RPGs Must Leave Their Tabletop Roots
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Pen-and- paper (PnP) games are an obvious place to look for answers to these questions these social and imaginative exercises distinguish themselves from the unruliness of play-acting through structures like inventories, experience and hit-points which fix fantasy with statistical representation. For many years, such mechanisms and the needs of videogames have dovetailed neatly. More than this, they have become such a visible and celebrated part of the roleplaying genre that the term '˜RPG' has itself begun to denote these peripheral features to the exclusion of the core idea of '˜playing a role'.Spotted on RPGWatch.
This is changing. Looking back over RPGs from the last few years, a trend is evident. Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and, more recently, Mass Effect all pursue a more direct, visceral means of representing action, searching for an immediate feedback that circumvents the prominence of PnP mechanics. Increasingly, the RPG is relegating tabletop conventions to the background in favor of the ultimate goal: complete immersion.
