4 ms·

I don't really understand this - to me, DnD without rp is just a bad facsimile of a video game. Wouldn't you rather just play skyrim? Or Baldur's gate in coop m

I don't really understand this - to me, DnD without rp is just a bad facsimile of a video game. Wouldn't you rather just play skyrim? Or Baldur's gate in coop mode, if you still want to be social?

mrob 1y ago
The only video game I can think of that seriously tries to replicate the experience of playing old-school D&D is Nethack and its forks. Nethack goes to great lengths to allow for player creativity, even at the cost of game balance. E.g. there are monsters (cockatrices) that petrify on touch. If you kill one, it's possible to pick it up (wearing gloves) and instantly petrify other enemies by hitting them with the corpse. This isn't without risk, e.g. if you fall into a pit trap while attempting this you'll end up petrifying yourself, and enemies can do the same to you if they're capable of wielding weapons and are wearing gloves. There's a simulationist approach to its design that goes beyond other games. There's a community saying: "the dev team thinks of everything." The problem is this isn't actually true. They certainly think of a lot of things, but it's still only a finite, predetermined set. All the clever tricks are common knowledge now. Anybody can read the Wiki and learn how to win without much difficulty. Nethack becomes boring once you understand how it works. If you want to play it but haven't yet done so I recommend avoiding spoilers as much as possible (the cockatrice thing is so well known that I don't think there's any real problem sharing that one; the game was designed around less extensive pre-Wiki-era sharing of knowledge, not zero sharing). Real D&D doesn't have this problem. A human DM can adjudicate improvisation without needing to program it in advance, and do this while maintaining consistency in a way that LLMs still fail at. Well-run tabletop RPGs are still the best games available for allowing player creativity.
BlueTemplar 1y ago
(BG3's local co-op is worse than the one that its predecessor : Divinity : Original Sin 2 had, which had dynam8c split screen, where the split screens merged when both characters were close enough to each other.)
nkrisc 1y ago
If I wanted to play a video game, I'd play a video game. I'm not talking about video games, I'm talking about tabletop games (and even board games). Besides, video games a fixed, finite experience. Very few video games (if any) can do what a tabletop game can do (basically anything you all want to do). Isn't DnD with roleplaying just a bad fascimile of a theatrical performance? Wouldn't you rather just put on a play instead of play DnD?

I don't really understand this - to me, DnD without rp is just a bad facsimile of a video game. Wouldn't you rather just play skyrim? Or Baldur's gate in coop mode, if you still want to be social?

mrob 1y ago

The only video game I can think of that seriously tries to replicate the experience of playing old-school D&D is Nethack and its forks. Nethack goes to great lengths to allow for player creativity, even at the cost of game balance. E.g. there are monsters (cockatrices) that petrify on touch. If you kill one, it's possible to pick it up (wearing gloves) and instantly petrify other enemies by hitting them with the corpse. This isn't without risk, e.g. if you fall into a pit trap while attempting this you'll end up petrifying yourself, and enemies can do the same to you if they're capable of wielding weapons and are wearing gloves. There's a simulationist approach to its design that goes beyond other games. There's a community saying: "the dev team thinks of everything." The problem is this isn't actually true. They certainly think of a lot of things, but it's still only a finite, predetermined set. All the clever tricks are common knowledge now. Anybody can read the Wiki and learn how to win without much difficulty. Nethack becomes boring once you understand how it works. If you want to play it but haven't yet done so I recommend avoiding spoilers as much as possible (the cockatrice thing is so well known that I don't think there's any real problem sharing that one; the game was designed around less extensive pre-Wiki-era sharing of knowledge, not zero sharing). Real D&D doesn't have this problem. A human DM can adjudicate improvisation without needing to program it in advance, and do this while maintaining consistency in a way that LLMs still fail at. Well-run tabletop RPGs are still the best games available for allowing player creativity.

BlueTemplar 1y ago

(BG3's local co-op is worse than the one that its predecessor : Divinity : Original Sin 2 had, which had dynam8c split screen, where the split screens merged when both characters were close enough to each other.)

nkrisc 1y ago

If I wanted to play a video game, I'd play a video game. I'm not talking about video games, I'm talking about tabletop games (and even board games). Besides, video games a fixed, finite experience. Very few video games (if any) can do what a tabletop game can do (basically anything you all want to do). Isn't DnD with roleplaying just a bad fascimile of a theatrical performance? Wouldn't you rather just put on a play instead of play DnD?