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The Trouble With Using D&D Rules In Videogames?
An anonymous reader writes "There's a new article on kuro5hin.org about the trouble with porting pencil and paper RPG games (such as d20 3.5) to RPG video games. One such rules-snatching video game is examined, The Temple of Elemental Evil. The article is also an introduction to a new RPG Standards Compliance system that is currently under development and will be online soon, in hopes of bridging the gap between computers and those lovable PnP evenings we all enjoy."
But I believe Knights of the Old Republic uses this sort of system internally. It's mostly hidden from the user (unless they choose to view it), and I had no problems playing the game. In fact, it was quite enjoyable. A good mix, I'd say.
Where are the cheetos?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Problem is that D&D's number-crunching sucks and instead of focusing on giving the player a thousand numbers to concern himself with, it'd be better to make a fun game.
If you're mostly into Hack & Slash, then video game D&D is workable. In fact, it's been around a long time: Rogue was released in the mid-80's wasn't it? Man, I still love that game.
But if you're mostly into grand sweeping epic storylines, or intricate political manipulative shenannigans, or just the camaraderies of hanging out at the gaming table, eating pizza & diet coke (or cheetos & Mt. Dew) and rolling dice and making bad puns or acting out like your character, then the computer version is very, very tame.
I can handle both styles fine though. THey both have merits.
BTW (off-topic) how many people still play older editions? I'm very much into old-school Basic/Expert D&D (those old boxed sets from 1981). That's what I started out with back in the day, and it's what I keep going back to for some reason. I know the new editions are technically better, but I just don't like 'em that much. *shrug*
not because of the AD&D rules being ported to a CRPG, but because;
1. It is extremely bug-ridden. Really *really* badly bug ridden. And abandoned too. No more patches. The publishers just don't care; they have made their money back already. Atari *suck*.
2. The designers appeared to have taken the original p&p module and turned it into a game with very little 'fleshing out'. Normally, when a DM buys a module and runs it as a game, they treat it as a framework. In TOEE all we get is the framework.
As an example of just how bad it is, a single rogue character can finish the game in about 30 mins with very little levelling up; all sneaking outside of combat is 'take 20'.
Every action you need to perform, every item you need to find to complete the game can be done from stealth (except one and that only leads to a non-combat dialog). If you know where to go and what to pick up the entire game can be completed with no combat. Period. Normally that'd be a good thing (eg the original Fallout, which can be completed *almost* without combat, by a 'talker'). But here, in ToEE, its only because theres no real storyline.
However, the ToEE game engine is potentially *awesome*; it faithfuly implements the AD&D rules. There is very little problem in this regard.
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For success they must roll at least an 18
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I played a good bit of pen-and-paper D&D back in the day. I remember ignoring most of the rules and dice rolls entirely. The biggest rule, was that all the rules were optional. D&D was about having a good time.
In computer games, the rules sometimes get in the way of the fun (see TOEE). Your character is more a collection of numbers than a person. Sure, you could play pen-and-paper like that too, but you would have to be pretty anal.
It still doesn't tell how Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is different from regular Dungeons and Dragons. I've asked around and no one knows. I'm starting to think nerds just made it up to sound smart.
"I'm playing Dungeons and Dragons."
"Oh yeah? I'm playing ADVANCED Dungeons and Dragons"
The whole idea of using tabletop RPG rules for video games is silly. Tabletop RPGS are designed in every way around the fact that the you can only generate random numbers by rolling dice, and human beings have to resolve everything: what made Rolemaster (or "Rollmaster" as we called it) intolerably slow in person would be completely invisible in a video game.
Tabletop RPGs today go out of their way to avoid rolling too many dice and looking up results on too many tables (things that are trivial for a computer). What makes games in person fun (aside from, you know, playing with other people) is the ability of the GM to improvise, which is essentially an AI-complete program. Thus, you end up with dungeon-crawls like "Temple of Elemental Evil," where the player's choices can be limited to the extent that it's possible to plan for most of them. (Or, you get a game like Neverwinter Nights, where - despite goods scripting - you bump against the artificiality of the world at every turn.)
Unfortunately, the article chooses to talk about AI bugs, scroll menu bugs, and other things that are entirely unrelated to the choice of the D&D ruleset.
