Sorry guys it has been a long while since I posted last. Various things have barred me posting including final exams, Christmas, and New Years. But now I am back and bringing you more discussions and reviews. And for my first post of the new year I have a discussion about something near and dear to me: tabletop RPGs and how they relate to video-games.
So for those of you who don't know what a tabletop RPG is I'll refer you to the image at the top of the post. Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most popular and well known tabletop RPGs in existence, so if you know about that then you know what a tabletop RPG is. For those of you who don't know what that is I'll give a brief explanation. A tabletop RPG is sort of a mash up of board game, RPG, and improv acting. Players create characters with stats, abilities, equipment, etc and play through a story created by another person known as the GM, or Game Master. Players use dice to determine if their character succeeds in a task, varying from spotting things to picking locks to hitting and doing damage in combat. If it sounds familiar it should, a tabletop is very similar to video-game RPGs.
However there is a key difference: tabletops are a tad more free form and loose in terms of what you can do in game. See in a video-game you're sort of locked in in terms of how much interactivity there is with the world. The game developers determine what all you can do in game and you can't do much else. In a tabletop the only limit is what you can imagine and what the dice allow you to do. So if you are interested in video-games it is not too much of a jump to try tabletop RPGs and you would most likely find them highly enjoyable. But now on to the real topic of this post: how tabletop RPGs relate to video-games.
There is a surprisingly large number of video-games that are influenced by or directly made using the mechanics of tabletop RPGs. Many of them are regarded as classics in the video-game industry. I'll name a few: Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Shadowrun for the SNES, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines and Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption, and the more recent Neverwinter and Shadowrun Returns. All of these are based off varying tabletop systems and all are quite good games. The video-game industry has a surprisingly long and lasting history with making tabletops into video-games. There is good reason for this. Tabletop RPGs provide developers with a world to work with and mechanics to translate into the game. With these pieces already worked out the developers can just tell their story.
With these factors in mind, the tabletop industry makes a perfect wealth of source material for making video-games. So the real question is why don't developers take advantage of this more? They used to do it all the time. There are tons of old Dungeons & Dragons based games and while games based off Vampire The Masquerade are few they are amazing. But these are just a few of the vast number of tabletops in existence. Tabletops can range from being high fantasy to dark horror to cyberpunk to steampunk to action/adventure to just plain old storytelling. There is such a wide variety of tabletop systems that you could probably find a tabletop system for any sort of video-game you would like to do. In fact there are tons of tabletop systems I would love to see made into video-games.
But this is also a two way street. You could just as easily turn a video-game into a tabletop system and it would be gloriously fun. It has been done before. There is a final fantasy tabletop system in existence. There is also a Pokemon tabletop that has been made and is quite fun. There are not really any others that I know of, but there are plenty of video-games that I would love to see be made into tabletops. For example, one of the DLCs for Borderlands 2 is basically a giant parody of Dungeons & Dragons, in which they made up their own tabletop system called Bunkers and Badasses. That would be a fun tabletop to play! And it could easily be done. Or how about a Legend of Zelda tabletop RPG? Exploring and creating your own stories in Hyrule? Playing as a goron, or a kokiri villager, or a Zora? There are so many possibilities for turning video-games into tabletops. In fact, if anyone could make these tabletops I would be extremely excited to playtest them.
In short, tabletops and video-games are very closely related. They are both highly interactive mediums of storytelling and can mix between each other very easily. Indeed, making more video-games based off of tabletops and more tabletops based off of video-games is a practice that should be encouraged and supported as much as possible. As gamers it is our job to show what we want more of by showing our support and effort in making these things happen.
Thanks for reading as always. I look forward to another year of discussion and review. As always leave a comment in the posts and requests for reviews and topics of discussion are always appreciated. Leave a comment about games that you think would make great tabletops or tabletops that you think would make great games!
Gamer out.
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