Did I miss something? I could have sworn NWN and Baldur's Gate and Icewindale and Fallout 1&2 were all created in this universe.
Those are based on Dungeaons&Dragons rules and while tabletop D&D is technically a P&P game, I don't usually consider it actual/original P&P, but rather a commercial tabletop game. While you may think it's the same, the difference is that D&D is a comercial RPG tabletop game with specific rules, while what I call P&P is the kind of RPG game that is created from scratch by the people playing it and that has no specific rules. In these games the prime objective is the creation of compelling stories and character development (not limited by rules on a book and some numbers), rather than following the rules and throwing dices in order to beat the objectives.
It's like when you played being a child (*). Your friends might be playing a Middle Earth kind of setting and you may suddenly join the game saying you are a robot from Delta Pi Andromeda, and as long as you explain why and how such a character would join the group and you convince the game master and a bunch of friends, you'd be accepted. (This is also posible under D&D because the rules specifically mention this posibility, but most people just play with the classes, races and skills specified by the playbook, it's <-- this last D&D that NWN, BG and Icewindale are based on, not the "open" one).
Also unlike D&D-like tabletop games on a P&P you can play without any statistics (although that's not common) and just play in terms like
very strong,
heroic/shy and whatnot. You are only limited by what your playing mates and game master accept as valid, because like I said the purpose of the game is not beatng the objectives you have been given based on some rules, the objective is ROLE PLAYING so if you have a very good imagination and you are good telling stories, only the sky is the limit. THIS is what role playing is and has always (historically) been. Dungeons&Dragons is something new that dates back to 1974, role playing is probably as antique as culture. (and probably much older, in the end, even chimps role play when they act as if they were humans)
* I have noticed that young people, the people that has completely grown in the era of modern video games have a worrying lack of imagination and few play as I would do when I was young, maybe that's the problem. And I'm talking about people just 5 years younger. I was born in 1983 so there was definately a videogame industry while I was growing, but those games strenghtened imagination rather than preventing it because they were so simple and limited (my parents worked hard to develop me out from VG and TV too something rare nowadays). Now it looks like kids need to be given everything. Seriously I've seen the case of kids who didn't know what to play if you take them to a park and they are not given some toy (like a ball) or if you don't give them
"intructions". It's sad. We would just take anything from the ground and start playing as pirates or medieval and we didn't even need anything, our imagination and the thin air was more than enough. I'm not saying every kid is like that now, but I've seen many and I do see a trend...
Sorry for my long posts, there's a lot that I have to explain to make my points clear and I competely lack any skills for systhesis, specially when writing in a language that is not mine.