Warning, this post has links to TVTropes. You have been warned.
When Microsoft released their Xbox, and afterwards the Xbox 360, they had a very wise look at marketing. They weren't looking to compete with Nintendo and Sony, the other major consoles, they were looking to compete with entertainment. Movies, books, television, anything you could spend free time and money on, Microsoft saw as competition. This strategy obviously worked brilliantly for them, as they've defeated both Nintendo and Sony, and in many ways removed the idea of exclusive titles from the minds of video game players. This article isn't about that though, rather, it's about the basic differences between the fun of Table Top RPGs and videogames, as I see them anyway.
As I said in my last article, Table Top games and my interest in them spilled out of my interest in videogames, in a rather indirect way but if I'd never had that NES, I don't think I'd ever make the jump to being a Dungeon Master. And when we were younger, table top games were just seen as another thing we could be doing. When we got a new videogame, whatever table top game we were playing, be it Star Wars or Dungeons and Dragons or even Dragon Ball Z took a back seat while we devoured the new thing. We always came back to Table Top RPGs though, even when new videogames would eventually become old news. Often we felt a need to restart with new characters, but we always went back. There was something in those games you just couldn't find in videogames.
Back in the days of the N64 and prior, I might have said one of these elements was imagination. Graphics were quite limited, while the Nintendo 64 looked amazing at the time, going back to it, it can be hard to remember how that was ever acceptable, let along considered cutting edge. A Table Top game however, is mostly pictured through imagination. This is supplemented by various bits of art, and novel like descriptions from the game master and players, but as the old cliche goes, the power of the imagination is unlimited. However, we didn't really start playing Dungeons and Dragons until the Game Cube and Play Station 2 had cozy spots in our homes, so it was something more then that.
One of the hardest things about teaching people coming into the RPG hobby is one of the first questions they ask. "What can I do?" It seems simple and easy, but the answer is "Anything". "Anything... like can I flap my arms and fly away?" Usually the answer to that is no, it depends on the world you're in. The more qualified answer is that you can "try" anything, and it's up to a third party, either the Game Master or the dice, to determine if you succeed. Timid personalities will let other people in the game dictate what they do. They might here "you're the fighter, you just hit things." While the person saying it means well, they're trying to express that hitting things is what they're good at, many players will hear this, and think like a videogame. Their creativity will shut off, and they'll treat it like a game with only an attack button.
But that ability to do literally anything is one of Table Top gaming's greatest strengths over videogames. New GMs are often flustered by the way that their players will prod at their worlds. Trying to find places where things will break, killing the big bad when he's supposed to just be taunting them or giving them exposition or trying to convince one of the big powerful NPCs to deal with a problem so the players don't have to are just the most common examples. And while these are irritating, especially when they're done just for the sake of breaking the game, they can end up making it much better.
In fact, I've of the opinion that the pervasiveness of video games into pop culture have probably harmed the Table Top gaming scene, especially for new players. There's a lot of overlap in the hobbies, they both cater to power fantasy enthusiasts, and both put you in direct control of the "hero". However, videogames require very strict rules, after all, the entire world is defined by them. Table Top games can be a little more loose, it might make a better story if you're able to talk down or team up with the villain instead of having to kill him for example. Most videogames won't allow this option, even more open RPGs like Mass Effect can only bend the story so far. Saren has to die at the end, you can influence how that goes down and what his final moments are like, but you can't save him and join his crew, nor can you decide to help the Reapers for the next part. That's fine for a videogame there are only so many branching choices a game can offer, but it can put Table Top players in a mindset that they have to go to the villains base, kill his minions, then kill him and it makes any other outcome seem like a failure state.
Speaking of Mass Effect, as videogames have gotten more and more complex, with better and better graphics, one of the main advantages that Table Top games are thought to have now is the ability to tailor a story to a group. Part of this is that the Game Master, who has the most control over the direction of the story, has instant feed back from the rest of the group. He can see the eyes rolling, or hear the players making fun of his tropes, and if he's savvy, turn them around. Imagine if mid way through Mass Effect 3, the game suddenly realized that you were tired of all the fetch quests, or that you thought the Star Child plot was dumb, or what you really wanted was another villain like Saren, and it was able to turn around and give that to you. The new ending Bioware released was seen as pandering, but in a Table Top RPG you can change things around before the players even realized anything changed at all.
Episodic gaming, which seems to have more downsides then upsides these days, may be a way to start to fix this. Unfortunately, Mass Effect, while not episodic, was presented in three segments, and my opinion, as well as most of the opinions I've heard believe that each installment was a little bit worse than the last. The first introduced a new, unique science fiction world that included bits of Star Trek, Star Wars and Buck Roger without feeling too much like any of them. It introduced an interesting political system, a great Bioware villain and while the twist wasn't the best the company has ever given us, it set up and dangerous new threat to deal with in future installments. It was both a perfect contained story and it got you excited for the next episode.
The second episodes tried something new. The focus was on the characters, and while two of the old crew returned, they mostly focused on a new cast. This was rather hit and miss, most people found Miranda caustic, and Jacob boring, but all of the characters were "strong" in their way, and it all built up to a very novel, and in my mind very exciting ending. A suicide mission, where depending on how loyal your crew was and what duties they were assigned, some would likely not come back. Unfortunately, the main "plot" is absolutely terrible, and it will often interrupt your bonding experiences with the crew due to its "urgency". It's a rant for another time though. I'll admit, I never actually played Mass Effect 3, but everything I heard was that they threw the best parts of 2 out like they almost never happened, kept the terrible "villain" and had a poor ending. Rather then listen to their audience (or the portion that agreed with me that the characters were strong but the story weak) they went ahead with their story and... well they lost at least one customer in me.
As a Game Master, I'd like to say that I'd never let a group of players experience Mass Effect 3 if their reactions to 2 were cold, and that I'd for sure change the ending if it got the reaction most people gave it. That said... sometimes you just want to try and make a story work, you think it'll be good in the end, and over-commit, and no one likes the game. That's what happened with Mass Effect. Hopefully, more episode based games like the Walking Dead coming out in the future will take story feed back as seriously as game play feed back, and videogames can start to become a great interactive story telling medium just like table top games.
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