I got a debate that I think might stir up some shit. Has any

>>386426023
of course not, a good dungeon master is better than any AI right now

>>386426023
I'll stir this into a shit whirlpool.

Yes, most video games. They're actual games that challenge your coordination, decision making, and other shit. The majority of them are exercises of pure skill with little to no randomness involved. A nerd gets good at a fighter or FPS or whatever and their senses are noticeably, scientifically improved over non-gamers. Only losers play CRPGs that mostly play themselves.

D&D is just a framework for nerds talking together about theoretical situations that are influenced by unreliable probability in dice rolls. You don't need dice or D&D or any tabletop RPG system to *do* the things you do in imaginative roleplaying.
I don't need a copy of pathfinder, spending a few hours rolling up a dickass gnome wizard and organizing a game in which I sit down with a handful of other people to make up a story.

D&D is just a supplement to do some loose "cooperative storytelling". you can *teleports behind you* without it.
Video games are actual tools/toys that can and have presented steep competitive challenges and have even been a contributor for many technological advancements.

I like the kind of stories that D&D can produce, but I really prefer pure freeform roleplaying without any particular toolset like D&D.

In my campaign, our Nature Cleric has set up a marijuana/mushroom dispensary, the profits from which are in part donated to his deity's church. He gets his product from a tribe of 293 frog-people who are devoutly loyal to him, due to him and his party killing a green dragon that had been devastating their ancestral breeding grounds.

Our party's fighter is the legitimate heir to a small human kingdom, but has been exiled by his half-brother, who took the throne for himself and turned the kingdom into an authoritarian militarized aggressor. The fighter has taken steps to contact the resistance movement that persists in his now Nazified home, and the party plans to travel there and overthrow the dictator-king half brother.

Neither of these things were planned from the start of the campaign - they've come to exist over the course of our 17 month campaign due to decisions made by the players. In video games, you will ALWAYS be beholden to a script, to what is programmed. In true D&D, you have no limits. You can do whatever you desire to do, and you will see and experience your character growing in the way that you desire, as you have COMPLETE agency over your actions. No video game can give you that.

Video games are great, but they will never come close to allowing the freedom and possibilities that tabletop RPGs allow. A

>>386427678
How do you stop someone from going all "teleports behind you" without a ruleset? I'm genuinely curious, do you just say "no that shit wont fly its dumb". But then what if hes work that into his backstory.

Not really. A good game master can have a campaign with unique experiences.

Video games have players stuck on the campaign railroad. And even with what "freedom" they are given, the result is just a flavor text in the ending.

>>386428403
Not him but if you're an actually grown adult and not a retarded 12 year old it's actually quite easy. All you need to do is realise how much more compelling a flawed, imperfect character that fails from time to time is, compared to Mary Stu

>>386426023
There was huge Neverwinter Nights community. People hosted servers with live dungeon masters. It's basicaly DnD traslated to a clunky isometric pc game

>>386427678
>>386428541
I'm finding it incredibly difficult to not imagine as a drama class reject who can never find a group because he's too cool for resolution mechanics.

I fucking hate pen and paper shit like dnd rifts gurps or palladium so just about any video game is better in my eyes
and I fucking tried to like them for years

>>386426023
Dungeons and Dragons is an awful game that people only enjoy because it's fun to sit around a table and make up bullshit with your friends. Guaranteed if you enjoy D&D you would enjoy literally any tabletop game. The rules are a lazily slapped-together pile of shit. It's why /tg/ always regurgitates the "roleplay > rollplay" meme: actually interacting with the rulebooks is an exercise in misery, and even people who like D&D admit it's better to ignore them and just make shit up.

>>386428860
Well for a start, of those 4 games you listed only gurps is halfway decent. You played 3 bad games and one game that's only good with the right group

>>386428185
>>386428536
But wheres the fun? video GAMES are plagued enough with shitty bargain bin novel tier stories as is but atleast they have actual fun shit to do in them instead of RPing and then just saying you hit X with your fireball
I just dont see how that stands up to playing DMC on DMD or hunting in monster hunter or even 100%ing spyro or going for high scores on tony hawks pro skater
My best friend has spent every weekend for the last 20 years playing rifts and has spent the majority of his time after quitting wow(since mid cataclysm) RPing on facebook except without any of the stucture or dice rolls just going "my character which is a black 3 headed snake called chaos constricts peter pan breaking all of his ribs before firing a nova blast in his face disintegrating his head" only for "it was a hologram" tier shit to happen because the other person says so and the motherfucker will stay up till 3:00 am doing this
every
single
night

There's a computer version of DnD that lets you play over the internet. So in a technical manner, yes.

I have no imagination, so most video games are better to me. Except that no games have met the amount of fun I have autistically poring over fuckloads of PDFs to build characters with.

>>386428185
>>>reddit

>>386426023
>Has any video game ever surpassed playing Pen and Paper DnD?
Bloodlines. And oWoD is the better PnP system.

>>386429212
I'm fat, 32, virgin, perpetually unemployed, and I've been stuck with diarrhea for eight days now, but at least I don't have your problems.

>>386426023
Depends on who's running your game.

If the DM sucks or is just reading everything from source books and it's super dull. you might as well just play a video game.

Can somebody explain the appeal? It's just people sitting round the table and pretending to be warriors and mages while one of them reads a book, right? Don't mean to judge, but it seems like a definition of childishness.

>>386432714
On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand aren't you ever frustrated by the limited nature of video game RPGs? When confronted with a strict binary good/evil choice, don't you wish you could do something different? Don't you wish you apply your own creativity and imagination to create a more interactive experience between yourself, the characters, and the setting?

Yeah it's immature but so is going on a shitposting forum to nitpick video games

>>386428541
I play D&D and many other systems since over 20 years. And there will always, al-fucking-.ways be a few arechetypes of players that behave like annoying dicks. In the absolute majority of pen&paper groups you need a ruleset. I have seen great groups that were able to perform with a more free syste, but the majority of groups need rule systems. And they know it.

>>386432714
>Using your imagination is childish
Does growing up mean being dead inside?

>>386432714
I have seen my own personal Pen&Paper playing style over the years. When I started with 12 I was all about killing skeletons and orcs with sword and spell. Basically a childish power fantasy. As I have grown up, I have evolved as a player and so has my group. We went from wildly killing stuff to political intrigue, to exploring and experiencing a world unknown to us. In the end, Pen&Paper isnt childish per se. It is what you make of it, and as long as you have the imagination to immerse yourself in the game you can enjoy it at every age on so many different levels. And as you said "childish": I remember when people called cartoons and animation childish, Nowadays there is much adult stuff in many animated shows and movies. You just need to get this "but its for kiiiids!" fallacy out of your head.

>>386426023
Not an easy question to answer. People play DnD for different things. Some groups like rules light games with a lot of story. Other people like grueling hard fights without much more than "you're here to loot treasure" for story.