Editorial Bethesda developer explains why TB is obsolete

[MountainWest]

I've never backed off from this position. TB in many ways has been rendered obsolete by automation. It's not nessessary to take turns to resolve combat in an RPG setting any longer.

It's not 'necessary' to have real time combat either since, you know, there's the turn based alternative. RT has in many ways been made obsolete by the gift of time.

Did I just prove RT obsolete? No. As a matter of fact - had I been serious - I'd have made a fool out of myself.

TB is a different system compared to RT. Not: 'the same, only slower'. It's different. Like tennis is a different sport compared to ping pong, even though they both incorporate rackets, nets and balls. Saying that RT has made TB obsolete is wrong. Why? Look above - they're different systems.

 

[Mr. Van_Buren]

I've never backed off from this position. TB in many ways has been rendered obsolete by automation. It's not nessessary to take turns to resolve combat in an RPG setting any longer.

It's not 'necessary' to have real time combat either since, you know, there's the turn based alternative. RT has in many ways been made obsolete by the gift of time.

Did I just prove RT obsolete? No. As a matter of fact - had I been serious - I'd have made a fool out of myself.

TB is a different system compared to RT. Not: 'the same, only slower'. It's different. Like tennis is a different sport compared to ping pong, even though they both incorporate rackets, nets and balls. Saying that RT has made TB obsolete is wrong. Why? Look above - they're different systems.

Sounds like you missed my apples and oranges post.

 

[mister lamat]

No shit. Tell them you think indie games suck. That will get you tagged in no time.

(They suck :!: )

meh... i've said the spiderweb series have sucked donkey cock for ages... pretty much every homemade rpg blows compared to what the rest of the world is doing with indie and open source development. apparently you don't have to use tech from this decade when you've got a banal story to tell!

 

[Twinfalls]

Wow MVB and his loyal sidekick Mr Lamat are still battling it out! The Dynamic Dumbfuck Duo. Such powers of wilful stupidity!

1: "TB combat still has player smarts making a difference, therefore TB is just as bad as RT"

No. It is physical skills which must be excluded, ie reflexes or 'twitch ability'. An RPG must allow the player's intellect to affect the outcome. This is because it is a game. Otherwise, there would be no winning or losing or even 'doing well', let alone motivation. And what type of game is it? An RPG. Not an action game, not a FPS. "Oh but then the dumb barbarian gets unfair help from the brainy player". This is where stats/limitations come in. Yes, you use your brain to get your dumb barbarian to overcome hurdles. This does not magically validate real-time twitch skills in RPGs.

1. characters get help from their players in both rt and tb. It's not that one is invalidated by the fact, but that neither is invalidated by the fact.

Que? Did you not understand the distinction between physical skills and mental skills, and how one of them is necessary since it's an RPG (and not an action game) but not the other? Or are you perhaps wilfully overlooking points put to you like you've done countless times in this thread?

2. "The fucking wheel came out of the Stone Age. Do you go to car-enthusiast web-sites and tell them they should 'move on' from using wheels?"

Depends, is there a more efficient alternative to wheels that reduces the time I spend on the road?

Ah, here's the thing. There isn't! Yet what you're doing is like going onto those auto-enthusiast sites and telling them the wheel is somehow obsolete and they should move on.

3."It's not Fallout" is not the issue. "It sucks, and is nowhere near as good as a Fallout game should be", is the issue.

That is only your opinion, and you're welcome to it. My opinion, however, differs.

You can't just use 'it's my opinion' whenever you want, because in this case it just doesn't make sense. What I was showing you was that you were using a straw man. "It's not Fallout if it's not TB" is not what we're saying. "It sucks if it's RT" is what we're saying.

6.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fallout fan.

"Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are niggers"

You're a petty, bitter, nothingness of a person. If you think because I don't think that RT will ruin a goddamned video from a franchise I enjoy is equal to racial slurs

Oh puhleeze. That's right, I'm calling you a racist. No, I was illustrating how disingenuous it can be to resort to "Don't get me wrong, I love X" to somehow absolve yourself from supporting destructive shit happening to X.

