If it's not real then why call for "realism"?

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Scribble

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.

For me it's not at all an issue of making the special or magic things rational (this is what I mean by talking past each other) but of making the non-special or magic things rational so that the special or magic things stand out all the more.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Rechan

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. .

I don't follow your logic. if lava behaves like lava, just as water behaves like water and air behaves like air, and you still can add a new force we could call Magic. Magic can trump these other forces. Magic could for example make you temporarily or permanently immune to the effects of Heat. To me that would make sense.

The problem with just arbitrarily fudging lava to behave more like it does in say, a particular cartoon you saw when you were 14, is how do I know where you got that idea from, how do I know whether to expect anything else to work in this universe differently from what I expect from my intuitive understanding of the real world, and if I find something else that is strange, how can I tell if it's Magic causing it to be strange or simply another fudge from the DM or the game designer?

If I'm playing in a world where I expect things to more or less make sense, and I see someone playing near Lava, I can assume that there is Magic afoot. Or maybe I should just play along and assume Lava doesn't burn you unless you touch it in this universe, ( it better or I'll get mad when I'm burned to a cinder because I don't have Magical protection.... )

And maybe later when I see a talking dog, instead of thinking there is anything unusual about it, I'll just throw it a scooby snack... that's fine for TOON, I would find it a little disconcerting in a standard FRPG.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

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.

Really well put.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Rechan

I'm a little exasperated by the idea that reality is the bottom line for acceptable cinimatics.

It doesn't have to be, but for some types of cinematic enjoyment, you have to set reality aside for it to work. Wuxia, movies like The Matrix or Wanted, or "stuff blows up" action film.

To me, the Matrix was extremely realistic. I haven't seen the other films so can't comment on those. But the Matrix (at least the original one) had a highly plausible, carefully thought out and well reationalized "magical" reality layered on top of the 'real' reality we were all familiar with. When people slowed down to watch bullets going by, you could see the sonic disruption of the air from the bullets. Having someone who was able to bend reality because reality itself is virtual, is quite analagous to having a Wizard who can invoke Magic that distorts an otherwise rational Medieval world.

To me unrealistic is something like a shootout in the A-Team, a first person shooter like Halo, or your typical mainstream FRPG system .

G.

[Fallen Seraph]

I think one aspect of realism that should be addressed is "shifting realism" based on the narrative at the time. This is probably not something some people would like, but I find it has worked quite well for me. I shift my realism depending on what the scene needs.

If a scene requires something to go beyond the norms then it does. But if scaling it back suits the mood of another scene it does. This can get confusing yes, but if properly managed by having good atmosphere and understanding between the Player and DM then it can work wonderfully.

So to bring in lava, if you want a fight near lava without a magical reason to be alive, the DM pumps up the action and the over-the-top feel of the scene. Make the players feel like, "yeah we can do this". In another where they must evade lava and watch their breathing because of ash pump up a feeling of dread or danger. This requires trust between the player and DM, but if known before hand as the means of the DM then in my experience works.

It doesn't feel like there is a disconnect to, or that the consistency has gone either since it is the consistency with the mood, atmosphere and plot that keeps things going not the world element.

[Rechan]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

I don't follow your logic. if lava behaves like lava, just as water behaves like water and air behaves like air, and you still can add a new force we could call Magic. Magic can trump these other forces. Magic could for example make you temporarily or permanently immune to the effects of Heat. To me that would make sense.

The problem with just arbitrarily fudging lava to behave more like it does in say, a particular cartoon you saw when you were 14, is how do I know where you got that idea from, how do I know whether to expect anything else to work in this universe differently from what I expect from my intuitive understanding of the real world, and if I find something else that is strange, how can I tell if it's Magic causing it to be strange or simply another fudge from the DM or the game designer?

If I'm playing in a world where I expect things to more or less make sense, and I see someone playing near Lava, I can assume that there is Magic afoot. Or maybe I should just play along and assume Lava doesn't burn you unless you touch it in this universe, ( it better or I'll get mad when I'm burned to a cinder because I don't have Magical protection.... )

Or you could assume that I don't know Lava doesn't kill you unless you touch it, because quite simply some do not. DMs/game designers aren't all-knowing, in terms of the realistic applications of things.

Forget "Cartoon I saw at age 14"; one of the damn BOND movies has a villain with a base in a volcano. I didn't know "Lava kills you if you're in the room with it" until I read it on TvTropes.com, and I took Geology in college!

If you're standing on a flying city about three miles above the ground, you might assume "hey, there's magic afoot keeping me from getting hypothermia up here" whereas the next guy doesn't realize it's really windy/cold/hard to breathe that high up, and therefore doesn't take that into consideration.

Once I was running a game where the PCs were in the desert, and looking through an abandoned town. They come to a door, and open it, and there are stairs leading down. Suddenly one of the players announces, "Something bad must be going down here; people in the desert don't dig underground, the earth is too hard! Something sinister is afoot."

I just looked at him and said, "Huh? Basements/cellars aren't universal?"

The player assumed something was intentionally done, in the game, when really it was that way because of ignorance.

