Editing RPG (section)

===Vidya RPGs===
It's worth noting that there are many [[vidya gaems]] that call themselves RPGs, particularly the MMORPG genre that games like [[World of Warcraft|this phenomenon]] hail from, but most of the time, this is inaccurate. Typically, the only things that videogame RPGs have in common with pen-and-paper RPGs are classes, the ability to gain/level up different skills and quests. But due to the limitations of technology, it's not (yet) possible to truly roleplay in the tabletop sense; and so most players don't even try. A few games do at least offer some preset dialogue options, but this always leads to a preset conclusion. Either way, the story is going to be railroaded to one degree or another, and your actions will be heavily limited to whatever the programmers coded in. For example, you might be given a "disguise" skill as an arbitrary pass/fail score, but the game might not allow you to gain a bonus from stealing a guard's uniform (or not even allow you to loot a uniform in the first place) when logic dictates you should, because the programmers never thought of it. In a pen-and-paper game a good GM can compensate for any oversights in the game-makers' scenario they didn't anticipate; but the scripts governing what happen in a video game are immutable while in play.

TL;DR vidya's a nice diversion, but don't allow for creative thinking as in RPGs.