Quote Originally Posted by Spiryt View Post
Vast majority of video games in general are about combat, so it's not about role-playing only.
In my experience—which I'll freely admit has a heavy weighting towards the indie game scene—TRPGs have a much stronger inclination towards combat focus than video games. Looking at the games I have currently installed on Steam (which is even more slanted away from fighting-ey games)...only about one in four are focused on direct combat, or about one in three if you count grand strategy games, and another one in three don't have so much as a single punch thrown. Even adjusting for how terrible I am at actiony games and how much I seek out novel games, that's a decent ratio. Out of the TRPG campaigns I've played in the past couple years...most are D&D, a couple were Shadowrun, one was in Monte Cook's World of Darkness, and I'm in the middle of trying to set up a New Gods of Mankind game. Most of the D&D campaigns (which generally follow published adventure paths) have felt at least as linear as your typical CoD campaign, and while the Shadowrun and WoD games had some room for investigation and subtlety, I have a feeling that combat would still be a central tool even if the other players hadn't been going at it like CoD.


Though speaking of Steam...maybe what we need is some kind of Steam equivalent for RPGs, some way to easily find and play interesting-sounding RPGs. But that's a topic for another thread...