You can eat my shit, princess, and I don't care if you do it in RT or TB.

Well thankyou! You've displayed tons of your shit here for all of us to look at, so it's nice to stop finally teasing us!

 

[Human Shield]

Meet it in what reguards? If you keep it broad RT VS TB, it's just apples and oranges.

But one way RT surpasses TB is that combat no longer takes all day. The perspective doesn't matter. RT is more efficient at resolving a combat encounter, at least as far as time goes..

You are wrong on both counts. TB can be faster then RT, you don't have to monitor when the player has no input so you can jump from round to round instead of babysitting. And TB can be done in different perspectives.

 

[MountainWest]

Sounds like you missed my apples and oranges post.

I had (missed it). Well, it seems we agree on that point after all.

 

[One Wolf]

I'm not positive that this hasn't already been covered:

One problem I see with RT combat are statistics like Iniative/Sequence. If my character is very quick, how, in RT, will I be able to get attacks in first? Will my opponent be forced to wait in RT until I attack? If he is, will I be forced to remain still, so as not to manipulate the layout of the battlefield to my advantage before attacking? If I am, how is that not already moving towards TB anyway? And even if I have a higher sequence, what if I don't target him well enough with my mouse, and miss even though I have the stats to score a hit? If he is moving quickly or erratically, thus making it harder for me to aim, then doesn't that negate some of the benefits I should possess from upgrading stats/skills relevant to accuracy? If I have a character with maxed agility, what will that mean in terms of combat? Will it merely make me move and shoot faster? If it does, what if my character moves too quickly for me to aim well with the mouse? Would this turn in to more of a detriment past a certain point?

 

[Mr. Van_Buren]

Wow MVB and his loyal sidekick Mr Lamat are still battling it out! The Dynamic Dumbfuck Duo. Such powers of wilful stupidity!

1: "TB combat still has player smarts making a difference, therefore TB is just as bad as RT"

No. It is physical skills which must be excluded, ie reflexes or 'twitch ability'. An RPG must allow the player's intellect to affect the outcome. This is because it is a game. Otherwise, there would be no winning or losing or even 'doing well', let alone motivation. And what type of game is it? An RPG. Not an action game, not a FPS. "Oh but then the dumb barbarian gets unfair help from the brainy player". This is where stats/limitations come in. Yes, you use your brain to get your dumb barbarian to overcome hurdles. This does not magically validate real-time twitch skills in RPGs.

1. characters get help from their players in both rt and tb. It's not that one is invalidated by the fact, but that neither is invalidated by the fact.

Que? Did you not understand the distinction between physical skills and mental skills, and how one of them is necessary since it's an RPG (and not an action game) but not the other? Or are you perhaps wilfully overlooking points put to you like you've done countless times in this thread?

2. "The fucking wheel came out of the Stone Age. Do you go to car-enthusiast web-sites and tell them they should 'move on' from using wheels?"

Depends, is there a more efficient alternative to wheels that reduces the time I spend on the road?

Ah, here's the thing. There isn't! Yet what you're doing is like going onto those auto-enthusiast sites and telling them the wheel is somehow obsolete and they should move on.

3."It's not Fallout" is not the issue. "It sucks, and is nowhere near as good as a Fallout game should be", is the issue.

That is only your opinion, and you're welcome to it. My opinion, however, differs.

You can't just use 'it's my opinion' whenever you want, because in this case it just doesn't make sense. What I was showing you was that you were using a straw man. "It's not Fallout if it's not TB" is not what we're saying. "It sucks if it's RT" is what we're saying.

6.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fallout fan.

"Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are niggers"

You're a petty, bitter, nothingness of a person. If you think because I don't think that RT will ruin a goddamned video from a franchise I enjoy is equal to racial slurs

Oh puhleeze. That's right, I'm calling you a racist. No, I was illustrating how disingenuous it can be to resort to "Don't get me wrong, I love X" to somehow absolve yourself from supporting destructive shit happening to X.

