I Wanna Hold Your Hand - NOT!

NOTE: Leave trapdoor open at night. Watch your step, lava may be present.

One thing I love about Minecraft is all the experimentation that goes on. You are free to just try things to your heart's content, come up with silly plans, and experiment. The game does not hold your hand, tell you 'this is the way to do it,' or lead you through the discovery process. Things are left open intentionally for you to try different theories and contraptions, and the game's designers purposefully build in new functionality to enhance those possibilities.

Watch out, here comes the Spider-Proof wall!

Now contrast this with a traditional pen-and-paper RPG, and especially something like Pathfinder or D&D4. It's amazing to see the shift in focus, now, these games focus on character builds, balancing everything, and telling you what to do. By the time the designers and forums get done with the new expansions and character classes, there is little room left to experiment, it really has all been done for you, any fun combo balanced and planned out, and all the options thought of already. There is probably a little fun in multi-classing, but really, any of the D&D style games typically either break or have the fun balanced out of them by the time the next edition rolls around.

Right now, the trapdoor goes to a cage where we can deal with intruders mercilessly.

In addition, the focus of pen-and-paper games often breaks down to a mindless pursuit of levels, character power, and loot. They really are nothing more than Facebook games where the whole goal is to increase your "numbers" and "get your friends to play!" Yes, there is that thing with the story and what a good gamemaster brings to the table, but that is the exception more often than not. Pen-and-paper games fall into the trap of making character power the ultimate goal, when in reality, there is nothing fun about character power than having bigger numbers, and being able to end combats quicker. In Minecraft, yes there is loot and character power, but it is capped at a point, and it is definitely not the endgame focus. How you play and what you build determine success; not, do you have diamond this and that. Those are still tools, not auto-win weapons and gear.

THEORY: Lower-level entrances should have some security!

Where is the creativity? Where is the experimentation? Where is the game that celebrates what you create, instead of the modules or books you buy? These are things other people create, and yes, they want to make money and sell you lots of stuff too, but all those modules and stories and expansions drain the life out of your creations, how could you ever write or create something better than the paid stuff? Player-created content takes a back seat to official re-tellings of The Tomb of Horrors or Pathfinder's adventure paths. At times, it feels like there is no creating anything; modern pen-and-paper games feel like they are there to just serve up the next official module release to you, and there is always another book to buy to make things more 'fun' next time. You imagination, and your shelves, sag under the weight of everything you need to buy to start having fun.

Of course I'll never need to defend against a castle siege, but it's so COOL!

Minecraft celebrates the simple, it's basic building blocks plus some rules, and it leaves the rest to you. The basics of the game haven't really changed, it's still the same simple building game with a few parts and many possibilities it started as. Big game companies, and this includes pen-and-paper as well as video game, just don't understand the 'simple is better' concept. I'm sure if a big PnP or video game company designed Minecraft, we'd have the following expansions to buy before we could start playing with others online, and having fun:

• Minecraft: Pets
• Minecraft: Seasons
• Minecraft: Ultimate Magic Power
• Minecraft: Heroes of the Netherworld
• Minecraft: Hollywood Style Stuff

...and so on until my wallet is drained and my mind hurts. Also, the official Minecraft: Adventure Pack 1 through 25+ would be the better maps to play on, nobody could really build maps that compare to the official releases, right? The game just wouldn't come with those awesome tools or random worlds that everyone loves.

I leave you with this, a dark picture of the end of the main shaft down all those stairs. Now, what lies beyond this? How would you build the stairs? Would you dig down, or off to the side and look for a cave to explore? The game's focus is on 'what will you do next?' It's not, 'Where do the game designers want me to go?' That is the difference, and frankly, it's where the vaunted benefits of pen-and-paper games fail in comparison to simple games such as Minecraft and other building-block games. When the creativity, experimentation, and fun is designed out of the game, you have little left. Simple, open, and games that let you build are infinitely better than games where you run a system until max_level and everything ends.

End of the line...? You decide.