Roll Playing

[andrewducker]

Watching developers talking about the recently announced D&D Online.  They seem to be of the opinion that because the bit of the character that computers can keep track of and aid with is the number-crunching/dice-rolling aspects that this represents the most important bit of roleplaying and what the game should revolve around.

This is why MMORPGs have pretty much no interest for me whatsoever.

Well, except maybe for A Tale in the Desert.  And I really don't have that much time spare.  Shame.

Comments

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

I've never seen the point in them. They all seem to involve finding things to kill, killing them and.. er.. bugger-all else. Apart from the monthly bill.

[rwrylsin.livejournal.com]

Ah.
Just today I read the term "roll playing" elsewhere and thought to myself "Ick. You'd think they'd check their terms before publishing them in a PHD paper."
Now I see I must have missed something somewhere.
I'm probably happier that way.

[andrewducker]

Roll Playing is usually used by Roleplayers to denote their distaste for games based largely around rolling dice and then declaring that something has died.

[ipslore.livejournal.com]

What about the recently-deceased Uru: Ages Beyond Myst? I never played it myself, and Cyan has taken the servers down, so there isn't a whole lot of point in mentioning it now, but still. No dice-rolling going on there.

[andrewducker]

Never really investigated it - how did it work?

[ipslore.livejournal.com]

First off, I misspoke; Ages Beyond is the single-player version, and Uru Live is the MMO version.
Anyway, as I said, I never played either version, but it looks like you run around and solve Myst puzzles while talking to other people about it. Apparently, it's set up so that players are members of an Explorer's Guild, rediscovering the Ages of D'ni after some kind of tragedy. This guy has a more in-depth review of it.