If you haven’t played Dungeons and Dragons before, I highly recommend it, especially if you’re a fan of games like Divinity: Original Sin, Dragon Age, or A Bard’s Tale. These games are almost digital recreations of the tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons by Wizards of the Coast, with some clear deviations due to the format in which you’re playing.
These games have seen a lot of critical acclaim for the different directions you can take in the game, the absurd choices you can make, and the overall fun of creating and progressing as you own, unique character. Unfortunately, we’re rarely, if ever, going to see a video game that completely hits all the marks that a session of Dungeons and Dragons brings to the table. The best part about D&D is the fact it’s possible for in the moment mutation of the story as a whole. The Dungeon Master (or at least a good one) should be able to roll with the punches and the rolls of the game, modifying the story as it progresses if a player takes the story in a different direction. The game is often tailor made for the characters the players play as and focuses on their backstories.
With a digital format, where assets and content need to be designed and implemented ahead of time, you won’t see that kind of customization of the game specific to a small group of people.
But that doesn’t make modeling games after it a bad thing. We just need to understand our limitations when designing these kinds of games or knowing that digital can’t provide everything an improvisation game with friends when we play these games. A game developer can promise that a game can have several different outcomes without promising that the game will reflect your every choice, as it’s near impossible and always gets the players hopes up, setting them up for disappointment later.
These games play a big role for those that don’t have a group of friends with the same interests and schedules in order to play D&D. Probably half the difficulty in playing the tabletop game is just figuring out everyone’s schedules. That’s not even counting all the rules you have to memorize or strategically leave out. Dragon Age was a great game for getting myself into D&D, but even then it took me years until I was able to find friends with similar interests that were willing to play.
Video Games Deconstructed 