Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Making table-top RPG's appealing to a new generation (Part 3)


Introduce the next generation to the concept of total imaginative freedom!
In our beta tests, some of our tests involved younger players, including some high school teenagers. The teens had never played a table-top RPG before, and began to respond with excitement to the open-ended possibilities of the game. They were at first shocked that they could do anything they chose, and quickly adapted to the freedom that a table-top RPG allowed them over a video game. The freedom in an open-world video game was still restricted by the boundaries imposed by the programmers—some buildings couldn't be entered, some things were inexplicably unaffected by player actions, and there were always barriers that prevented passage, somewhere. Yet when the teens played Solar Echoes, they became excited by the possibilities. One group chose a bold and risky tactic for the beginning of their mission (they drove their car through a wall, guns blazing), and the Mission Controller running the game simply adjusted and had the NPC enemies respond to the surprise. Chances are, if the scenario had been in a video game, driving through a wall would probably not have been an option—programmers simply can't predict everything players will think of! This is one of the advantages of a table-top RPG, and what makes it a true, “open world” experience.

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