RPG to computer game thought

[Joose]

Ive had this thought bumping around my brains for a while now, so im going to put it down here. Partially in the hope that it will expunge it so it will stop bothering me, partially to get you guys thoughts on the matter. It basically goes like this:

An increasing amount of p&p RPG games are getting in on this new fangled computer game buisness. Theres been a bunch of D&D based computer games, but theres also the old and new Shadowrun games, the Vampire games, theres been a Cyberpunk game announced, and unless im imagining it im sure I heard mutterings about a SLA based computer game at some point.Technically, Champions Online was based heavily on an RPG, although its an RPG so obscure that even quite a few RPG nerds havent heard of it.

What occurs to me as odd is that they are nearly always still RPG's when they hit the computer.

Apart from a couple of anomalies (there was a not great RTS based on the Eberron campain setting for D&D, and the shooter that I swear was made first and had the Shadowrun IP slapped on it as an afterthought), they are all some flavour of RPG. Sometimes its an action RPG, sometimes its an MMO RPG, a lot of the time its a straight up, classic, top down view, party based RPG in the Baldurs Gate style. Why?

No, I know why: its the obvious route to go with. They are RPG's before they hit the computer, so why would you not make an RPG out of them for the computer itself. I think its a mistake. I think theres a lot of missed opportunities where the game designer could have taken the setting of the RPG and used it to make something *very* different to an RPG. I know, I know, you could argue that thats what they did with the aformentioned Eberron RTS and the Shadowrun FPS, and both of those failed hard under a cataclysm of fanboy hate. I would argue that the reason the Eberron RTS failed is because it sucked as an RTS, and the reason the Shadowrun FPS failed is because it was only superficially like the world of Shadowrun. If you make a decent game that is faithful to the setting, you could be innovative as balls.

Examples!

Battlefield/Planetside style games; shooters with huge game maps, covering everything from infantry to large vehicles. There are two game settings that immediately come to mind as being potentially awesome fits for these style of games. The first is Shadowrun. Theres a thing in the SR lore called Desert Wars, which is part military training exercise, part sport, part reality TV show. A bunch of countries and megacorps send teams/armies to a big empty bit of the middle east where they carry out mock battles to show off thier new tech, impress people with their tactical skills and potentially win big prizes in the overall competition. Of course, being Shadowrun these mock battles are fought with live rounds. I can see that being an awesome online shooter: different sides having different styles (Ares being very tech heavy, Aztech being more magic focussed) and classes ranging from standard shooty man to combat mage to military hacker. Imagine a game of battlefield where you can sit at the back remote controlling drones and taking part in e-war whilst your buddies have high speed augmented gunfights in the streets and two mages are duking it out above everyones heads using powerful spells and summoned spirits! You could have a Beef style unlock system where you start of as a fairly regular dude and can unlock not just different weapons and gear but implants, spells, drones, foci, spirits...

Or, if you want to go Full Awesome: Battlefield Warhammer 40k. Anyone who claims that the idea of playing out the games you normally play on a tabletop, but as one of the dudes against a bunch of real dudes, doesnt have potential is a fucking liar. New gear/character classes as unlocks, maybe paint/decorative options as microtransactions to make the thing F2P without unbalancing it. You could even go bugnuts crazy and make it Epic scale: you are in the midst of a massive tank battle, things are starting to go your way, when all of a sudden the puddles start going all Jurrasic Park. You look to your left, nothing. You look to your right...Holy shit, thats a foot the size of a small house! ENEMY TITAN SPOTTED!

Its not just Battlefield style games that could work like this though. An Amnesia style game set in the world of SLA would be pretty sweet. You could do an interesting (and maybe terrifying) spin on city management by putting the city in a Hab orbiting Jupiter in the Eclipse Phase world. You could do Call of Cthulhu as a Rally driving game....ok, maybe not that last one.

You get my point though. There are some opportunities for some supremely excellent games if developers could just consider detatching the setting, IP or "fluff" of a game from its mechanics.

[Dog Pants]

I want to play Cthulhu Rally. I've always wanted to try my hand at Ryleh driving.

[Joose]

Ryleh Driving.

Thats just begging to be turned into a daft flash game.

[Dog Pants]

Now I'm not posting on my phone I can give this more attention. I've touched on the fact that videogame RPGs aren't really comparable to tabletops before. They just aren't the same medium and so a crossover is really only the use of the IP, regardless of whether they try to make an RPG or an FPS. Also, Games Workshop have deviated from their medium with some worthwhile results. Not quite the same as a proper tabletop RPG, but it backs up your point that using the IP with an established game types, rather than trying to shoehorn the tabletop game into a format that can't meet expectations, is a good option. I really don't think that you could ever entirely replicate a GM within a game, at least not without some pretty hefty AI, so why try? Better instead to just make a good game that gets the feel right. However, when it comes to games less complicated than a P&P RPG an exact replica can work wonders. Blood Bowl famously captures the magic of the board game, despite Cyanide's seemingly best efforts to fail, and the old Hero Quest and Space Crusade were great representations.