Whatever happened to

[Violet]

Simply untrue, but your opinion, so your imagination at work. Nice roundabout, but unconvincing here. Books require more imagination than movies, old school rpgs more imagination than computer games. Very clearly so in the lack of spoonfed visuals. No shortcomings unless Gerbers steak dinner is always to be preferred over Ruths Chris.

And yet I use the same amount of imagination during a movie (and the amount of imagination I use during a game of MoO is beyond any game that is not chess, as I envision the different races under the philosophies I have constructed for them to be consistent with what they do. This is called immersion, and is something you should try harder to do.)

Being provided with graphics does not mean one cannot make their own. Being provided with sound does not mean one cannot make their own. You do not *have* to imagine anything at all when reading a book: it is not a requirement to immerse yourself in it.

I happen to imagine things happening in the real world using that as a backdrop into varieties of fantasies (some spontaneous and some continuing for years). If what you say is true... then the real world, which is so much more presentable than a movie or book, should have next to no imagination in it.

Tis not so Don't feed your personal limitations into how other people operate.

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Some traditionalists like me still play them. The computer just can't match the story telling aspect. It's good for hack-and-slashers who have a video-game mentality anyway, but for those who see the RPG as a make-a-movie-that-you're-in kind of game, it's going to be a while before the computer is a good format.

Every played mass effect and then played mass effect 2?

It isn't about one variety of storytelling being better than another (movies, books, games, life, imagination, oral, storyboard, pictures, etc... they all tell stories in different ways: not one of them 'the ultimate storyteller' nor any of them less adept at telling a story). I've heard some fantastic stories from word of mouth that most books cannot even compare to. I've read A Christmas Carol and remember the entire plot and many of Scrooge's intricacies. I've imagined stories in bed, in churches, on boats, as I walk in a hallway, while chatting to other people, and elsewhere that sometimes should be world-class works. I've played games that immersed me so fully within that it was no longer me making decisions for my character: it was the character making decisions for myself. I've watched movies that played out so well that I could not tell you the difference between them and reality.

It is simply a question of interface. Some people can't integrate into a system as well as I can, and others can do so better. The story telling aspect is affected by how immersed... how 'into' the story we are. If you're in the worst mood ever and your dog died on top of that: when someone tells a normally incredibly funny joke... you might at best smile or give a hollow laugh. It is because your current status affects how the story comes in. As it is with games, movies, books... they are all as a basis only different in mode of presentation. They all come into the same damn thing before they mean anything: the brain. It is you that has to adapt to them before you can appreciate them well... not the other way around.

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Oh cmon, they do require more imagination. I wouldn't say they limit the amount of imagination one COULD apply, but the case of spoonfed visuals is a pretty easy one to make.

They require exactly zero imagination to read. I can read:

"The wavy blue ocean laps gently at the windblasted shore of sharp sand"

And take only the facts from that. Not conjure an image, not conjure a sound, not conjure a taste or texture, not conjure a smell. Imagination is when you do these things with what you are presented.

With a strong enough imagination: reality is almost imperceptibly different... if it is at all.

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Paladin, you really are close to the quick with that. Technology is a marvelous thing, and it certainly is the product of the imagination and creativity, but as a surrogate for the dynamic of real human interaction, the number of social aspects and variables possible in a face-to-face rpg, computer games come second. This is not to say that they do not have their place, and their place is massive now; but they are not an authentic replacement for the human based systems. I worry that, in time, we may forget so much of the way culture was transmitted that culture itself will become irretrievably diminished. After a fashion, the old style rpgs, such as D&D, GURPS, Space Opera, are something that cannot be "recreated" through any circuitry that is not human. As a Classicist, I appreciate the oral traditions that these games echo.

And this is very... very sad for you.

But I'll not be pitying you for me having so much more fun everywhere

Edit:fixed a doublepost.