Re: What difficultly level do you play one?

On 15/07/2024 20:43, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

it didn't help when D&D started getting ported to computers. Because
early computers were GREAT with the number crunching, but were pretty
poor with the story and characters. Computer RPGs/still/  struggle
with making a game where the combat isn't the most dominant feature.
Our beloved 8-bits were far inferior machines; they hadn't a chance in
capturing what made table-top gaming such a fascinating hobby. So
those early RPGs - most of which were either licensed D&D games or
very closely based upon it- were little more than brain-dead combat
simulators and loot collectors. Which in turn reinforced the idea that
was all that D&D really was.

I knew you could get it back to video games! I think you just have to have different expectations of CRPG's from TT RPG's because, as you say, computers just aren't very good at the bit that makes the later stand out for other TT games.
It's not just the overall flexibility but CRPG's aren't very good at encouraging you to play in character but instead play a version of yourself*. The example I normal use is the classic trope of the old crying woman who has lost here husband or child. You end up doing the quest not because that what's your character would do but instead because you know you'll get a bauble at the end of it and you get to do something. It's just horribly binary.
Problem the best version I've played is Disco Elysium as it doesn't have that feeling of pass = good, fail = bad (and probably a reload), instead it's how the story advances. Even then you can't, as yet, get to the stage where a GM invents things on the fly or thinks that's not how the story is supposed to advance at all but I'll go with it. Oh you want to visit a cafe and ask around for information even though the scenario doesn't have one. Ok here's one and we'll have a waitress who is the sister of a nurse who used to work at the sanatorium. Now you want to visit her yet again, oh the cultists are monitoring your activities and decide they can work the fake suicide also into her brutal murder.