What do tabletop RPGs have to offer that computer RPGs can't deliver?

What do tabletop RPGs have to offer that computer RPGs can't deliver?

Why do YOU personally keep playing tabletop RPGs?

>What do tabletop RPGs have to offer that computer RPGs can't deliver?
A wealth of personal possibility and replayability that video games can not match.
The experience will be different every time, in many different ways.

Improvisation.

Real, human interaction face-to-face.
Zero limits to how you play your game aside from your imagination. And the DM's patience.
No DRM.

Imagine a point and click adventure game, only the solution to the puzzle can be anything that makes sense instead of what the game makers originally planned.

I don't know how to program.

Also, if I made a video game people could choose not to play it. If I convince people into thinkin that they like me, I can strongarm them into listening to my stories every saturday

Oh fuck you just reminded me of this one fucking puzzle

>need to get a key to a fusebox
>too bad, the key is on the subway track for some reason
>but you can't get it because third rail will electrocute you
>so you have to go to your apartment and get a pair of tongs that aren't even long enough to reach the key
>the tongs are clamped to a pipe to plug a leak on the water pressure system, so obviously you're supposed to steal it
>so you sacrifice a ring the character got as a birthday present from her dad to use as a fuse power up the water pressure system, thanks to gold's high conductivity, and turn the pressure down for the whole apartment building
>to obtain a clamp that you don't even know why you need
>then you need throw bread crumbs from your apartment window into a canal so that a seagull comes and pecks an inflatable inner tube float in the canal so that the air which escapes from the hole and pushes it somewhere reachable
>then you need to grab the clothes line on your way out of your apartment to go hunt down this float
>and tie the clothes line to the clamp tongs handle
>then blow up the inner tube and place the tong handles inside the center of the inner tube so that the tube holds the clamp open
>as the tube deflates, the tongs begin to close
>then your character masterfully throws the hellish contraption onto the subway track so that the clamp grabs a key when the tube deflates, and reels it in
>now you have the key you need to open the fusebox to the theatre so you can fix the broken marquee display

Fucking hell that game is from 1999 and I still can't get over how much that puzzle threw me for a loop

Even if you do know how to program running a Veeky Forums session usually gives you a much better return on your effort spent as a small group.

Holy Jesus. What was the game? How on earth did you solve that?

This is how I'm describing RPGs from now on

This.
In addition, you can design any kind of game you want, even one that crosses time, space, worlds, and even genre, and there is no data limit save your imagination.

unlike computer RPGs, you can do almost anything in tabletop ones, I guess

The Longest Journey, and I solved it through a lot of trial and error. It was obvious what the fuck you were supposed to do with the tongs, and the clothing line, but the inner tube was just me trying to combine every item in my inventory in desperation.

There was another one that I remembered just now, but it's arguably not as bad. You're supposed to find a way past a receptionist, and the solution was to take a pizza box from a trash can outside and pretend to have a pizza delivery, but the pizza box didn't spawn until you had triggered some arbitrary flag by having a completely unrelated conversation with another npc. They were two extreme low points of an otherwise pretty good adventure game.

Oh fuck and there was another one where you were supposed to make a gargoyle sneeze to get past him then challenge a wizard to a battle of wits use a calculator to beat him at math. Then he gets sucked into the calculator when he loses so he's no longer in your way.

I haven't been able to enjoy an RPG since my first/best DM died unexpectedly 1 years ago.

Anyone know any RPGS that resemble a tabletop game or at least have the tabletop feel to them? I wanna play a tabletop game but I don't have the time, friends, experience, patients, and probably many other things to do so.

Damn dude that's harsh.

Gloomhaven

Wait I completely misread and got the question backwards.

Neverwinter Nights

All the Infinity Engine games are almost straight clones of AD&D (or 3.0 for Icewind Dale 2).

>What do tabletop RPGs have to offer that computer RPGs can't deliver?
A GM.

No matter how hard the developers try, the technology is just not there to replicate a good GM.

Basically, an RPG is more railroady than even the railroadiest of That GMs.

More like the other way around. What do cRPGs do that you can't get from tabletop?

The answer is accessibility.
And graphics I guess

>what does writing your own novel have to offer that watching TV soap opera trash can't deliver? are you crazy???
fucking normies

I like the group storytelling and character development.

Even the most brilliantly designed silent-protagonist or dialogue tree focused rpg's (and this is coming from someone who loves those games) don't give you the opportunity to personally write a character and their arc, and guide them through a story which neither the creator nor the player potentially knows the ending to.

You could say "freedom" is the answer to the question, but it goes deeper than just giving players a sandbox. No video rpg lets me write my own dialogue from scratch and have npc's respond in kind.

A computer won't get me drunk

>What do tabletop RPGs have to offer that computer RPGs can't deliver?

A human GM that can adapt to out-of-the-box ideas, so that you're not confined to a small handful of preprogrammed solutions to every problem. That's the big one, and likely to stay relevant for decades to come.

There's also the warm social aspect of hanging out with friends in real life, but that one is served equally well by boardgames/cardgames.

"a generic city guard is blocking your entry to the house."
"what? why? we're working for the Mayor. show him our letter of employment."
"i don't know how to do that."
"well, put him to sleep with this Sleep spell i've got."
"i don't know how to do that."
"go around to the back of the building and climb up to an open window?"
"i don't know how to do that."
"challenge the guard to a fight and tie him up?"
"i don't know how to do that."
"okay, what are my options?"
"the only way to get past this guard is to use the ice wand you would have received in chapter 2 if you'd helped the murderer escape his prison cell."
"are you serious? i'm lawful good. i would never do that."
"sorry, that's the only way to get past this guard."
"but if i don't get into this house the game is stuck forever!"
"sorry. start the game over i guess."

i like tabletop RPGs better than CRPGs because in CRPGs the GM is a retarded computer program that can't think of any solutions to a problem except whatever the writers thought made sense that day.