If any of you are scratching your heads, trying to figure out where this text is from, it's from Summoner Geeks.
Figured I'd could save someone the trouble I just went through trying to figure it out...
The sketch in question was originally done by a comedy group called the Dead Alewives, an improv troup based out of Milwaukee whose webpage now seems to be defunct. The Summoner Geeks clip as linked above was actually a hidden feature in the computer/PS2 game Summoner, which could be accessed by pressing ESC (X) during the credits. The original Dead Alewives version had a very amusing intro, which was cut in the Summoner Geeks flick.
The audio is, however, preserved in its entirety in a flash animation called 8bitDandD.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
The article states that the main base for D&D wasn't Tolkien, but actually was Jack Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth.
If you read the novels it now looks like someone wrote that book with the D&D player's guide in front of him. All the funny magic items and weird magic system comes from there. While everyone agrees that Tolkien (and his Inklings group of which CS Lewis was also a member) had a great influence on fantasy, in this case it was Vance's fault
PS the article also fails to give credit to Dave Arneson (hope got the name right) as a co-creator.
be seeing you
Ironclad Security only exists when you have Chuck Norris on the shift. Do we really have to discuss this? (Plutonite)
not true anymore.
They designed the system so that you quickly get to about 8th level, and in 40 hours, you could get to 20th, reasonably.
However, level pails compared to a good, challenging, and exciting adventure.
Hell, if you played for 40 hour, only gained 3 levels, but had a kickass time playing, wouldn't that be alright?
The goal of the game should nopt be to make the character as high level as possible.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have to wonder if the writer of the article has ever really played D&D d20 (3.0 or 3.5) or AD&D/D&D from previous iterations. I suspect, given the tone early on in, that he was blinded by his personal gaming political prejudice.
The latest incarnation lends itself very easily to implementation on a computer. Heck, we've been toying with converting an old LPmud to d20 because for the first time the D&D has a standardized machanic that can be more consistently implemented.
The author even goes on to state that d20 fails to take a standard approach in monster/character creation. Clearly the autlor has no clue what he's on about. d20 applies the same ruleset to everything. You want to play a Minotaur sorceror. No problem. You want to play a goblin barbarian. No problem again. Heck, you want to play a half-dragon assassin, you can do that. Now try doing that with earlier versions of D&D. Good luck coming up with a standard approach.
If there is one complaint I do have about d20 D&D it is that it feels too much like a computer game. The rules are so clear on everything now, that it all feels too structured. I find that the game is geared more towards the video game generation and less to those of us who prefer role-playing.
...saying what should have been obvious to everyone.
This guy has no clue about RPGs (computer or otherwise). He doesn't know the history of roleplaying games. He doesn't understand Gygax's contribution. He uses buzzwords to hint at computer knowledge, but uses them in such a nonsensical manner as to suggest he's trying to get revenge on geeks for the jokes they've played on social science journals.
I mean, look at this quote:
What the heck does that MEAN? I mean, know a little about client-server architectures (having written an engine designed to power a server for a game which uses such an architecture) and I have no idea what he means by "server client." All clients have to have a server, but no client is a server. So "server client" is either redundant or contradictory. And in what sense is Temple of Elemental Evil a client? I thought it was a stand-alone CRPG which played on your home computer. And, even if it was a client in some sense, what would client-ness have to do with intepreting rules. Every time I have tried to port an RPG from paper to computer (quite a few times, both successfully and unsuccessfully since I first tried it with Traveller in 1979), "intepreting rules" was the job of the programmer. And how would that lead to "standards violations" from any standpoint, let alone a programming standpoint?
Please...
The subject of this article is of intense interest to me. As I said, I have been facing the issues of porting RPG rules to computers since 1979. My first RPG was published by a major publisher in 1982. I've been playing CRPGs since they first came out. I want an intelligent article to be written on the subject so we can all discuss something that is obviously of interest to many of us. But this is not that article.
The author makes some statements about Troika's development of ToEE. Maybe we could learn something from some of them. But how can we assume they have anything to do with the game's actual development, when they're surrounded by pure gibberish? What's his source for this inside information about the development? (Assuming we can figure out what is being said among all the buzzwords. I'm not even going to try to figure it out until I have some reason to believe it would be worth trying.)
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.