You can eat my shit, princess, and I don't care if you do it in RT or TB.

Well thankyou! You've displayed tons of your shit here for all of us to look at, so it's nice to stop finally teasing us!

I understand that you think that you're the definative authority on what defines an RPG and what player input is required and what input should be dismissed.

But just becuase you think it, doesn't make it nessessarily so.

I offer facts, backgrounds, illustrations of my points, examples, and endless rehashing of my very simple position. That position being that combat resolution does not make, nor break this game for me.

That is my position. You can disagree at your pleasure. But don't talk down to me like you're an authority on the way things have to be. You're nobody to me. You're probably nobody to everybody. And I couldn't care less if everything you cherish in the world suddenly changed in a way you disapprove of. Get the fuck over it.

I don't care if your whole world ends because a goddamned video game switches combat resolution dynamics. That's your sideshow, and your opinion. It's not one I share, and you've said nothing that would compel me to share your position.

I think the difference between us is that I always use my mind even when the circumstances don't favor it by design. If you choose to mash buttons and disengage your brain, hey, whatever works for you.

I'm just not that worried about it. Realtime tactics and strategy takes brainpower too.

 

[kingcomrade]

What an enlightening post, lol. Twinfalls you have a new e-telepath, he's in ur thawts, reddin ur motivashuns.

 

[Mr. Van_Buren]

Oh puhleeze. That's right, I'm calling you a racist. No, I was illustrating how disingenuous it can be to resort to "Don't get me wrong, I love X" to somehow absolve yourself from supporting destructive shit happening to X.

It's only your opinion that it's destructive. From my perspective it is not destructive.

See that's my opinion, and your opinion, having a difference of opinion.

It's destructive from your point of view. I get that. But I don't share your fucking point of view. Nothing's being destroyed on my end. Afterall, anytime I want to play turnbased RPGs I can just flip through my collection. It's not like F3 being RT removes TB from the timeline as though it never existed.

I can play TB Fallout any time I want. I enjoy it everytime I pop it in. I love fallout, but not because of it's combat dynamics.

F3 being RT doesn't threaten me in the least. Truth is, bethesda would screw it up even if it was TB. Maybe that's one reason why I just don't care one way or the other.

And if you people want TB games to keep coming out, I'd recommend buying as many copies as you can, even the shitty ones. Nothing keeps something going like hard numbers and piles of cash.

But I'm not worried about it. I spent two decades playing all manner of turnbased games, and I've had my fill of the dynamic. Any time I long for it, I can pop in any one of over 30 titles I have. I just wouldn't mind seeing the other side of the coin.

It's not a stupid or evil stance, but I think RPGs can grow beyond tradition. And I'm not affraid to see what a fallout looks like in first person or realtime or both or even neither.

 

[One Wolf]

And what about the stats/skills that are negated by RT? Do you believe them to be unnecessary? Do you see some way of representing them in RT?

 

[Zomg]

Someone take this fucking repetive textwaller thread out behind the barn and blow its brains out.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I love some black and white and silient movies, but I'd never consider demanding that the industry should stagnate at my preference.

Sin City and Schindler's List were "stagnation"?

The mind boggles.

*sighs* Sin City and Schindler's list were made in their respective styles by artist choice on the part of the creative staff.

And yet we don't really know if FO3 will be turn-based or not and yet here you are, suggesting that if they do make it turn-based (even presumably, by choice), it's stagnation? How is Fallout 3 being turn-based "stagnation" and not "creative choice"?

That artist choice was not pummeled into the projects by vocal and fanatical "purist" whose primary objective was to force artistic choices onto a production by being abrasively negative and critical of every aspect of the work.

You do realise Sin City was made the way it was because of the fans of the books, right? And that that pretty much invalidates your entire argument, right? And that you're a moron too, right? amirite?

