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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
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              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
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        <p align="LEFT"><img src="../images/beak.jpg" width="196" height="246" align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8"><b><a target="" href="../corner/index.html"><font size="-1">Beaker's 
          Bent</font></a><font size="-1">:</font></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"><br>
          CRPGs are not RPGs</font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Rich &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:rich@loonygames.com">Beaker</a>&quot; 
          Wyckoff</font></b></font></p>
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        <p><font size="-1"><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've been 
          designing games professionally for three years and thinking about designing 
          them for most of my life (when not playing them). I tend to present 
          strong opinions, but I want to make it clear that these are only opinions, 
          and I don't want to come off like some of the famous names in the industry 
          who seem to think that selling a lot of copies of a game and getting 
          attention from the press makes them an expert on everything about making 
          games. My tenet is that if you claim to know everything, you're missing 
          out on the fact that there's always something new to learn, some other 

          opinion which is worth considering, some experience you are still lacking... 
          </font></i></font><i></i> 
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="../images/letters/t.jpg" width="26" height="40" align="LEFT"></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">his 
          week I'm beginning the <b>Trespasser</b> recovery process - yes, that's 
          right, as far as I can tell we've shipped (if you've ever worked in 
          games, you'll understand how these things can be a little undefined 
          at times). Please though, no more letters about ship status and ship 
          date, there will be an announcement to all the regular gaming news sites 
          as soon as things are official.</font> 
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Anyway, the two games I've 
          most been wanting to play after finishing Trespasser are <b>Half-Life</b> 
          and <b>Baldur's Gate</b> - especially <b>Baldur's Gate</b> (<b>BG</b>). 
          I'd really been hoping the timing would work out just right, and <b>BG</b> 
          would appear on shelves shortly after we got done, but things don't 
          seem to be going that way. So to work the <b>Dungeon & Dragons</b> (<b>D&D</b>) 
          cravings out of my system, it's time to spew another plethora of acronyms 
          and look at the differences between computer roleplaying games (CRPGs) 
          and traditional pen and paper roleplaying games (RPGs).</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now I don't have a whole 
          lot of RPG experience under my belt - I played some <b>Call of Cthulhu</b> 
          and <b>Shadowrun</b> at a convention when I was a kid, and more recently 
          part of a GURPS campaign and some <b>D&D</b>. So RPG purists, feel free 
          to leap down my throat if I somehow misrepresent your favorite pasttime. 
          However, I feel I've played enough and had good enough RPG experiences 
          to understand what it's about.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">If you haven't played a real 
          RPG, and you can convince yourself that you won't be forever doomed 
          to geek loserdom if you ever utter the phrase "My cleric bashes the 
          Orc with his +2 mace," I'd urge you to find a good group of players 
          and try (it helps if they're friends). RPGs, <b>D&D</b> especially, 
          form the basis for a great number of today's computer games - think 
          for a moment how many games you've played, even those far removed from 
          tunnels and trolls, which use the phrases "hit points" and "experience 
          points." Yet once you have seen what a good RPG is really all about, 
          you'll be amazed at what pale shadows CRPGS are of pen and paper RPGs.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The major facets of a good 
          RPG are not the character building procedure, not the combat system, 
          not the number of monsters or spells in the rulebooks, but rather the 
          interaction between player characters (PCs)and non-player characters 
          (NPCs) - usually played by the games master (GM) - and the freedom of 
          choice the PCs have in pursuing the plot. These two features can be 
          summed up as Talking and Improvisation. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It is entirely possible to 
          play an RPG without any rules whatsoever - I have seen sessions of <b>Cthulhu</b> 
          run without ever once using any dice, and in <b>Paranoia</b>, the GM 
