: Juho Julkunen < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it : I agree with you that the support for roleplaying is the important : thing. Practically any game can be roleplayed, because roleplaying : chiefly takes place in one's head. Not every game allows the p_layer_ to : effectively express their role, nor offers sensible responses from the : gameworld, however. : : The degree of support is higher in tabletop than computer RPGs, : obviously, Being unfamiliar, this isn't obvious to me. Can you explain just a bit *why* it's obvious to you? The what exactly puts the roleplaying into a game question. : I disagree with the notion that no CRPG supports roleplaying to any : degree.  I also don't believe that there is an obvious dividing line : where quantity of support becomes a quality of its own.  I find the : idea of a degree of role-playing friendliness as more useful than : division in RPGs and not-RPGs. Which seems sensible enough; much like, you can use a phone to remotely attend a meeting, but a whole wall video screen and bit electronic whiteboard and such consistutes quite a bit of support. So what are the analogies to whole wall viewscreen and big electronic whitepard , etc, etc, etc, that can be incrementally added to better support roleplaying, as those better approximate a physical meeting? Or possibly I'm totally missing your point. Wayne Throop   This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   http://sheol.org/throopw

: Juho Julkunen < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it : Yeah, many CRPGs, especially console RPGs, are more adventure games : with stats than role-playing games. That doesn't mean that there are : _no_ CRPGs that can meaningfully be called RPGs, even if they have more : limitations than table-top games. So... one can't play a role in an adventure game? Or even... one doesn't play a role while playing an adventure game? Wayne Throop   This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   http://sheol.org/throopw

: Will in New Haven < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it : I would say that the p_layer_s were playing an RPG but the MMORPG, that : was doing no more than delivering messages, wasn't the RPG exactly. It : was more like the table that the p_layer_s were sitting at. OK, that makes sense to me.  But isn't it also sensible to call the one a table-top role playing game and the other a computer role playing game ? Wayne Throop   This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   http://sheol.org/throopw

: Will in New Haven < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it : I would say that the p_layer_s were playing an RPG but the MMORPG, that : was doing no more than delivering messages, wasn't the RPG exactly. It : was more like the table that the p_layer_s were sitting at. OK, that makes sense to me.  But isn't it also sensible to call the one a table-top role playing game and the other a computer role playing game ? In a sense. It is just that I have never seen anyone do the latter.

The other part was the claim that CRPGs (or specifically, MMORPGs) don't involve roleplaying at all.  That they could in theory, but that they don't currently, in practice.  Plus for example, Neverwinter Nights comes close.  What is missing in most, and NWN has a small bit of, the absense of which leeches all the roleplaying out of it?         A lot of it depends on what you define as:         Game         and         Roleplaying, yes.         If we take game to mean ruleset/mechanics provided , then part of the problem is that tabletop RPGs run on a CPU called a human brain, and the output of the game is determined by the rather complex software and data available in that CPU. CRPGs run on the much less capable, and vastly less flexible, computer CPUs.         NWN, and some other games, allow me to make custom content for them

: Juho Julkunen < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it : Yeah, many CRPGs, especially console RPGs, are more adventure games : with stats than role-playing games. That doesn't mean that there are : _no_ CRPGs that can meaningfully be called RPGs, even if they have more : limitations than table-top games. So... one can't play a role in an adventure game? Or even... one doesn't play a role while playing an adventure game?         Not in general. Unless you play the role of, say, Harry Potter when you read a Harry Potter book.