Also, should Sin City 2 be done in full colour because otherwise, it's just giving in to the fans of the original Sin City if they make it the same and that'd be "stagnation"?

Do you see yet how your argument doesn't actually work?

I'm not saying TB must be done away with, and I think people get that, I'm just saying that progressive developement has presented developers with options beyond turnbased.

I don't get this. It's as if real-time hasn't been around since computers were born. The first PC game was a real-time space shoot-em up. The first mass produced console game was a multiplayer real-time game called Pong. Diablo was released about a year before Fallout and that was real-time. It's not as if they got to Fallout and went "Well gee-whillickers, we'd make this real-time if we could but computers just couldn't handle it!". They made a choice (an artistic choice, if you like) to use turn-based. They weren't forced to by GURPS. Fallout is only loosely based on GURPS in the first place and they changed several things to suit their own whims. I'm pretty confident they could've gone real-time if they chose to. They didn't though. They chose to use a system that allows for abstract combat. More importantly, it's a combat system that allows a melee player to have an advantage over an enemy using guns.

There was a time when turnbased was pretty much mandatory as game design thought and technique hadn't presented many other options.

Sorry, when was this "turn-based is mandatory" time? Before or after Doom (which came out about 2 years before Fallout) or Wolfenstein 3D maybe? Truth is, they even chose to use an "isometric" point of view, rather than first-person. Why are these choices suddenly somehow invalidated because "Oh, they can make it real-time and in first person today". Ermm... If they wanted to do that, they would've done it back when they made the original. First-person and real-time are not new concepts. As I said, they've been around since the very first computer games were invented. More to the point, they were around when Fallout was created.

Trying to bully your preferences into somebody else's artist work is forced stagnation. An artist deciding on that choice because they think it's best for their work is just artistic expression.

But as I said, what happens if Bethesda choose to use turn-based of their own accord? You're assuming Bethesda are going to see this message board and change whatever they've been planning for the last 2 years into turn-based when clearly, there's no way in hell that would happen.

Yes, I'm clearly the dumbfuck here. Go ahead and brand me if you think that's what I deserve. That doesn't mean you're right, however.

No, it does mean VD's right. Sorry but that's how it works. Welcome to the real world.

Nha. You just banned me. Yeah, much more mature way to handle disagreeement, right?

Ermm.. You've deserved a banning for a long time. I don't think I have to point out to anyone how retarded you've been over the years. The only reason we tolerate you is because it adds to the D R A M A.

Who the fuck are you to pass judgement on opinion? You may agree or disagree with me.

It's not your opinion we have issue with really, it's the way you're saying it and that you appear to be disagreeing with your own opinion. Everyone else here seems to be able to see it except yourself? In short, you've said one thing and then hypocritically said the opposite or made a statement which is in conflict with what you said earlier. EG: You say there's nothing wrong with turn-based and that there's a place for it, yet you constantly refer to it as a "stagnation" coming from an unreasonable demand from fans and that if we had better technology we wouldn't have turn-based at all, rather than being an artistic choice with it's own pride of place, like you initially stated. Hence the dumbfuck / illiterate tag.

But back in the day, a realtime rpg wasn't even an option. We're talkin' pnp and generation 1 here, not some of our "silverage" favorites like daggerfall or fallout.

How is that relevant though? Fallout was made in the era of real-time RPGs, when they had the technology to create a first-person (ala Daggerfall) real-time (ala Diablo) RPG and they chose not to. Now somehow, you're suggesting that Fallout would've been made in real-time if only they'd had the technology... Technology which they did have. How then is your "lack of technology" argument even relevant?

honestly, you shouldn't have a side in this. shut the fuck up and hand control of the tags back to saint. i don't care if he's here or not, directing discussion through the use of name calling is fucking sad.

