Quote from: Warthur;741291I think you are broadly correct. I think there's scope for a small business to succeed running a virtual tabletop - Roll20 seems to be riding high - but nothing on the scale that it was ever really worth Wizards dabbling in that business.

Barring some fad, tabletop roleplaying in its original form will never challenge the newer forms of roleplaying that have sprung up. It require too much of an active involvement of participants.

Quote from: RSDancey;741294Yes, I agree strongly.  This is why I think that Ron Edwards hit the nail on the head when he started asking questions about why RPGs didn't give narrative authority to the players.  

The ability of the tabletop game to alter it's rules, it's environment, it's characters and it's challenges on the fly to tell great stories collaboratively is something the MMOs are decades away from achieving.

It is also a good place to stand if the network is reduced to Storytellers, some Character Actors, and a greatly reduced contingent of Power Gamers and Thinkers.

Roleplaying Games didn't give narrative authority because the game was never about the narrative. It about the EXPERIENCE of being in another place as a character. Do you go to the Grand Tetons to create the story of you hiking. No you go there to experience the grandeur of the landscape. The story comes afterward when you tell all your friends about your experience.

That the point Ron Edwards, you, and far too many miss.

There are people by the power of their voice alone can transport their listeners to another place and time. You don't need a stage, or film, or a screen to make this happen. The words alone are enough.

With tabletop role playing, Gygax and Arneson develop a way for a person make his listener participants. To actively explore and experience the world that exists in only in the imagination of the referee. By just using words, pen, paper, and dice.

Now if a gamer is not happy, like Ron Edwards, perhaps what going on is that his gamemaster is presenting an experience he doesn't like. Just like people are all excited about hiking the Grand Teton only to find out that the mosquito, the cold nights, and hard ground to sleep on really sucks for them.

Quote from: Warthur;741291I think you're 100% right about the Power Gamers and the Thinkers, there's more or less nothing a tabletop game can offer character optimisers and combat tacticians that a computer game can't equal or do better at.

Permanent consequences? Obviously MMOs tend to lack permanent death of monsters, permanent quest completion, and other world impact. But they also lack permanent death of Player Characters (at most there might be permanent equipment loss), so the sense of accomplishment for success is very different and much more limited than for an RPG.
To the extent that I'm a 'power gamer' I get my satisfaction from winning, when failure is a real possibility. MMOs don't seem to have failure as a possibility, you can't ever be permanently defeated, the heroes can't fail and see the dark lord conquer the world unless it's a pre-scripted inevitable event.

edit: The Warcraft type MMO is also very weak on political shenanigans, on PC/NPC roleplay, and even PC/PC roleplay. Thinkers may not care about roleplay, but they may well care about the ability to manipulate the political environment as well as the battlespace.

Quote from: RSDancey;741294Yes, I agree strongly.  This is why I think that Ron Edwards hit the nail on the head when he started asking questions about why RPGs didn't give narrative authority to the players.  

Because it breaks immersion. MMOs also tend to be terrible at immersion, for the opposite reason. With an MMO I as player can't have the impact on the world I as my character should be able to, everything resets. With narrative games I as player have far more world impact than I as my character should be able to.

This is where traditional tabletop RPGs can shine; I as my character can do exactly as much as he should be able to. That's what I play for.
This is why linear railroads are problematic of course, that agency gets taken away.

Edit: Agree with Rob Conley above. BTW Paizo's success with Pathfinder seems built mostly on appealing to charbuild powergamers in a post-MMO world, so clearly there is still a demand there. From things Lisa Stevens has said she doesn't seem to be a crunch-oriented powergamer type herself, but her company's game caters to them more than any other game on the market, just as 3e did previously.

DM Vince's Retoclone (Mazes & Minotaurs?) claims to be the only Wotc certified retroclone IIRC.  He said he contacted Wotc legal thru back channels and they issued him a letter stating that his game is not in copyright infringement.  I am inclined to believe him.  

This does not mean that the others are lawsuit proof (they may be judgement proof though).

Cheers

Quote from: RSDancey;741294Yes, I agree strongly.  This is why I think that Ron Edwards hit the nail on the head when he started asking questions about why RPGs didn't give narrative authority to the players.

I agree to an extent, but I also think there's a legitimate place for groups who prefer the traditional division of narrative authority (players have authority over the PCs' decision-making process, GMs have authority over how the world reacts), not least because in my experience not many groups actually want an equal division of narrative authority. Lots of people prefer to occupy their characters and explore the GM's world or scenario, I think in part because that way it feels less like the gameworld is designed by committee, whereas worlds and scenarios designed by an individual GM will reflect their individual tastes and vision and consequently feel more distinctive and characterful.

