triosurfer.blogg.se

I have an unlimited special effects budget when I work and I don’t have to fret over memory size or how fast a CPU the reader owns. Given the nature of computers today, no matter how fast they evolve there’s still a limit to the amount of information you can put in a computer on your desktop, while the author of a novel can take you anyplace and show you anything. A game asks you to participate and make decisions. A book asks you to fasten your seatbelt while the author takes you for a ride. For the most part.īy their nature, books and games ask you to do two different things.

So then folks added more colorful graphics and pretty pictures and sound and animation… and it’s still pretty basic stuff.

Still a pretty pale imitation of a good fantasy novel, right? Sure, you still had to kill a lot of ugly-buglies to get the Wand of Chaos but once you got it, you could defeat the evil wizard Wartface and save the kingdom. Then over the last few years some folks introduced problem-solving. After a while, it’s all pretty much the same. Computer role-playing was either a glorified arcade game - with names of fantasy characters hung onto a computer graphic with no other relationship to the literary work it was based upon - or it was basic fantasy role-playing run by a computer: kick down a door, kill something, get treasure, go up in power, get better at kicking down doors, killing things and getting treasure, so you go to the next level where the doors are harder to break down, the monsters are tougher, and the treasure’s harder to find.

And, like most of you, every once in a while I’d think, “Why can’t these games be more like a good fantasy adventure novel?”īut games are one thing and books are another, right? Spellcasting.Ĭombat Strategies.Īnother silly item I needed somewhere else.