Are there any RPGs that are good all around...

Are there any RPGs that are good all around? It seems like even the best ones only succeed in one or two areas while failing in all the others(for example Planescape Torment has great writing, but terrible everything else, ToEE has great combat, but terrible everything else, Arcanum gives a lot of room for role-playing and is fairly open, but has awful combat, etc.) The most well rounded RPG I can think of is Fallout 1, but even that has, at best, mediocre combat.

That's because video games are a really mediocre medium for RPGs.
Roleplay with a group of friends and a proper, coherent story that can reasonably adapt on the fly organized, mantained and structured around your individual decisions under the careful eye of a good DM, can't be replicated in a video game.

Video game RPGs are more like a choose your adventure book, even the best ones can't really hold a candle to the shittiest RL tabletop session.

By this logic the limitation of choices and consequences in video games makes the whole medium mediocre. Yet you ignore the fact that being a computer game it's able to handle more in-depth rules and interactions that couldn't be calculated on the fly by a GM in a tabletop game.

You can have all the choice you want in a PnP game but the vast majority won't have any meaningful impact or consequence on the game - not unless you've got some turbo-autist GM that pre-planned the shit out of his game and took into account every possible decision he thinks the players could make (which gets thrown out the window when they decided to fuck off from the main quest).

Well yeah.
Just numerical calculations, it's the bare mechanics of what an RPG is.
The math is just an abstraction, people don't play D&D IRL for the math.
You're missing the entire point here.
I don't think you've ever played an actual RL session, user.
It's not played in a single sitting, the DM makes a plot, a roadmap, it's also his job to organically steer the players towards the main plot, however it's absolutely normal to stop for the day, and then come back to it later, with the DM altering the adventure to take into account the decisions the players made.
It's not rare at all for the DM to rewrite large chunks of his adventure for the next session.
He doesn't plan everything before it happens, he adapts.

Obviously there's limits, if you just go "my adventurer skullfucks this really important person to death and starts shitting and screaming" the DM will have problems adapting around your decision, it's just because you're being an assclown, in that case.

Fuck off, grandpa.

An experienced DM improvises so seamlessly that the players need never know that they have deviated from the session plan, unless the DM decides to tell them so.

Once you're familiar with the rule system of a given game (and often even if you're not), you can adapt mechanics or even make up entirely new ones on the fly to accommodate the unanticipated or unconventional decisions of the players.

This isn't the same as being entirely submissive to the whims of the players, however. If a player wants to do something that makes no sense, will derail the game disastrously, or goes against the tone of the game generally, the DM can shut them down at their discretion.

This
It's really why CRPGs should really be more along the lines of ToEE and focused on tactical combat

Heh
You mean the actual game.
If people aren't playing for the game then they're as superficial as the people playing games for the story.
Yes, they adapt, but their adaptation will either be a shallow, on-the-fly reaction or be incredibly delayed if they didn't pre-plan.

You may be missing my point as well. In a PnP RPG there are far less limitations to the choices you make but consequentially the consequences are going to be limited by the planning and flexibility of the DM. In a cRPG while there is a greater limitation to the choices you can make, consequences can be handled in greater depth much more dynamically given that the creators know ahead of time what those choices will be. Each medium has their own drawbacks but neither are an ill-fit for RPG gameplay.

GET OFF MY BOARD GRANDPA

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

user i don't think you have the slightest clue how, and why, people play PnP RPGs.
The type of priorities you have describe the kind of player that ONLY plays meatgrinders.

You know, the type of "campaign" where you just throw a party into some dungeon and let them kill a metric fuckton of monsters over and over.
The type of sessions that spawned Diablo as the video game equivalent (and at the time, Diablo was utterly shat on for being shallow compared to actual cRPGs and was considered a dangerous entry point for casuals into the RPG genre, bet you forgot about that, did you?)

Those games are just played by people that want to relax and not think for a while.
No one would ONLY play that shit unless they were severely autistic.
That's what exclusively focusing on the mechanics in a PnP setting gives you, mindless roll after roll and zero involvement from the players.
That's not what this shit is about, that's the most brainless, basic bitch way to play possible.

Question, do you honestly believe the game part of an RPG (cRPG and PnP) is limited to combat interactions? Because that's the vibe of what I'm getting. I hope you don't also believe that playing pretend at a table serves any purpose other than to dress up in-game choices to engage those less involved in the actual game part of the game.

Can you describe to me what do you do when you attend a D&D session?

Do you enter the room, sit at the table, and tell everyone around you "ok we're going to roll the dices today, don't fucking talk to me, i'm just here for the game, i'm going to roll to do shit and you're going to tell me the results of my rolls, and that's it."

Then you roll every time the DM tells you to do something, either in dead silence, or my describing what you're doing in a monotone voice, and when it's over you grab your shit, get back up, and go back home?

Is this how you play?

Way to completely miss my point.
I wasn't saying that I don't want all the talking and story - it would be a pretty bland play session without that fluff to present it - I just said it's not important to the actual game part of the game. You're treating the entire experience of playing a tabletop game as if it were all part of the game itself. You're also trivializing its actual gameplay to an extreme extent. To the point where I have to ask you if you have any idea about RPGs, or games in general, are about.

He's back?

