition to Barrier Peaks, anyone?). Now, most of the people who claim to be 'old school' and bemoan the 'new school' complain about modern min/maxing, claiming the 'old school' was about roleplaying. This is what I meant -- DEFINED as opposition to the 'new school' as opposed to defining yourself under some characteristic of the 'old school'. You are not "the old ways were good for these reasons" -- you're "the new ways suck for these reasons". Logically, that does not present a case at all, meaning even if you successfully convince someone there's no reason they should behave as you after the fact -- which leads to MORE arguments. I find it odd that not many people notice that.
#8 zombiegleemax Nov 13, 2006 23:17:41	People who play video games (but never have played D&D Tabletop style) are going to have a much more difficult time doing more than hack-and-slash because video games by necessity tell you how to play your character with few exceptions. You gain levels and equipment mainly by going out and killing anything that moves. If you can't (or if the game warns you not to) then you aren't supposed to kill it as it is integral to the game or because it is simply an NPC, or you are in a town (read "safe-zone"). Do you know why I don't play pen-and-paper RPGs like little hackfests? Because video games are so much better at it. Pick up a really well-designed computer game, try it for a while, and you'll see just how much faster and more tactically nuanced the combat engine is. Playing D&D just for killing just plain doesn't compare. Occasionally, I find myself frustrated with the lack of versatility of a video game compared to D&D. I have a long explanation of how boundaries and "rails" work and they exist in all games, but it's rather too involved for me to type it out. Suffice it to say, every game has limitations. To enjoy that game, you have to understand how the limitations work and work within them. In D&D, you don't go running off to do something random that strikes your fancy when the GM has just spent five hours preparing this really big dragon battle, either.
#9 quenya Dec 03, 2006 23:43:44	I love Halo 2. I could play it for hours and hours on end and still want more. And, I’m not all that great. I also love playing paintball, again I can play for hours until muscles ache and the mornings welts have become full blown bruises some ten or twelve hours later. At paintball I am actually really good. While playing paintball I use my own body, which I am pretty familiar with. I can use cover, crawl, roll, climb, and run. Of the guys who I paintball and play Halo with, I am the "worst" at halo and arguably the "best," possibly luckiest, paintballer. The argument that I can't roleplay because I play Neverwinter Nights is just as asinine as saying I can't take cover or run in a game paintball because Halo doesn't function in that way.