Have computers hurt or helped PnP games?

[unbreakable]

I think for a long time, the net effect was bad.  Mainly because companies were very slow to take advantage of the benefits computers bring to the table (no pun intended).

For example, how hard would it have been to make a computerized character sheet, and have it tied in to a DM info database?  Granted that relatively recent advances like HTML made this a ton easier, but it seems to me the companies were focused on computers mainly regarding gaming licenses.  Maybe there was also the issue of potential piracy, or losing profit from sales of character sheets?

Now that there are programs like OpenRPG (and heck, even some PnP RPG systems have gone Open Source), it seems the potential is there.  But are people sticking too much with the more accessible single player RPGs, RPG weak-MMOGs, or hybrids such as NWN?

I'm not really an active PnP guy anymore (sometimes I go and read the rule books, or flip through modules), so hearing from people who are still actively playing would be interesting.

[Space Herpes]

Honestly,  I don't know at this point.  I recently got back into Pnp games after having left the hobbie for five years.  The reason I got back in was mainly due to the lack of good RPG releases on the PC.  Console rpg's don't really do it for me.

There was a big surge in game sales when d20 3.0 hit.  Many d20 games came after and seemed to sell well.  Right now games seem to be in a bit of a slump again.  Pnp games seem to have a very harsh cycle of highs and lows.

In some ways, I think computer games have sapped some of the creativity out the pnp games.  I find people now and people ten years ago have very different outlooks on gaming.  Ten years ago, people didn't seem to mind learning new systems and spending time creating adventures.  Today, people tend to only play d20 or only World of Darkness.  Also, I find people would rather buy adventures and supliments rather than spending time creating them.

That has been my experience, anyway, and most of my impressions come from visiting the rpg.net boards.

SH