If i'm trivializing the gameplay, you're trivializing the story, and the roleplay experience, and the choices and sinergy with the DM when it comes to those choices.

The experience is composed of ALL these things, forming the entire package.
In video games, in video game RPGs, only the mechanical aspect, the numbers game, is correctly translated (and sped up to inhuman degree, as the DM is the machine), but the story aspect becomes massively dumbed down.
The story becomes a single path, a choose your on adventure story book, with a limited, crippled potential for roleplay and creativity compared to RL sessions.

If the "game aspect" aka the barebone mechanics are the most important thing to you, then yes, obviously you'd be ok with the video game transposition of said mechanics in video game form, and thus a video game RPG would obviously satiate your needs.
But it doesn't satiate mine.
In a RL session, the story, while having a planned path, isn't as linear as you make it out to be, nor are the choices you make as meaningless as you think they are.
If someone has "trained" you to think this way, i'm sorry to say but you've been playing with really shitty DMs that didn't know what they were doing.

Because that's all a machine is, it's a really shitty DM that is however insanely good at handling the numerical calulations involved in playing the game and "drawing" the visual rapresentations of what you're doing.
I understand you're into that part of the experience, but it's just way too limited for me, and what i want out of RPGs.

I'm tired of retards like you telling a board full of socially-inept autists to play tabletop/P&P RPGs.

I don't have any friends to play tabletop with, and even if I did, I don't know how to play a tabletop RPG because if you didn't learn how to play them 30 fucking years ago, you're not gonna find a group willing to teach you.

Are you the same faggot from the other thread who said that the only reason people play RPG's is to allocate stats and that story means fucking nothing?

You don't need to be especially social to play with other people.
All that it's expected of you is not to be a complete deranged asshole everyone hates immediately.
Thus in a way, it would be a therapeutic experience for a lot of people on Holla Forums.
Sort of a "wow, if i'm a decent human being people like me" eye opener.
Nobody cares if you spill your spaghetti everywhere, it's a bunch of nerds gathering around a table playing pretend, people won't give you shit.

Additionally, it's not that complicated to play, AND if you put in the effort to look for a group, many of them will actually take the time to teach you, plus there's a shit ton of tutorials online for most of the basic shit.

I think Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim have the best controls and most decent combat among all RPG's. First person view and FPS controls are a great choice, I wonder why people rarely do that anymore in a sword and shield game, it's the only reason why TES games are very easy to get into. Everything else is too dumbed down though, especially for Skyrim.

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I don't know, I can't behave around people I know for more than like 2 weeks before I get too comfortable and start making mean, sarcastic comments that piss people off because they don't get that I'm just being sarcastic.
Shit, when I was in High School, I had a few "nerd" friends, and even they rejected me because I went around screaming and slapping my ass for no reason.

I feel you user, the only people that can uderstand and stand me are my half-reatrded childhood friends that just don't give a fuck anymore, well at least I got them

No, I'm fully recognizing choice and consequence as an integral part of games, and have already stated why I feel video games aren't a poor fit for RPGs in that regard.
Here again you're trivializing the gameplay. There's more to games than numbers, user.
A branching narrative does not make an RPG.
Do you honestly think that the only thing there is to roleplaying is the pure breadth of choice available?
Again with the gameplay trivialization.
Never claimed it was linear, in fact I fully accept that PnP RPGs are capable of more dynamic overall game progression, but moment to moment interactions are often less important to the game than the cumulative direction of them.
You're playing some pretty shitty RPGs. A cRPG may not be able to offer the same breadth of choice that a PnP can offer, but they're far better at handling more complex and in-depth interactions on the fly that most DMs wouldn't be prepared to handle without plenty of pre-planning.

You clearly don't understand what part of the games I enjoy, if all you think I care about is number crunching and power gaming shit.

I don't recall posting something like that so no. I do recall stating that gameplay should be the prime classifier for game genres and that RPG's aren't an exception to that.

I want to participate user, but some asshole is going on about tabletop shit.

AoD manages to have a worse combat system than FO1/2. I really wish elements of FO:T are applied to a main Fallout title.

I don't necessarily mean something that 100% replicates TTRPGs, just a game that has fun combat, good writing, a decent amount branching paths and dialog options, and that's not completely linear.

Same. It's like I can either be quiet and standoffish or loud and sarcastic with little in between. Both seem to put people off.

I wish all the idiots falling for bait/actual honest dumbfuck comments would just post games instead.

Speaking of Fallout Tactics, are there any other games that suddenly go from 8+/10 to 3/10 at best about halfway through like FO:T does? I replay it like every other year thinking this time it'll be different!, and then I get to st. louis and just stop playing. Fucking shame because the Reaver missions are actually fun, but jesus fucking christ the super mutant and robot missions are pure fucking AIDS.


What is wrong with you, user?

You might, I did, but it's not something I really wanna do because I feel like I would be dragging everyone else and even if I don't I'd be pressuring myself which isn't what you're supposed to do.


You would have eaten pavement quickly where I was at. I sincerely hope you don't do that anymore; or to be more clear that you don't want to do that anymore.

Banjo Kazooie goes from 9/10 to 4/10 when you reach Level 9 so there's that.

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Forgot to add it goes to 3/10 after the first area, not halfway through.

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