Friday, April 5, 2013

Save game in tabletop?

Sometimes I have played with a thought that if roleplaying games had a save game feature. Kinda like fate (or-what-ever) points you earn as a group and can use to save game. Then you can kick-in-the-door approach, see what's beneath, die and "load game" for a better approach (for example).

Or before epic battle you use save game. Just because if the dice screw the epic battle (TPK) you can re-try it.

Just an idea I have had sometimes when I play video games. But what do you think?


4 comments:

Kai S. said...

I don't think that's a good idea. Good roleplaying comes (at least partially) from caring about your character and being afraid of what might happen to him. Having a "save game"-feature takes that away. Why should I care about what's going to happen to my character, when I can just "load" a previous savegame? There'd be no consequences in a game world anymore, and at least I think consequences (especially unforeseen ones) are one of the great things about roleplaying.

This would also lead to a kind of metagaming I wouldn't appreciate. We tell players to seperate player knowledge from character knowledge. A "save"-feature would signal the players to do the ecaxt opposite.

Jonas said...

It would perhaps be more interesting that each player has their individual fate points but the game can only be saved if every player chips in.

Unknown said...

I do agree with you about roleplaying (highlighting the role part of that gaming). But for more gaming approach this could work.

Though are challenges real challenges in an adventure (not much character personality nor interaction. Buy your stuff, go in, buy more kinda gaming) if you can review and try again?

But there's one point. You go into this dungeon. Play it to 60% in 8 hours (big one) and then you die. You want to play the same dungeon again and your Referee really wants to run it. What do you do?

1. Start again with new characters basically grinding and doing the same stuff again to get to 61% where things are new.
2. The dungeon is cleared to 60% by previous adventurers. Monsters are killed (what are killed already) and stuff looted (there might be more if not found yet). So basically walk through to 61% but possibly can find extra stuff on your way there unnoticed before.
3. Load game.

Unknown said...

That's cool. Everyone must agree to save game. Additional meta-game rule:

You cannot discuss about saving game beforehand. When you want to save game, you give your "chip" in. All around the table must throw their chips in and the game will be saved. If not, those who gamble will loose their chips.

Basically if you individually want to save game it's always a risk to do so if others don't want to. And what happens when one player runs out of chips? You can't save anymore before chips are earned (exchange xp, earn with heroic feats whatever).

I am not a gamer, but sometimes I think what if I put more "game" in role"play".