[v01dlight]

There's no end of people making video games that are direct attempts to convert D&D to a digital format. Take the new Baldur's Gate for example[0]. All the same spells present, digital dice rolling, etc.

Personally, I say let things fall to the medium that best suits them. If D&D is sufficiently complicated rules wise that it is actually more fun to have software take care of that so you can just focus on the tactical combat and scripted story choices, then the video game is probably your best bet! There are many other TTRPGs where this is not the case, and where any digitization would take away much more than it would add. Such RPGs are elegant enough rules wise that they do not slow down play at the table, and you can spend 99% of your time just relishing each other's madcap plans and imaginative descriptions of things.

[0] https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/27/21156082/baldurs-gate-3-di...

[ajuc]

CRPGs are no competition, there's no comparison, really. When you do anything outside the box CRPGs just break, while a good game master will run with it and that's how the best stories happen. We found a boss we didn't wanted to fight. Our spellcasters decided sending a construct with 2 bags of holding to put one into another near the boss will destroy it. It worked, but it also created portal to another dimension, and when we tried to recover the hostages 2 player characters got thrown into that dimension. The rest of the party had to pay a powerful mage to recover them with our best magical weapon. Half a session (several hours) was spent arguing over who owns the magical weapon and if it's good idea to give it away :) They almost fought in game :) Meanwhile my character stranded in another dimension decided to become a priest (I was a barbarian before).

These kind of stuff never happens in CRPGs - it couldn't because there's infinite number of possible open-ended solutions to any problem. If AI can improvise them I'd argue it's as good as a Turing Test.

BTW complicated rules aren't that big of a problem - there is a compromise between CRPGs and TTRPGs - and it's computer-assisted TTRPGs played over internet. The most important advantage is that you can play with people from other continent, so it's much easier to find players. But the computer-assisted part is also making the rules much less of a problem. You set up your character (all the items, feats, skills, abilities) before the game, and when DM wants he asks you to roll the attack, you click and the system rolls the dices for everybody to see, adds the needed modifiers, calculates the damage (including critical hit if needed etc. ) and shows how much hitpoints you lost.

It's faster than doing all this stuff physically and beyond the initial setup and occasional level-up it makes complicated rules more bearable.

[smush]

> If D&D is sufficiently complicated rules wise that it is actually more fun to have software take care of that so you can just focus on the tactical combat and scripted story choices, then the video game is probably your best bet!

No kidding. I've been writing a WinForms program that is basically a combination character progression tracking, inventory management and basic battle system for Star Wars Fantasy Flight Games.

Why? Do we not want the person-to-person experience? Hardly! We need more wetware space for strategy and thinking of creative ideas, so we need to free up the parts for calculating what number of ability vs proficiency dice and what talents may mess with the roll etc.