How can I briefly describe the limitations of contemporary Computer Role Playing games comparing the traditional Tabletop Role Playing games.
I am working on a presentation and I need to highlight the limitations of CRPGs in terms of narrative flexibility, story development, re-playability and player experience comparing regular Tabletop roleplaying games. However, I am finding it difficult to make it clear and concise.
Also can anyone give a a simple/brief example that clearly hightlights those limitation in more obvious way?
Best Answer
Sure, here's a concise differentiation.
In computer RPGs, every course of action that is allowable must be specifically coded for, potentially at great expense. At the single scene level, in a fairly open world game like Fallout: New Vegas, you can go into a shop and attack the shopkeeper, or buy from him, or conduct a canned discussion with him. You can't offer to go into business with him, or threaten him, or ask to marry his daughter, as these options haven't been coded in advance by a programmer, provided with art and sound, etc. But in a traditional RPG using the same setting, you could, as the only restriction on the players' activity is the mind of the present gamemaster and activity of the players; the game adapts to become what they all want to do instead of vice versa. Infinite scenarios are thus created using the same "engine."
What is true in one scene is even more true in the long term. The game's narrative, even in an open-world game, is constrained to the metaphor of the game and what it intends the player to accomplish. In the best CRPGs, a player can wander where they want to, and maybe pick one of several paths, and adapt based on "good vs evil" moral choices or the like. But they have strict limitations based on the need to control the narrative, including constructs like "the door that cannot be opened until a quest condition is met," or "the NPC that cannot be talked to until a certain phase in the game." A CRPG doesn't support many alternate paths and doesn't learn based on the player's choices. In a tabletop RPG, the prostitutes would stop getting into your car after a couple of them get killed, whereas in Grand Theft Auto they just keep lining up.
Of course, the tradeoff is that instead of extensive visuals and recorded dialogue and twitch-pleasing combat, all the activity occurs in the mind's eyes of the participants - but it can be done anywhere, anytime, with practically no gear or expenditure.