This vicarious gaming installment is going to be a bit different. For those of you keeping track Leah and I now have Rikku in our party and we have managed to traverse the Thunder Plains without Leah hurling a Dual Shock 3 into my flat panel. I’m not quite as interested in discussing that this week but instead I want to talk a little bit about how this experience is shifting my view of games and actually nerdery in general.
I’ve made it very clear in past installments of this column that I have largely felt RPG games were out of reach and too complicated for me to get in to. I’ve since realized that this isn’t true at all. What I need to do is look at RPGs from a different perspective than a fighter or a shooter. I’m finding if I view an RPG like a book the level of patience I have for figuring out the game mechanics completely shifts. Watching someone else play through one of these games made this abundantly clear. I’m much more patient with slow character development, complicated location changes or even ridiculous dialog in books. In games I’m used to writing this stuff off as secondary and useless because ultimately all I’m going to do is shoot people in the head.
The entire act of watching someone else play through a RPG is what clicked the comparison on for me. With Leah piloting the game that I thought was too complicated just became a slightly ridiculous story that I was compelled to follow. I was willing to understand the mechanics because I wanted to follow the story and the mechanics just come up so much that you can’t help but to learn them as you go. So what does all of this mean in a broader sense?
For me it means I’ve had a huge shift in the way I view games and activities that I previously saw as too complex or frustrating. Now, I want to play a newer RPG by myself and experience figuring out the mechanics and following the story as the game driver. I also find myself curious about Dungeons and Dragons, something that I previously thought was way over my head. I’m still in love with shooters, fighting games and puzzle games but I see a place in my gaming time for RPGs and potentially table top game experiences as well. I have to admit that this is in fact a little odd for me because I thought as I got older my specific gaming tastes would cause me to “specialize”. My thought was that as my time dwindled I would be forced to choice a specific subset of games (in my case mostly shooters and fighters) and ignore most things outside of my specialty. I suppose I thought my hobby would imitate my academic career….
It’s turning out that this isn’t the case for me. As I get older I see reasons for having wider gaming interests. The more diverse my interests the more people I get to talk to and interact with on a daily basis and the more folks I can drag into pieces of the hobby that I love so much. The only enemy to this is time. I don’t have the energy to stay up all night and I have a mountain of responsibilities outside of my job that I have to deal with. I suspect that in order to balance my rapidly diversifying tastes with my restriction in time I’m going to need some sort of time management strategy. I may need to once again invoke a schedule for my game time so I can actually get meaningful hours in on as consistent a basis as possible. This could be a sustainable plan if I could just convince my husband that watching me play an RPG is more interesting than the terrible horror movies he likes to spend his time watching.
I will probably revisit this point in future posts because this new mindset is ever changing. I am compelled to follow my newfound interests. This means buying more games in the name of science and exploration!
Dungeons & Dragons is a ton of fun with a good group and the right DM. 4th Edition is also a great time to get in to it. I heartily approve of expanding your gaming horizons!
Then, once you’ve conquered your fears?
Dwarf Fortress.
I have some thoughts related to this subject, but I’m not entirely sure what they are.
First, I think, is that computer “RPG” games are very focused on stats and discrete things. For example, if we take a look at Dungeons and Dragons, it too is very focused on stats, but there is a huge role playing mechanic that computers have trouble reproducing. Even with games that allow you to choose conversation responses, these usually seem to be restricted to “Oh hey, I’m good!” and “Oh hey, I’m bad!”
I can tolerate things in a book that I cannot tolerate in a game because the game is interactive while the book is not. Role playing is not merely following a story, but making it your own, and computer games don’t usually capture this very well.
western rpg’s, jrpg’s and table top games all have different styles of role play. In jrpg’s it’s usually a pre-set group of characters that you can change stats and equipment on, and if you’re lucky maybe change their names. The narrative is front and center and you are guided along its path.
In western rpg’s you can change sex/race/etc and the emphasis is more on trying to balance telling a story, with individualizing your character. Outcomes can vary depending on choices made but the overall plot stays the same.
Tabletop rpg’s are kind of the middle point. You have your quest, and the quest has certain plot elements and dungeon layouts that are preset by the dm. Because you can improvise dialogue and quests are custom built you have a bit more freedom than in a console/pc rpg. But mostly it’s the illusion of more freedom. Because you can say what you want, and do what you want in the setting but you’re still bound by game rules and whatever story the dm is telling through the quest.
tl;dr: console/pc rpg’s capture “RPG” just fine. It just depends on what you’re looking for when you want to role play.