I haven't been playing RPGs for a long time. I think my first one was Final Fantasy X, which I played 3 years ago. Back then, I would have never thought I would be sucked into what I'm doing now.
The game Dungeons and Dragons has a negative connotation to people that don't play it. What came to my mind about the game before I played it was just a bunch of fat or skinny guys around a table, dice scattered everywhere, soda or beer bottles, small figurines and a small, smelly room. And all that would happen is that the characters would go into dungeons and slay minions and dragons using spells and swords. People would joke about other races and classes and the only language spoken was old English.
Now that I have played it, my imagination was not too far off. But I never imagined how much fun it could be.
Reaching back to my early Pokemon days, my favorite attack had always been Metronome. I loved the ability to use a random move that you only knew about once it was used. This same fascination stretches over to D&D. In a phrase, you could call D&D a gambling battle. And I love it. Now, I know I will not be a gambler or anything like that in the future, but I love rolling a dice and seeing if my attack will hit, or if I will hit with a lot of damage or very little. And after playing more Final Fantasies and other RPGs, I am now a complete stat junkie.
On top of this, the simplified way that I play (thanks to Stephen's Dungeon Mastery) boosts the importance of story and removes needless factors like food and weight and such. Stephen almost promotes breaking rules, in a sense. The attacks make sense, and even though to a normal DM the technique would seem near impossible, Stephen adds a little nudge to give every move a potential record in the Hall of Awesome. Let me recall what happened last night:
Our party was near a cliff. One enemy remained. This enemy was a giant tentacle monster that hovered just off the edge of the cliff, out of reach of any melée attacks. The monster had been hit earlier by a bow and had 2 arrows sticking into it. Levi's character is a monk with an ability to fly as many moves as he can move. In this situation, Stephen allowed Levi to fly on top of the monster and stand on the arrows as he attacked, then make an acrobatics check to jump back onto the cliff before the monster fell. Levi rolled a d20, hit the monster with 21 crit damage, killed the monster, and safely landed back onto the cliff. Sheer pwnage.
I hope I get my chance soon.
If you really want to experience the power of dice/randomness in D&D, you should try (or at least take a look at) the Sorcerer w/ Wild Magic. When they wake up, they have to roll a d10 to determine their elemental resistance for that day. Their first attack roll on their turn determines whether they get +1 AC or a free saving throw. Many added effects for their spells depend on whether you roll even or odd. If they ever roll a natural 20, they slide their target 1 square and knock it prone. If they roll a natural 1, they have to push everyone within 5 squares of them 1 square away. It gets even more insane if you take the Wild Mage paragon path. The effects and range of some of their spells depend on incremental rolls. If a Wild Mage rolls a natural 1, sometimes, they swap places with their target. FOR NO REASON.
ReplyDeleteIt's terribly, TERRIBLY important to understand that, when comparing D&D and Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy is not at all a RPG. They're adventure games. There's no role-playing whatsoever going on. I know that just sounds like semantics to you, but it is a vital gap. Here's why.
RPGs are, by nature, unscripted and character-driven. Any video game is inherently not a RPG because it is literally 100% scripted. It can't not be, otherwise it would cease to function (and cease to be fun, to choke out a pun (and let me take this time to make a dumb rhyme)).
The reason this is vital to understand is that in D&D your role as the player is not to "beat the game" (I know we've had a discussion like this some time in the past), but to assist in creating a narrative by acting out and otherwise dictating the actions and thoughts of your character. Some people have a knack for it while others don't, but everyone, I've noticed, tends to enjoy it, or at least enjoy watching it.
Of course, D&D is still a game, so it still has rules, and in that way it has to be scripted somewhat. But the only parameters of that script are that your character can do whatever they would like to do (within possibility). Whether or not they succeed is up to the dice, but you're always welcome to try almost anything. That, and the Dungeon Master's attempt at giving the setting some sort of circumstantial structure.
But the ultimate point is that the script is not the structure like it is for a video game, it is merely a guideline. It can be bent, broken, and shattered into a million pieces, usually causing the DM to be very frustrated and have to rethink the entire story, but the game itself goes on in whatever direction it can, as long as the DM and his players are committed to its progress.
You slightly exaggerate my willingness to break certain rules. A lot of DMs, even highly experienced ones, choose to ignore rules on encumbrance and hunger and thirst, because they want their campaign to feel more cinematic and less gritty. Well, also, they're rarely relevant. Even the most heavily encumbered characters rarely carry over 100 pounds, and no mentally healthy DM would tell his players that the heroes suddenly collapse and die of malnutrition right in the middle of town just because they never mentioned getting anything to eat. Encumbrance will matter if your character is trying to carry an unusually heavy object (usually as part of a puzzle or something), and I might get snippy about thirst if the party happens to be in a place completely devoid of any water source. Still, these are merely details that can be used or ignored at my discretion. In the grand scheme they basically count for nothing. It's like when we were little and we thought that when it was commercial break, the actors would go to the bathroom. It's also really pathetic to survive an encounter with the Remorrhaz and then end up freezing to death mere days after you lay it to rest on the permafrost. Call it a rule of drama, suspension of disbelief, detail overlook, whatever.
Ok, I see the difference now. But there is one common mechanic with video game RPGs and D&D: stats. How strong your character is compared to others. I like those differences. It makes people very unique, and you use those unique stats to benefit the party in a certain way.
ReplyDeleteI just like the way you DM. I guess I was just focusing on one mechanic, but you're very story-focused and character-developing. I'm not saying this as "compared to other DMs", just in general.
Well, the major difference between Final Fantasy and D&D is that D&D is a roleplaying game where you actually play a role. Which is kind of a crucial element. I think Final Fantasy (etc) should adopt a different genre title.
ReplyDeleteWhat's really frustrating is when your main character is better than everyone at everything, while the awesome secret character has the worst level 99 stats out of the entire party.
ReplyDelete