Uhh... Saint banned a guy purely because he disagreed with him. Saint was also well-known for dumbfucking people quickly and without question again, purely because they disagreed with him. The only reason people complain about it when VD does it is because VD is a soft touch and FLIP-FLOPS if enough people whinge about it. If he grew some balls, we wouldn't have this problem.

all he's been saying is that rt combat can work in an rpg and doesn't have to be a detriment to the genre... hell, it could even advance it by borrowing from other genres. if you don't want to see it in this particular instance, that's all well and good but it's by no means the measure of an opinion's value.

No, that's not all he's been saying. He's also said that TB is dated while at the same time saying it's a perfectly good choice for games, implied that if Fallout 3 is turn-based it would be a "stagnation" because it gives into the fans - as opposed to being a deliberate design choice and sugested that real-time games are some new fangled whizz-bang wotsits that have only just come out recently and that now that it's here, Fallout should "move on". If he'd left it at "real-time could be fun", he wouldnt't have been identified and tagged for future generations.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this. Player skill, especially micromanagement can take over easily. Look at Lionheart. It was an isometric game that used S.P.E.C.I.A.L., but was in real time. Later on in the game, if you couldn't twitch, you died, no matter how skilled your character was, just because of the real time aspect.

I think lionheart, like bloodlines suffered from bad developement overall. Being turnbased wouldn't have saved either one. At least in my opinion.

And yet it's the awesome turn-based combat that is generally seen as being responsible for saving ToEE from oblivion.

I understand that you think that you're the definative authority on what defines an RPG and what player input is required and what input should be dismissed.

But just becuase you think it, doesn't make it nessessarily so.

Likewise, just because you feel Turn-Based is "inefficient" doesn't make it so.

I offer facts, backgrounds, illustrations of my points, examples, and endless rehashing of my very simple position.

No, you don't. As has been pointed out, Section8 made some brilliant posts which you ignored completely. You haven't illiustrated points or offered facts. You've simply stated such things as "TB is inefficient", "Fallout should move on", "Fallout was made in the days when computers couldn't calculate pi" and so on, all clearly stating that RT is better than TB. And you've done so without any examples or facts to back it up. When you've been called on it, all you do is throw around a few "jackass" comments, ask someone to point the obvious out to you and say "well it's my opinion". Duh, of course it's your opinion. I'd just like to see you back it up for once, instead of contradicting yourself and then screaming that you have a right to an opinion.

That position being that combat resolution does not make, nor break this game for me.

And yet you're still here, saying with one hand that the combat system doesn't matter to you yet on the other that it should be real-time because turn-based would be "stagnation".

That is my position. You can disagree at your pleasure. But don't talk down to me like you're an authority on the way things have to be. You're nobody to me. You're probably nobody to everybody. And I couldn't care less if everything you cherish in the world suddenly changed in a way you disapprove of. Get the fuck over it.

Again, the same can be said of you. Yet here you are, responding to us. Hint: If people don't care, they don't spend 11 pages talking about it.

Realtime tactics and strategy takes brainpower too.

... and you keep saying that turn-based is "slow", you hint that it's boring while continually saying you couldn't care what combat system Fallout is before once again impounding us with the wisdom of how TB came to be and then talking about how RT can do that too. So either you're lying about the "not caring" part, or you're a moron.

Oh and Section8 won this thread on page 3. I'd really like to see how you respond to even half of what he said.

 

[merry andrew]

Attention Mr. Van_Buren: Please Respond

I had a feeling you liked to ignore and/or not comprehend valid arguments against your position when you read my "latency" comment as a multiplayer-only feature... but seriously, Section8 wrote a lot more and much more elegantly than I did. Just respond reasonably to the arguments you've passed over that clearly destroy yours and you can probably have that nifty tag removed.

 

[denizsi]

Ha, I know that my pre-emptive dumbfucking suggestion was in order! Get the fuck out of Codex already, MVB, or grow brain cells that function. What's with mister lamat being his cocksucker by the way?

