Video Games and Tabletop Games and When to Stick that Peanut Butter in the Chocolate

So I just read THIS. Which is an article about Alex Gygax working with  turning some of Gary's old unpublished adventures and home setting stuff into video games.

Here's a quote:

“I grew up playing this and I’m also a huge video gamer, so I’ve always wanted to see my dad’s work because I thought that they were some of the greatest stories and tough adventures,” Alex said. “I’ve always wanted to see them put out in the next level. Pen and paper is a dying art. Computer games, video games, they’re the next generation, the next wave of games and I’ve always wanted to see them on that new medium and I’ve always wanted to be working with someone who’s excited as I am about it.”

Pen & paper is hardly dying, I think anyone that has seen the massive following that actual-play podcasts like The Adventure Zone and streaming games like Critical Role have know that. And anyone that refers to video games as "The next generation" is possibly unstuck from time.

Something else that bothers me here is the idea that by plucking these adventures from their intended system and rehashing them as video games you are somehow upgrading them. It's like going and seeing an exhibition of beautiful and well shot photographs and telling the artist you would really enjoy their work if all of their photos were ceramic jars instead. Maybe that's true but why on earth were you there in the first place?

I don't want this to come across as some argument against adapting things. I think the idea of reverse engineering a system from a different system is totally cool and fun, Mute is working of an adaptation of Diablo for tabletop play which I'm very excited to try. It's a time honored tradition in tabletop games to look at something and say, "How would I do that with dice?" and you would be hard pressed to find an RPG video game that didn't owe something to the worlds most popular fantasy roleplaying game

BUT

The things that are satisfying about both TTRPGs and video games are more universal than a setting or a specific story. The feeling of exploration, anticipation, camaraderie and adventure are shared throughout games of all kinds. The thing that differentiates these mediums is approach and focus. Swinging a sword in a video game is different than saying that you're swinging a sword at the table, and you can build whole games around those differences, but in the end what you're left with is a ship, and a the point of a ship is to sail somewhere.

I guess what I'm really trying to say here is that "Lejendary Adventure" is a really dumb name and letting me buy it on Steam isn't going to change that J to a G.

By Jary Jyjax