On Purists vs Hardcore

Purists vs Hardcore

By: GM Tristan

As strange and as unbelievable as this may sound, I’ve had my share of the traditional pen-and-paper RPGs. The first thing that comes to my mind, the first memory that reappears in my head, when someone says traditional pen-and-paper RPG(s) is DnD. For those out there who doesn’t know what DnD is, it’s Dungeons and Dragons. 

DnD was pretty big as a traditional sit-down game some decades ago, although I’m not sure of its current state. It’s not the only game of its type my friends and I played. We also tried our hands on our version of Mazes and Monsters, a spoof of DnD as made popular by the Dexter Cartoon Series on Cartoon Network. That was probably one of the most tiresome games we’ve played so far, excluding a game of “Moro-moro” with girls back in high school.

As far as I can remember, the first MMORPG that made me a fan was Ragnarok and even before that point in time, I had already stopped toying around with the pen and paper type of RPG. I got my own Playstation before Ragnarok and even before that, the SNES and the Gameboy family (The Light version and the Color version among others…) were already taking more of my non-school time.

I guess you could say what drew me out of the whole traditional picture was the fact that the world around me was evolving. There have been a lot of games that were a lot easier to start and end, that were more visually appealing, that were more involving and portable than the former. So even before I became aware of Ragnarok and its kind of gaming, I had already fallen out of love with DnD. 

Another point where pen and paper gaming would lose to MMORPG nowadays, In my opinion, is the fact that not everyone will agree with the Game Master. That leads to chaos, confusion and chasing each other out the house for a heated game of basketball. 

Its really a no-contest since the two aren’t even of the same level really. I mean, I still love playing Game Master (God Modding, anyone) with my younger cousins (oh no, that doesn’t read right) because it lights my creative wick up but I detest playing it in the long run since we all have short attention spans and my cousins tend to fail at following rules. I love MMORPGs because I get to meet different people, whatever the distance, and there’s a sense of “another world” there but, like GM Tristan coined, it can take too much of your time without you even knowing about it.

In the end, pen and paper is played less nowadays compared to MMORPGs mainly because its not as advertised as the latter. When it comes to time, both are at par with game time dependent on the player’s interest with the game. With expenses? Rule books for the pen and paper and game time (for cafe players) or specs (for those with PCs) are essentially on a draw. My friends and I didn’t have much trouble with starting DnD since I (always the Game Master) always plan ahead (like three days) before the weekend games.