A few minutes after entering it, Brian, Scott, Jon, and Newton were all dead and it was my fault. The script I'd use to place the fire beetles caused them to endlessly re-spawn. That wasn't a problem when the beetles were just being led to the umber hulk, but the party had no idea there was an umber hulk in the dungeon. So they had just kept fighting... and fighting...
Now it was their turn to level the criticism on me. How were they supposed to know what to do? Was it immersive to have a spawn on endless repeat? After sitting through their righteous anger, I raised them all from the dead and we went on to finish the module. But the joy was gone.
My manifesto was in shambles. My efforts at deep content and story-telling had been at best mediocre. Roleplaying had proven unworkable. What little immersion there was died at the hands of designer error, lag, client bugs, or player mistake. There was no fear of consequences - rather than be an impactful and tragic event, death was a comedy.
I went back to the drawing board, and re-worked everything for my next module using what I had learned. I replaced my sprawling 64x64 zones with smaller areas that would be easier to load. I eliminated subtle clues in favor of short, simple, and direct messages that couldn't be missed, from NPCs that couldn't be fought. I got rid of "immersive" fauna and flora that were just for looking at, and added random encounters with random spawns to give the players the experience points they craved. I added instant respawn on death at a cost of gold and experience. I let the players rest wherever and whenever they wanted, and let them pause the fights if they needed to. And I told the players not to worry about roleplaying and just to have fun. In short, I created every other CRPG out there.
We played it the following week. It didn't have a damn thing to do with tabletop gaming but it was the one and only successful session we had. It was also the last session.
I couldn't go on. Each module had taken me twenty to thirty hours to create, and ultimately where I ended was nothing different from - and certainly no improvement on - what was already out there. Even with a hands-on gamemaster, and a crew of gamers who knew each other from their face-to-face days, I hadn't been successful in my quest to emulate the tabletop experience. The Holy Grail was forever outside my reach.
The gameplay of computer RPGs doesn't feel like D&D in the old days and it never will. Trying to design a computer game that plays like a tabletop RPG just makes for a broken computer game. It seems obvious now, but like so many designers before me, I had to learn it for myself.
I'm left with a new found respect for the craft of computer game design, and a strange sense of gratitude I didn't learn the lesson with a $5 million budget and a team of twenty under my control.
And Newton - next time we play online together, please don't roleplay the bugs.