Now I know MVB will attempt to assault me for not responding to him previously, so let me clear that: for all the things you have written in your post, MVB, I'd like to quote myself:

Now this is addressed at all the fuckers who thought isometric vs. orthographic / paralllel projection debate was retarded:

For something that wasn't even aimed at you, you certainly took it personal and made some more ridiculous remarks, while perfectly ignoring my previous post where your quotes contradict each other on TB vs RT issue, which you looked for in my post not even aimed at you. Dumbfucks and illiterates do that all the time though. The post above is another example.

How come mister lamat is still not buttraped?

 

[sqeecoo]

Ah, now DorkOvenLoad (hehehe), that's a nice post. Finally, a clear reasoning for why you illiterated the guy. VD was mostly right, but didn't touch the crux of the matter - the guy keeps shifting his opinion. That's where he is stupid, on other points he is just wrong (or even not wrong, like that Fallout 3 could, concievably (but not likely, in my opinion), be RT and a good RPG).

I am now inclined to agree with the illiteration. But I must say, mister lamat argues very well, and Twinfalls and VD were not at their best in this discussion - hostile, but often wrong, and trying too hard to prove that their opposition is stupid, as opposed to just wrong - but not really managing, in my opinion.

However, despite the fact that Van B. does shift his opinions, I think you might be reading too much into his posts.
For instance, when he says:"I love some black and white and silient movies, but I'd never consider demanding that the industry should stagnate at my preference."

He is not really saying that making a TB game is "stagnation" (as you keep accusing him), but that never trying out new things, i.e. attempting to make RT RPGs would be stagnation - like making *only* B&W movies would be. Sure, TB is very nice for RPGs, but I don't see why one wouldn't be allowed to try to implement other combat systems - even if they fail, we might figure out new approaches. Despite the fact that I can't see any gain in using RT in a normal RPG, who knows what someone else might think of.

EDIT: denizsi, I don't see any reason whatsoever for dumbucking mister lamat

 

[elander_]

This is what Bloodlines tried to do and they failed miserably on the combat part.

On the other side System Shock which is an action rpg made two years before Fallout:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/system-shock

is the still the most successful implementation of an action rpg we have to this date. Maybe becuase they didn't tried to messup with targeting, and other things that are usually the domain of action games and shouldn't be touched.

Instead they implemented rpg aspects in other things like weapon repair and unjamming, damage increase, more control over weapon kickback and faster reload times.

The point is doing an improved TB game would be a new approach. Why is that doing a RT rpg would be a more new approach than this?

I don't see anything wrong with doing a game like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYmQyHl2bc

You can even switch from 3rd person to 1st person for close up dialogs. The birds eye view is important because this is a point and click interface.

It would even be acceptable IMO that in certain situations the player would be allowed to go into RT mode to make combat more fluid for those boring bits and then switch back to TB. Just design the game for TB and allow the player to switch to RT whenever he wants.

 

[Kraszu]

Depends, is there a more efficient alternative to wheels that reduces the time I spend on the road?

Very bad analogy, faster combat =/= better combat as combat system have diferent function, not to allow you to go through combat as fast as possible.

Ok summary:
1)You say that pnp creators could go for rt if they got tools >That means that FO3 whit fp would be presenting of pnp concept. It is like saying that chess creators may made chess an platform game if they got tools so chess the platformer would be true to chess concept. That is twisted logic and you can't support it FO was based on pnp that existed not may existed in creators head, arguing that there is no difference between those two is just stupid.

2)FO was clearly created in time when there was rt rpg before so it design decision having nothing to do whit technology.

 

[Kraszu]

two actions, you bet and the ball goes in a hole.

No there is plenty of possible bets and numbers to bet on, and you can bet more then one number, plenty of possibilities, all of them are meaningless but they exist - more rules/more possible actions don't always create depth. You can create game whit many rules and diferent units but only one thing can work good in game vs anything that opponent do and game will have no depth becouse of that.

two outcomes, you win or you don't.

You can also break even, but haw is that diferent from results of other games?

