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I'm posing the above question to everyone who cares to read.
It's just something that I don't get when I read about "realism" OR "versimilitude":
Why do you expect things to act like reality, or act consistently, when they aren't real?
I can understand it if people just want to play in that kind of world, but I don't understand it when the tone is one of expectation that that's how things should always work.
I've only read the first post after this, and that answered the question. But I'm going to add my two pence anyway, to make it even simpler.
Its because my character lives there. So unless I've been told, at the start of the game, that something doesn't work the way it does in our world, you bet your @$$ that's how I'm going to expect it to work.
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For example, in the golden age of comics, Superman might have been seen holding an entire building above his head. It's perfectly fine to assume that Superman had the strength to hold that much weight, but it's silly to think that the building would remain structurally intact when in essence all of its weight is being compressed down in two teeny, tiny points (Superman's hands). Superman's arm would simply punch through the building, not hold it up.
What good is Superman's ability to hold up a building if someone is going to enforce physics on him? Rationality is the enemy of circus peanuts.
But then I'm That Guy who gets annoyed when space battles have sound effects.
Well okay, at this point while I can't agree with you I at least can understand by comparason. I have the same problem with all forms of "mind power".
I must say, though, that I find myself the opposite of one thing you said: I feel insulted when someone decides that they're going to invoke realism over cinematics. I feel insulted that someone thought I either needed or wanted to see another boring piece of mundanity, and insulted that they didn't trust my imagination to suspend my knowledge of the real world to accept something that's satisfying image-wise.
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Originally Posted by Asmor
For example, in the golden age of comics, Superman might have been seen holding an entire building above his head. It's perfectly fine to assume that Superman had the strength to hold that much weight, but it's silly to think that the building would remain structurally intact when in essence all of its weight is being compressed down in two teeny, tiny points (Superman's hands). Superman's arm would simply punch through the building, not hold it up.
Realism and verisimilitude are two completely different things.
You can make things unrealistic and maintain verisimilitude. When you break verisimilitude is when things get silly.
For example, in the golden age of comics, Superman might have been seen holding an entire building above his head. It's perfectly fine to assume that Superman had the strength to hold that much weight, but it's silly to think that the building would remain structurally intact when in essence all of its weight is being compressed down in two teeny, tiny points (Superman's hands). Superman's arm would simply punch through the building, not hold it up.
The difference between realism and versimilitude vis a vis gaming is that internal consistency within a genre is all you need as long as you are familiar with that genre. Like say, Toon if you have ever seen a Buggs Bunny cartoon in your life, which most people have.
Realism is the expectation of verisimilitude when you aren't already within a clearly defined Genre (Superhero, Star Wars, Vampires, Steampunk, Cthulhu, etc. etc.)
I think the problem a lot of people have with most FRPGs is that the presumed fantasy genre baseline can range from the fairly realistic low-fantasy world many people know from early fantasy novels, (the Conan books, Jack Vances Dying Earth, Fafhred and Grey Mouser) to the rather zany worlds of World of Warcraft, anime, or the throw-away Sci Fi channel movie of the week (Gargoyles vs. the SS or whatever).
In the former case you can bring your own expectations of everymans knowledge of the real world and history into, with the expectation that there will be a few fantasy elements (dragons, magic spells, potions whatever) but by and large the world is one you can expect to find your way around in. In the latter case, who knows whats going on.
Still worse, often, rather than being consistently in one zone or another, many FRPGs are a rather ill-defined and often confusing mish-mash of realistic and cartoonish elements.
G.
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Last edited by Galloglaich; 3rd April 2009 at 11:54 PM..
Because the non rationality of it is the part we find fun? It's only "unnecessarily complicated and baraoque" when you insist on trying to put it into some sort of rational assumption. It's just a different way of looking at things.
It's like a magic trick. When I see the trick, it's cool because of the fact that it seems to break the assumptions I have about the world around me. When I learn how to do the trick, it's still cool, but in a different way. (Now I can use it to break other people's assumptions about the world around them.)
