I may have just rambled around my main point without actually making it, so one more quick crack here lol.
I think when I am totally engrossed by the story or the performances its somewhat easier to set aside the mechanical considerations or eschew stuff like 'roll/check/roll again' in the service of a hightened entertainment factor, but its only when the story/performance aspect gets strained (as tends to happen when say replaying the same thing twice) that I cling even harder to the mechanical stuff and the systems in place. That's when you really need the dice/rng.
Since D&D is this weird marriage between playacting and wargaming, at least when the former starts to fall apart the latter can step in to keep it going at least on the level of tactics and crawling.
I can recall a few conversations with table top players who kind of derided Baldur's Gate or any crpg really as an inauthentic D&D experience. Especially when NWN came out and there was a serious attempt to find a bridge between the crpg and the table top. Like "Baldur's Gate, isn't that just a game about fireballs though?" with a snear. But it always struck me, because that game was fun enough that even after beating it and hearing the story 100 times, it still totally delivered on the mechanical side. Meaning it managed to be still be a fun game to actually play, even if the DM was passed out drunk or having an aneurysm tick/dimensia episode, endlessly repeating themselves on the story set up. It just worked on that level of 'ok if everyones checking out, I'm just going deep dive on stats and tactical builds or equipment minutia.' But I really can't remember ever saying to myself, 'these dice are totally trash! Why didn't that spell land? Is it the rng? Maybe it's the rng? It must be the dice.' Like that just never happened, cause it didn't have a chance to. They filled it out in other ways from the RTS type angle, which on the TT would come down to either imaginative story telling or just rolling dice. Emulating the table top or the cast die is an ideal to aspire to, but there are other ideals too, and if I'm being honest it was the art books and the miniatures and finally the computer games that brought me into D&D more than the actual TT and dice game materials. The original BG saga brought a lot of people on board that way too. I don't know that D&D is my really my favorite dice game hehe. I also struggle with how I feel about most my other favorite dice games when they are translated onto the computer. Like I think there must be an elegant way to do it, but I haven't really seen that done yet. At least in D&D the roll flow is better and we have the novelty of the many sided die. D6 dice games like Axis and Allies are hitting on whole'nother level of computer dice pain. At least the rng gripes couldn't get that bad here, even if that really was the whole game.
I feel like there's some sort of cautionary tale in there. But I'm probably rambling around it again. I'll plead insomnia every time
Last edited by Black_Elk; 21/02/21 02:59 PM.
