EarthBound-style roleplaying

[Jiggy]

Beware: "Stream of consciousness"-style ramblings ahead! There might not be a point!

My very first RPG ever was EarthBound, for the SNES. How does that influence my tabletop roleplaying habits now?

Things about EarthBound:
• No character customization exists.
• No permanent consequences of defeat - your main PC comes back at your last save point, you lose some of your cash on hand (but none of what's in your account) and maybe you have to pay a hospital to revive the rest of the party. That's it.
• Even level-grinding is rarely feasible, as XP thresholds are tailored to where you're supposed to be in the game, instead of a fixed or algorithmic progression.
• You are literally incapable of interacting with NPCs in unintended ways - you cannot "go off the rails". Ever.
• The game leans heavily on the fourth wall (eventually shattering it, when a couple of different NPCs ask for your real-life name).
• There are bathroom jokes. More than once.
• You are forced to experience plot-relevant cutscenes that may not match what could potentially happen. For instance, you are at one point ambushed/knocked out/taken prisoner by a group of zombies you could have destroyed in a couple of rounds. Or there's another time where someone escapes in a helicopter just as you're stepping onto the pad (you could have touched the chopper, you're so close) at a point in time when you're capable of destroying robots with your mind and have a party member packing firepower that one-shots certain bosses. Yet when the plot demands it, you're helpless to intervene.

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EarthBound is, in my opinion, one of the greatest games of all time. It's been around ~20 years and I still play it. Yet those things I listed about it would make players and GMs alike cry if they described a Pathfinder game. People in You-Know-Which-Camp would gnash their teeth at the thought of PC actions never disrupting the pre-written plot or of not having the freedom to determine their own fate - they'd say it was a game for those dirty members of You-Know-Which-Other-Camp. Yet those people would balk at the fact that the GM was assigning them characters - letting them choose only their name - and forcibly keeping levels within a predetermined range via arbitrary XP adjustments.

And yet, the game is a blast to play. Combat is fun, despite always playing the same characters/"builds". The story is great, and still brings me to the verge of tears at the end, even if I exploit the "rock candy glitch" to obtain unearthly power.

Are there any APs or homebrew campaigns that you would gladly play multiple times, with the same characters?

Nothing seems to "break" EarthBound - not predetermined stats, not linear plot, not breaking the 4th wall, not forced cutscenes, not even cheesey infinite-stats combos.

So why are we all so afraid that these things will completely ruin our Pathfinder games? Is it a sign of how fragile our games (and perhaps by extension, we ourselves?) tend to be, or is it a sign of how fantastic EarthBound is?

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Alright, my head feels less jumbled now. So, er, anyone like EarthBound? Has it influenced your other gaming experiences?

[PhelanArcetus]

I've watched Earthbound be played; never played it myself (but it's one of the three reasons we set up the SNES last year).

I think there's two big reasons why we accept some of these things in video games, but not in RPGs:

- Technology limitations. At the moment, we simply can't provide the hardware or software (at least not to the typical consumer) that is capable of improvising the way a human GM can. That leaves video games living on the rails out of necessity, and that helps us accept it.

- This one is more true in JRPGs than western, classically. It's definitely true for Earthbound: the sense that this isn't your story, this is Ness' story, and you're just directing him along. An RPG in this form is more like a play-along adventure novel (not a Choose-Your-Own Adventure, which is more like what western RPGs classically try to do).

But a tabletop RPG is sold to players as their story. And when it's your story, not Ness' or Terra's or Crono's, etc., you expect to be in control of it. When it's someone else's story, it's more like participating in a novel.

That, I think, is the big distinction. I play a game with a JRPG-style plot-train to see the story. I play a tabletop game to shape the story.

[Jiggy]

Interesting point! Maybe that's what I like about it - getting to see a story unfold.

Though that leaves me wondering why I generally dislike JRPGs...

[Orthos]

Giygas was pretty much my introduction to the Eldritch Abomination trope, and led me to my eventual love of Lovecraft and similar ideas.

[Rubit Chris]

I feel this thread made by RoboHusband might be useful to you.

[PhelanArcetus]

Jiggy wrote:

Interesting point! Maybe that's what I like about it - getting to see a story unfold.

Though that leaves me wondering why I generally dislike JRPGs...

Probably most of the other tropes of the genre, ranging from awkward translations to disconcertingly in-depth philosophical musings, androgynous and unappealing protagonists, painfully awkward romances, excessively long attack animations, sudden left turns in the plot, overly complex (and non-transparent) mechanics, excessively hard optional bosses, and so on?

Also, insanely long introductory sequences that leave you begging to play the actual game? Too many random encounters? Just some things that have bothered me.