This almost seems like a classic example of talking past each other in these kinds of discussions. I don't recall anyone advocating realism in this thread who seriously suggested playing FRPG in an entirely mundane world - a world with no magic tricks.
In fact, the idea we have been discussing of introducing Magic elements into an otherwise realistic world is exactly like seeing a good Magic trick.
The flipside strikes me as more like drifting into an entirely magical world, through the looking glass as it were, which is fine if it has an internal logical all it's own, like the world of Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan, or The Wizard of Oz. If you have a game going that is truly magical in this sense, my hat is off to you.
The problem is precious few game designers and DM's rise up to the level of a Lewis Caroll, and you end up playing in a game that is more like a bad episode of Thundar the Barbarian...
G.
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I must say, though, that I find myself the opposite of one thing you said: I feel insulted when someone decides that they're going to invoke realism over cinematics.
Why does cinematics and realism have to be mutually exclusive? Was The Thing realistic? Was Alien? Aliens? Blade Runner?
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I feel insulted that someone thought I either needed or wanted to see another boring piece of mundanity, and insulted that they didn't trust my imagination to suspend my knowledge of the real world to accept something that's satisfying image-wise.
I'm a little exasperated by the idea that reality is boring or mundane...
When playing an RPG, if it's meant to be a relatively serious game (a rather big iF) I feel insulted if I'm expected to play in a crude sophomoric mish mash that doesn't make even the least bit of sense, for the same reason I wouldn't go to a movie theater and pay to watch the latest made for Sci Fi Channel masterpiece "Mansquito" or whatever.
If you are a Dali, paint me a surreal landscape I'll be glad to play in it, but I'm a grown man, I don't waste my time with juvenile pablum. I personally don't think RPG's need to be dumbed down, I don't play with action figures or hot wheels cars, I can go to the gym and spar with somebody for real if I want to fight and I have a real car. And there is nothing boring or mundane about my life.
G.
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Some semblance of realism-mirroring is necessary (in, as others have mentioned, a non-genre system) if only so as not to have to design one's game-world physics, chemistry, and biology from the Big Bang on down in order to explain how things work as they do. So, we assume basics such as gravity; moons orbiting planets orbiting stars etc.; that solids and liquids and gases generally behave as they do in reality; that water freezes at 0 (32) and boils at 100 (212); that life exists, functions, and reproduces much as in reality; and so on.
Then, we overlay whatever amount of non-reality required to achieve the game we're looking to play: living gods; magic as a 5th force of physics that can be manipulated by some lifeforms and in rare instances can manipulate itself; non-invention of gunpowder or any other industrial-revolution stuff; fantastic lifeforms; the alternate planes and how they affect the game world, etc.
The questions (and for some, problems) arise when we try to explain the non-real overlays in terms relating to reality, as I do with magic above. Should we bother? I say yes, as far as possible, as it adds to internal consistency and by extension to "believability"; here defined as "a situation where things make enough sense to the players in and out of character such that they do not find themselves asking on a meta-game level how and why something works the way it does".
This almost seems like a classic example of talking past each other in these kinds of discussions. I don't recall anyone advocating realism in this thread who seriously suggested playing FRPG in an entirely mundane world - a world with no magic tricks.
Well talking past eachother may be the case because that's not at all what I was saying.
My statement (maybe I said it poorly) was that people have different ways of looking at a situation. I think it's a right brain vrs left brain thing.
Some people want things (even fantastic things) to have a rationality to them. They want the rules of the world, and they want the rules to be consistant. If there are no rules, or they don't know the rules they're uncomfortable, and will even make "standard" rules for use going forward.
Some people don't want (or care) things to have that rationality. The fantastic does fantastic stuff, and it doesn't matter if the fantastic stuff has a logical explaination. It's just cool, so it exists. These people don't care if they know the rules so much, and tend to change the rules to match their ideal anyway.
