Do you think its possoble to recreate the kind of enjoyment one gets in video games from searching/farming for resources or other semi-repetitive tasks, but in tabletops? Or, if not that, how one could take an interesting setting and/or plot idea which relies on repeatedly scavenging areas for resources, and make it work in a tabletop setting?
I don't think it's entirely impossible, but I think it's worth thinking of why it's so fun in video games: in video games the process of farming/grinding and other repetitive tasks is often very predictable to the point of the player being pretty much able to go on autopilot and not have to be at a 100% at all times. Tabletop RPGs differ in the sense that many of their mechanics are based on conversation and it's sort of expected that the mechanics only be brought in once the right conversation is done.
But now like tabletop RPGs aren't the only tabletop games out there and there are in fact heavily mechanized solitaire games where playing them can be heavily automated. Completing a puzzle can be a solitaire tabletop game, as can be a playing a game of the card game Solitaire, etc. and I feel those games can hit the same kind of spot as "doing a repetitive task in a video game that still feels rewarding and fun."
So like: if you want to model it through the traditional tabletop RPG framework of "two players in conversation and once the right conversation happens the mechanics are brought in and then the procedure is followed" then I think you might struggle with making repetitive tasks fun and rewarding in a tabletop. There's too much friction there, when the reason why those activities can be fun in a video game is due to them being almost entirely frictionless. However, if you accept that one of the modes of play in your "tabletop farming sim" could literally be "a player literally plays a bean-counting mini game on the side as an abstraction of their character being involved in the bean-counting side of farming and collecting resources and so on" and just let them do that, then yeah. Maybe.
Now this is very high level and abstract but I could see the potential in just making some parts of a TTRPG automated and not necessitate a GM and it could work and be fun. :)
i think there's something to be said about incorporaitng it into a Meta-Game that's composed of different systems or games each representing different facets of the whole, such that someone could be engaging with such tasks and it feed into the broader game. to give an awful example: someone sitting doing a farming minigame as a solo ting that provides resources for another game but that they're part of a broader group for
