lertsenem

Musing about comparisons between #ttrpg, and #videogames.

I feel like one interesting difference is that, as a videogame designer, you have to come up with interesting solutions to any problem you present to your players, because no solution can exist outside of what you put in the game (caveat for #imsim maybe? but even then you have to make sure some solution does exist lest you'll just lock the game).

On the other hand, as a ttrpg DM building an adventure, you can (and maybe should?) put in obstacles without envisionning yourself how to bypass them, because your players will be the one coming up with clever (or, more often than not, bonkers and silly) solutions from the top of their heads.

Jan 6 at 3:01pmWeb
Show threadlertsenemJan 6
Of course you can also put problems with built-in solutions in ttrpg games, such as puzzle and stuff, but for some reason these often feel bad and clunky and contrived in my games, while they absolutely work in videogames settings.
Show threadDave?Jan 6

@lertsenem Someone taught me a guideline of having ~3 potential solutions to a TTRPG puzzle. The idea is if you can't come up with at least 3 then the puzzle might be too difficult and needs to be tweaked.

Of course, the players tend to find a secret 4th solution, sometimes to their own detriment.

My DnD players once successfully destroyed all the evidence and accidentally murdered all the witnesses in a murder investigation so now I lean on being more generous with bread crumbs.

Show threadBlind MapmakerJan 6

@lertsenem Interesting to think about this innate difference.

With TTRPGs I'd be careful about putting in problems to which you CAN'T (as opposed to DON'T) envision a solution. The latter is good practice since the plot should be able to deal with creative solutions.

The former is easier with social problems if you have a very well established setting and many NPCs the PCs can enlist/entice/badger for help, but even there it can go catastrophically wrong.

Or maybe I am wrong and it's easier with mechanical / physical obstacles where you can just wave your hands and say "Your last move made the apparatus click and now it works."

Nevertheless I usually try to have at least two possible solutions in mind - the more divergent, the better.

Show threadNorton GloverJan 7

@lertsenem
I was going to list some of the differences I could think of, but realized the worlds of TTRPGs and video games have gradually become more similar.

I was going to say videogames don't have modules and splatbooks, but most popular games on Steam now have tons of DLCs.

I was going to say RPGs don't have shovelware, but a quick look through all of the 3rd party D&D stuff on Drivethru disabused me of that notion.

I was going say RPGs generally aren't released in buggy, incomplete versions, but DriveThru keeps sending me updates for stuff in my library.

The biggest difference is really the money. A triple-A video game can cost hundreds of millions to create. I don't know what 5E cost, but it ain't that.