Without realistic things to contrast with, the fantastic becomes meaningless.
Also, because there seems to be more than one argument here: What is the point of having rules if everything seems to ignore them? In most works of fiction, even magic has rules. Excessive handwaving gets a little frustrating.
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Why does cinematics and realism have to be mutually exclusive? Was The Thing realistic? Was Alien? Aliens? Blade Runner?
Yeah, they were. And so they were boring to me.
I'm not sure if cinematics and realism have to be mutually exclusive, but I think if you try to use them both there's very little to work with.
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Originally Posted by Galloglaich
I'm a little exasperated by the idea that reality is boring or mundane...
Compared to what fantastic things exist in the non-real world the stuff I go through every do isn't worth thinking about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Galloglaich
I personally don't think RPG's need to be dumbed down, I don't play with action figures or hot wheels cars, I can go to the gym and spar with somebody for real if I want to fight and I have a real car. And there is nothing boring or mundane about my life.
I don't think it should be dumbed-down either. But I view realism as dumbing it down because I know reality. I want something that I don't know, which in something speculative.
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Originally Posted by Leatherhead
Without realistic things to contrast with, the fantastic becomes meaningless.
If I say, "dragon," you picture something in your head. Therefore, dragons are not utter nonsense.
If you know anything about physics, you're aware that a two ton lizard that can fly is absurd. Sure, you can say "it's magic", but I've never seen anti-magic/ dispel magic drop a dragon out of the sky.
Fantasy bends real world laws all the time. I admit that there comes a point where it can go too far and enter the "realm of the absurd", but in general I think it's okay if fantasy bends the rules from time to time. It's fantasy, not real world + magic.
If you know anything about physics, you're aware that a two ton lizard that can fly is absurd. Sure, you can say "it's magic", but I've never seen anti-magic/ dispel magic drop a dragon out of the sky.
Fantasy bends real world laws all the time. I admit that there comes a point where it can go too far and enter the "realm of the absurd", but in general I think it's okay if fantasy bends the rules from time to time. It's fantasy, not real world + magic.
Imagine a halfling is capable, in game mechanical terms, of tackling an ancient red dragon to the ground. In some game worlds, this is perfectly acceptable. In others, this is surreal to the extreme. Reality, in the game world, is whether this is an acceptable event.
As for dragons themselves... they may be physically impossible, but magic is a sufficient explanation. Anti-magic and dispel magic, by the way, will not case a golem to turn into a pile clay, will not work on any artifact, and will not cause a beholder to fall. In fact, anti-magic will not, naturally enough, cause itself to fail. Casting such a a spell does not mean "the rules of magic no longer apply," it just means, "certain magical effects in this area are suppressed." It's anti-magic zone, not "zone of things acting like the real world."
Realism is important if you decide to merge, say, Conan, with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. you have to decide what the new rules are. If you do not decide, the result is just incoherent.
Fantasy bends real world laws all the time. I admit that there comes a point where it can go too far and enter the "realm of the absurd", but in general I think it's okay if fantasy bends the rules from time to time. It's fantasy, not real world + magic.
But that's exactly what I want from a game. Real (medieval) world + magic + mythical creatures.
Imagine a halfling is capable, in game mechanical terms, of tackling an ancient red dragon to the ground. In some game worlds, this is perfectly acceptable. In others, this is surreal to the extreme. Reality, in the game world, is whether this is an acceptable event.
As for dragons themselves... they may be physically impossible, but magic is a sufficient explanation. Anti-magic and dispel magic, by the way, will not case a golem to turn into a pile clay, will not work on any artifact, and will not cause a beholder to fall. In fact, anti-magic will not, naturally enough, cause itself to fail. Casting such a a spell does not mean "the rules of magic no longer apply," it just means, "certain magical effects in this area are suppressed." It's anti-magic zone, not "zone of things acting like the real world."
Realism is important if you decide to merge, say, Conan, with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. you have to decide what the new rules are. If you do not decide, the result is just incoherent.