          is actually encouraged to disregard the rules altogether and just make 
          rolls randomly to make the players think the rules are being used. An 
          RPG really consists of a group of players imagining themselves in a 
          different world, and interacting with each other and the NPCs they come 
          across (the Talking). The rules and character statistics and spells 
          and experience points and all the trappings are there to provide some 
          traditional, rules-based gameplay, to give the GM a chance to think 
          of the next plot twist, and so that players don't feel like they are 
          being cheated by the GM if their character gets killed or loses items 
          or is otherwise inconvenienced in some way. (Except in <b>Paranoia</b>, 
          where the GM is expected to fudge rules and PCs are expected to die 
          - over and over again. <b>Paranoia</b> is great...). The Improvisation 
          comes in whenever the players fail to pick up on some clue the GM has 
          been beating them about the head and neck with, or when they decide 
          that they don't really want to accept their primary quest right at the 
          beginning of the adventure. Players can easily steer a campaign in a 
          completely different direction than the GM was originally planning, 
          and that's perfectly all right - maybe at some point they'll all end 
          up joining forces with the ultimate bad guy, and the rest of the campaign 
          will consist of fighting off the goody two-shoes who try to stop them 
          - that's exactly what an RPG should be all about.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Compare the Improvisation 
          and Talking in an RPG to a typical CRPG: even in <b>Fallout</b>, which 
          had some of the most varied NPC reactions I've seen in a CRPG, you always 
          played the same plot, dealt with the same people, and heard many of 
          the same words. In other CRPGs, you hardly have any choices in the talking 
          at all, going all the way to the extreme of <b>Final Fantasy VII</b> 
          where every single event is pre-scripted. CRPGs are all about the battle 
          system and spell effects and character building, and finding the next 
          better sword or armor, right to the extreme of <b>Diablo</b>, where 
          the conversations might as well have been, "go kill things and bring 
          me the mushroom," and, "do you want to buy a sword?" It is especially 
          rare to have great opportunities for improvisation in a CRPG. Even the 
          games which let you play a bad guy usually end with you achieving the 
          same goal that a good character sets out to achieve (like <b>Fallout</b>).</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I believe that it is impossible 
          to bring the real RPG experience to computers for a single player any 
          time soon. Computers simply aren't good at Talking or Improvisation. 
          However, multiplayer games have a lot of potential to create an RPG-like 
          experience. I don't believe that <b>Ultima Online</b> (<b>UO</b>) or 
          any of the current online CRPGs succeed at this, however. The Talking 
          is there (though in my opinion, not satisfactorily - human players slip 
          in and out of character, and computer NPCs react in all the typical 
          robotic ways), but the Improvisation is not there in a big enough way. 
          If a bunch of PCs in <b>UO</b> (there go those acronyms again) get together, 
          they can't decide to cast a spell to summon a world-ravaging demon which 
          wipes out Britannia, or to go into a dungeon, clean it out permanently, 
          and turn it into a new city. There is no provision for such major, game-altering 
          plans developed by players, because <b>UO</b>, just like a single player 
          game, is too much of a CRPG - unless the creators decide to make something 
          like this possible and enlist players to do it, it isn't going to happen 
          at all.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">As an RPG fan, I don't even 
          really like massively multiplayer CRPGs, in fact. They are missing what 
          I feel is the third important aspect of an RPG: Heroism. Online CRPGs 
          allow much greater freedom in Talking, and a little bit more in Improvisation, 
          but in exchange, they turn into a world where a great number of people 
          are essentially just low-level serfs. In an RPG, every member of the 
          party is going to reach god-like levels of power, and have a major impact 
          on the world of the game. Yet current online CRPGs require players to 
          spend a good deal of time at low levels, hoping they don't get whacked 
          (if the world allows player killing), and often having to essentially 
          beg for equipment and help from upper level characters. Many players 
          won't even have the patience to stick around long enough to ever become 
          very stoked. It's real hard to feel like the savior of the world when 
          you're killing chickens while someone else is nonchalantly offing dragons. 