I think a strength of TTRPGs that CRPGs (and particular, MMOs) don't touch goes beyond player impact on the world.  While the GM retains narrative authority, there is a collaborative narrative building that goes on in TTRPGs that allows players to influence the direction the GM takes the narrative.  The high level fighter that builds a keep doesn't only change the landscape around him (physically, politically, and militarily) but also drives the direction of the narrative into whole new areas (defending the keep, power politics, etc.).  Even on a smaller scale, the GM even tailors or tweaks adventures based on player goals (type of loot, fulfilling a character arc, etc.).

Wayyyy off topic. But did the original Neverwinter AOL MMO have permanent character death?

Yeah I'm much more a power gamer than any other style and I like rpgs much more than MMOs.  After playing MMOS for years you never really care about your characters or your stuff or even your kills. It's just a perpetual ladder climb.  Eventually you realize the reason you like a particular MMO is because of your online friends.  And those folks just don't count for as much as real life friends.  The live rpg sessions are more dynamic so more challenging.   The main reason I still MMO game is for schedule reasons.   It's an acceptable second place.

VTT play is a better second place for me.  It more closely resembles live play and all the participants are thinking human beings with the ability to adapt.   Fantasy Grounds does most of what Ryan wants but at a high programming cost for the GM.  I hope they work on fixing that.

It didn't take long to get back to Forge la-la-land, I see.

Quote from: Bunch;741366VTT play is a better second place for me.  It more closely resembles live play and all the participants are thinking human beings with the ability to adapt.   Fantasy Grounds does most of what Ryan wants but at a high programming cost for the GM.  I hope they work on fixing that.

Only if you have to make a ruleset. Otherwise it just a matter of filling out forms and dropping images in the right folder.

Quote from: estar;741369Only if you have to make a ruleset. Otherwise it just a matter of filling out forms and dropping images in the right folder.

Yeah I don't get the whole vtts are nicht gut thing; I mean, I'm 500, 800 and 3500 miles from people I care about greatly and wish to game with as well, none of us want to get our game on via WoW for the very reasons Dancey outlines, and yet, per him I have no good alternative.

Fortunately facts are on my side.  Witness not only one but several good, and well-supported VTTs.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;741370Yeah I don't get the whole vtts are nicht gut thing; I mean, I'm 500, 800 and 3500 miles from people I care about greatly and wish to game with as well, none of us want to get our game on via WoW for the very reasons Dancey outlines, and yet, per him I have no good alternative.

Fortunately facts are on my side.  Witness not only one but several good, and well-supported VTTs.

Agreed and while it is tech you need to learn, the way you use it is seamless with a given person's tabletop roleplaying hobby. You can go from VTT to a in-person session and back again without missing a beat.

I personally think it is the one of two best kind of tech to have a positive impact on tabletop RPGs.

The other? Tablet devices, and i point to things like PDF readers, the Crawler's Companion, Diconomicon, and Inspiration Pad Pro (random tables). Sure some people like books over silicon, would prefer to manual look up a table to roll on. However if you put that person side by side with the person using the tablet. They are doing the same damn thing, just using different means.

The only thing I am a bonafide Luddite on is the use of physical dice over a dice roller program while physically at the table. I really want to run a game of the DCC RPG just so I can use the Crawlers Companion, it that good.

Quote from: estar;741369Only if you have to make a ruleset. Otherwise it just a matter of filling out forms and dropping images in the right folder.

Oh and the newest version of Fantasy Grounds has a generic core ruleset that is about as sophiscated as roll20 current character sheet (i.e. not very but can record basic info).

Quote from: thedungeondelver;741370Fortunately facts are on my side.  Witness not only one but several good, and well-supported VTTs.

I got the sense he was talking about VTTs as a business, and not just as a small business but one on the scale someone like Hasbro would be interested in.

Fantasy Grounds, Maptools, Roll20, etc., are cool and all, but I'm guessing their combined user base is rather negligible.  And it's a business where you have to compete with people just using a google hangout and calling it good.

If we look at some recent RPG kickstarters, we may notice a trend of successful products with 500 or less backers.  That's still more than enough to pay for the printing and distribution of a game for someone who has it has a secondary income.  So if these 500 purchasers want to play, they either need to recruit a group locally (and the odds are, there will be no one locally who also bought the game) or they need to meet up online using the same social media channels that brought the backers together in the first place.  For these smaller games, something like google hangout with roll20 is a fantastic option (and perhaps the only option) to actually play the game.

I imagine a lot of OSR games are similar in that finding people online is the only way some people can play them.

All of this is far, far too small for Hasbro to go after and a horrible prospect considering the people might just opt out of a Hasbro VTT subscription and just play D&DN via Google Hangout.