So why is it that it's okay for dragon flight to be explained away by magic but you can't have magic-infused lava that radiates less heat? Why is it okay for an anti-magic zone to suppress some magical effects but not others (beyond the fact that it would be so broken if beholders inside it couldn't do anything but flop around helplessly, dragons fell out of the sky, and golems deanimated)?
Don't get me wrong, I think the room filling with lava trap/test was inherently very flawed (encounter hammering, DM didn't think the trap through, etc), but I think it has more to do with the DM than anything else.
Magic is a very powerful dramatic tool in fantasy. If you want to have a fight over a pit of lava, then the cult currently inhabiting the volcano used rituals to reduce the radiant heat within so that the volcano could be habitable (and PCs can notice and decipher the runes used to enact this ritual using Arcana). Alternately, it could just be magic lava, prized by wizards for use in their eldritch research (which could also be why the cult chose this particular lair in the first place).
I think the "realism problem" often has more to do with DMs who don't consider the basic justifications/reasons (5 W's) and implications of their settings than anything else.
But that's exactly what I want from a game. Real (medieval) world + magic + mythical creatures.
For me, magic and the real world are incompatible unless magic is exceedingly rare. The defining laws of our universe are (usually) default in a fantasy setting, but as I see it the presence of magic automatically downgrades all laws into guidelines. IMO, in any setting with prevalent magic the default assumption of anyone living there would be, "everything is as it is, except when it isn't".
I mean sure, you can count on gravity to cause objects to fall downwards. Unless some magical beastie reverses gravity, or some mystical experiment has unintended consequences and suddenly the laws of our universe need no longer apply...
These don't have to be day to day occurrences in the lives of the common folk for this to hold true. They tell and retell the tales of wizards flagrantly disregarding the laws of physics, and therefore have a pretty good idea that those laws aren't rock solid, even if they haven't seen it for themselves.
The sun will rise tomorrow... unless some wizard stops it from traveling across the sky or the gods are peeved... let's just cross our fingers, say our prayers and hope for the best.
Last edited by Fanaelialae; 4th April 2009 at 02:21 AM..
The lava in Beyond the Mottled Tower actually deals 10d10 damage per round of immersion and none if you are not in direct contact with it, and is used in a lava trap exactly like the one he's complaining about here - it's a neat scene, but if you're bothered by being five feet or so above a rising column of lava, it's gonna bug you a lot.
The problem is, if you see lava, and it behaves in a manner differently than you expect, i.e. more like lukewarm marmelade (it doesn't burn you unless you touch it.. you can relatively safely crawl over it etc.) and everything else in the room does as well, you really don't know where to stand (not on the cannons apparently) because your normal assumptions of how the physics works, how the room is shaped, how cannons and walls work etc. are all useless.
And the reverse of that is that if you make lava behave too realistically, it might become so annoying that it's not fun if you implement it.
If you're relatively close to lava, you're dead. Lava heats the surrounding area to 700 degrees, which would cook a person. Not to mention the gasses, ashes, and such that accompany lava and volcanos.
So, fighting in the heart of a volcano is just impossible if you're going to be realistic. But, we ignore that, because otherwise it's not fun.
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Originally Posted by Janx
bingo! We don't have to justify how a dragon exists. The player can accept that (suspension of disbelief). The player should not accept that 20' wide dragons can squeeze through 3' doors. That's not realistic.
At the same time, I have seen issues of "Realism", not as far as, "How can a dragon exist, how can it fly", but more a macro issue of, "Wait a minute. There simply cannot be that many dragons in the world, because based on the monster's size, it would have to eat so much things that it can't possibly exist."
You have folks calling unrealism due to the notion of lots and lots of monsters (apex predators) existing in a world. A dungeon of monsters would, respectively, have eaten all the normal woodland animals surrounding it to force the monsters into starvation, for instance.
Taking that level of Macro thinking too far forces you to fight against the genre itself.
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