          To me, your average online CRPG can be summed up as a standard CRPG 
          with a chat riin - and has all the usual downfalls of a chat room: large 
          numbers of illiterate fools, a huge amount of useless and immersion-breaking 
          chit chat, and a lot of unfriendliness.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think current online CRPGs 
          at the very least need GMs who are active participants: these GMs shouldn't 
          just be customer service reps there to fix problems and boot people, 
          but rather active participants with the godlike powers pen and paper 
          GMs have to create monsters and magic items to keep the game interesting 
          for players. Some online CRPGs have GMs who do this, but only to a limited 
          degree, and rarely for all players at all times. What I'd really like 
          to see is something more like a computer-assisted online RPG - every 
          group of 5-10 players should have a single GM, and ideally should adventure 
          completely separately from the rest of the players most of the time, 
          so that in their world they can be the biggest heroes and save the day.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Give the GM even more powers 
          so that they can essentially construct the world as the players pass 
          through it, and here you have a true RPG but on computers, where you 
          can have all the animation and complicated battle scenes and graphics 
          that you don't get in a pen and paper RPG, but still have all the freedom 
          and immersion that you don't get in a CRPG. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's 
          <i>Dream Park</i> series give a good description of a live action version 
          of a computer-assisted RPG (there are in fact already non-computer assisted 
          RPGs already happening, but if you have trouble uttering the words, 
          "my cloak of fire protection wards off the fireball," dressing up like 
          an elf and bonking your friends with a rubber sword is probably far 
          beyond the pale for you). An even better example of the computer-assisted 
          RPG is Melissa Scott's <i>Burning Bright</i>, which is pretty much exactly 
          how I imagine this kind of game should work (once we can all jack into 
          cyberspace, that is).</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now even though I don't really 
          like online CRPGs and have already noted how different CRPGs are from 
          RPGs, I have to say that I really do like CRPGs and <b>Baldur's Gate</b> 
          remains my most anticipated game of the season. What CRPGs offer up 
          very well are character power growths which take forever to achieve 
          in pen and paper RPGs, many more combat situations than you could ever 
          hope to resolve on the tabletop, and most importantly, visuals for all 
          those things you can only see in your mind when playing a traditional 
          RPG. This is why I think that <b>Final Fantasy VII</b> (<b>FFVII</b>) 
          is an exceptional CRPG, even though a lot of American reviewers gave 
          it a bad rap for not allowing any choices in dialogue, and for throwing 
          up seemingly countless random battles. In <b>FFVII</b>, you feel like 
          a hero more so than in almost any other game - give me a single set 
          of well written, almost excruciatingly melodramatic dialogues over half 
          a dozen greetings based on your Personality rating in something like 
          <b>Fallout</b>. Allow me to go from dealing 12 points of damage to dealing 
          4000 regularly rather than from 10 to 100. Give me increasingly pyrotechnic 
          spell effects, and obscure secrets which I'm probably going to have 
          to play through a second time with a hint book to find instead of a 
          game which can be gone through in 20 hours even if you don't have a 
          walk- through. Give me a hundred different weapons and armors and allow 
          me to slay a thousand monsters, and I'll be happy.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It's a losing proposition 
          to keep hoping the latest CRPG can be like an RPG. Online games may 
          someday have everything that RPGs give, but for now, embrace CRPGs for 
          what they are, and RPGs for what they are. I leave you with the statement 
          that the most fun I've had with any pen and paper RPG was with <b>Warhammer 
          Quest</b> (<b>WHQ</b>) - a very simplified, fast playing RPG notable 
          for randomized dungeons playable in three or four hours, and a set of 
          different collectible characters who gained a set of unique and wacky 
          powers as they grew through the ten levels they could attain. <b>WHQ</b> 
          had NO Talking or Improvisation of any kind - it was like a much more 
          interesting version of <b>Diablo </b>on the tabletop - essentially a 
          boardgame CRPG. And it was a hell of a lot of fun. So I guess when it 
          comes down to it, while I like RPGs, I really love CRPGs.</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp; 
        <p align="RIGHT"><i><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">- 
          Rich "Beaker" Wyckoff is a game designer on the game <b>Trespasser</b> 
          for <a href="http://www.dreamworksgames.com">DreamWorks Interactive</a>.</font></i></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><i><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">.</font></i></p>
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    <td><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
      Beaker's Bent logo illustrated by and is &copy; 1998 Dan Zalkus. Beaker's 
      Bent is &copy; 1998 Rich Wyckoff. All other content is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
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