 

[sah]

I think this thread has lived to 11 pages because of the ease with which MVB was able to discuss THEORY. It's always easier to disect concepts on paper, rathern than finished projects.

Nevertheless, I also think MVB has been defeated. It's all been said.

 

[Vault Dweller]

two actions, you bet and the ball goes in a hole. two outcomes, you win or you don't.

You go to a casino to play roulette. You have 100 bucks. You want to go home with at least 300. How do you bet? How many strategies can you use?

...the contention is that prior to the computer there was no way to adequately represent armed conflict in that manner that didn't devolve into an intense, unenjoyable clusterfuck. hence, none of those system, had they even bothered to invent them, survived.

You've never heard of war games before? Peter the Great, the Russian Tsar, formed two regiments out of friends and commoners, representing armies, gave them real weapons and played war games, developing tactics and strategies, that he later used in real wars.

Using the Spartan war games as an example would have been too easy.

There are no real time DnD games because the rules require and are based on turns. There are, however, real time games with DnD labels on the box that do NOT offer real DnD experience. Does that answer your question?

and i wasn't huddled around a card table with some fat fuck who smells like cheetos and reeks of mountain dew when when i played toee. also, no compendiums, no human gm, no notebook, no dice on the table, no bitching about rules... was it a 'real dnd experience'?

You are pretending that you are confusing DnD with PnP experience.

what some people consider minor aspects of the series others consider major. when an author needs turn-based combat and an isometric view to write a story that interests me, i'll let you know.

Please do. Keep in mind that Fallout was never a story-driven game though, so you may want to use another argument here.

so... i dunno really... go fuck yourself i guess.

You are such a sweetheart.

i've often remarked that the linear passage of time is very similar to defeating an army of dragons. both happen in my daily life.

I don't really care what you often remarked about. *I* never said anything about the linear passage of time, so do me a favor and don't pretend that I said something and then attack it as my argument.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I am now inclined to agree with the illiteration. But I must say, mister lamat argues very well, and Twinfalls and VD were not at their best in this discussion - hostile, but often wrong...

Where?

However, despite the fact that Van B. does shift his opinions, I think you might be reading too much into his posts.
For instance, when he says:"I love some black and white and silient movies, but I'd never consider demanding that the industry should stagnate at my preference."

He is not really saying that making a TB game is "stagnation" (as you keep accusing him), but that never trying out new things, i.e. attempting to make RT RPGs would be stagnation - like making *only* B&W movies would be.

You are reaching too far trying to prove that he had a non-stupid point there.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The tech did not exist, especially to the common man, at the time gygax was getting his gaming feet wet. Turnbased was all that was known as a gaming/sim dynamic. And it's not like Gygax was computer savy when pong hit the scene. He stuck to what he knew.

It's all true, live with it.

I love the "It's all true, live with it" part. You may have a future as a comedian here. As for the actual point, one more time, the tech did exist and the first computer games were real-time. The easy choice would have been to make a real-time RPG, not a turn-based one.

From Merrium Webster: Franchise; the right or license granted to an individual or group to market a company's goods or services in a particular territory.

Territory is the key word here, genius.

The mere fact that other companies have been allowed to market DnD, easy example being videogames, proves that it's a franchise.

To market DnD? Do you not understand the meanings of words you use? For the record, even if there were companies marketing DnD, that would have nothing to do with franchises.

See, MVB, you are like a kid. You used an incorrect word. I pointed it out. Instead of admitting it, which wouldn't have been a big deal, you tried to prove that the word was correct by using more incorrect words and making yourself look really stupid now.

Is the meaning of franchise really how you hope to knock me down? if so, not only was it weak sauce, but it also failed. Sucks to be you.

You are a very witty fellow.

 

[Joe Krow]

Stop cluttering the thread VD. No one wants to hear your nonsense. Let Mr. VB respond to the DarkUnderlord post. I'm sure he would love to sidestep right now and your just opening the door...

 

[One Wolf]

And more importantly, Section8's post. I'm curious as to how his arguments might be countered.