[Rechan]

Here's what I've been seeing missing from this whole talk of realism and player/dm assumptions:

People saying "Well I expect this to happen if I do this" well - what happened to asking instead of just acting without instead consulting? Do people not ask the DM if there are any differences of how his world works to the real world, or do these issues not come up until people just stumble into them?

Using the running example of the Lava/Volcano... if there's lava in the room, shouldn't you ask the DM what the rules are? Or, if the plot seems to be directing you to a Volcano where a Dragon lives in the heart of it... then either the DM is assuming you are going to go in, or he's going to assume that you aren't.

Wouldn't checking be advisable?

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by jdrakeh

Some people simply desire more or less reflection in that regard, depending upon why they pursue RPGs and what the conditions of their personal existence are. There is no 'correct' level of verisimiltude. It's a matter of personal preference. Like salt on food. Some people want a lot of verisimilitude in their fantasy, while some people want very little.

But the other factor at work. If you take a low level of realism, you have the problem that people entering into a given game are going to be faced with an exponentially larger learning curve.


If you will indulge a flight of fantasy (which I can assure you is not unrealistic) Lets premise a person, I'll call her "Brunette Girlfriend", or BG for short. is not a hard core gamer by any stretch of the imagination. BG is of a different demographic than the typical hard core gamer, but she is fun to be around. More fun than games even.

Lets say BG has a moderate interest or tolerance for playing games once in a while. We have friends over on weekends, play poker one night, board games like pictionary another night, and play drinking games on yet another.

If Galloglaich tried to get BG to play an RPG #1, "E&E", which has a rather complex low verisimilitude world and physics based on a mish mash of the expectations of hard core gamers, trekkies, anime fans and comic book collectors, she is going to have an exponentially more difficult time relating to the new game. As she encounters one illogical oddity after another, pretty soon BG is getting annoyed asking snarky questions, and quickly gets fed up. Before Galloglaich knows it, game night is over.

On the other hand, when Galloglaich tries introducing RPG #2, "Call of ToolHoo", which is relatively simple and mostly based on familar concepts from the real world, onto which are layered a well developed, engaging and strangely compelling literary horror genre which is internally consistent, he finds BG relates to it fairly easily. They have a good time and RPGs become an occasional part of game night, which continues.


This is why I like realism.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Fallen Seraph

I think one aspect of realism that should be addressed is "shifting realism" based on the narrative at the time. This is probably not something some people would like, but I find it has worked quite well for me. I shift my realism depending on what the scene needs.

If a scene requires something to go beyond the norms then it does. But if scaling it back suits the mood of another scene it does. This can get confusing yes, but if properly managed by having good atmosphere and understanding between the Player and DM then it can work wonderfully.

So to bring in lava, if you want a fight near lava without a magical reason to be alive, the DM pumps up the action and the over-the-top feel of the scene. Make the players feel like, "yeah we can do this". In another where they must evade lava and watch their breathing because of ash pump up a feeling of dread or danger. This requires trust between the player and DM, but if known before hand as the means of the DM then in my experience works.

It doesn't feel like there is a disconnect to, or that the consistency has gone either since it is the consistency with the mood, atmosphere and plot that keeps things going not the world element.

That seems reasonable to me, but something which you would develop as part of the rapport between DM and players, if not necessarily built into a game system per se.

G.

[Fallen Seraph]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

That seems reasonable to me, but something which you would develop as part of the rapport between DM and players, if not necessarily built into a game system per se.

G.

*Nods, nods* Yeah that is why I made sure to mention the trust issue. Though I do think there is mechanical ramifications with this, in that with a shifting realism on different aspects of the world the mechanics put into place would also adjust.

Just you know throwing it out there as another debate point. Another point on the spectrum as it were.

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Rechan

Here's what I've been seeing missing from this whole talk of realism and player/dm assumptions:

People saying "Well I expect this to happen if I do this" well - what happened to asking instead of just acting without instead consulting? Do people not ask the DM if there are any differences of how his world works to the real world, or do these issues not come up until people just stumble into them?

Using the running example of the Lava/Volcano... if there's lava in the room, shouldn't you ask the DM what the rules are? Or, if the plot seems to be directing you to a Volcano where a Dragon lives in the heart of it... then either the DM is assuming you are going to go in, or he's going to assume that you aren't.

Wouldn't checking be advisable?

I think this is also just a difference between playing RPG's as a kid, or as a grownup. When I was first playing DnD at the age of 13 or 14, we really didn't care about details too much or know much about history or physics.

I'm 40 years old now and the people I play with are well read professionals who have traveled around the world, done tours in the military, lived in other countries etc., so at this point I want a different type of game. The world around me seems more consistent with the rules I understand, and I expect an RPG, a computer game, or a film I spend the limited amount of time and money I can devote to entertainment to not jar me out of immersion by being gratuitously illogical or internally inconsistent (without a good reason)

I think I was much more tolerant of that when I was young.

G

[Galloglaich]

Originally Posted by Fallen Seraph

*Nods, nods* Yeah that is why I made sure to mention the trust issue. Though I do think there is mechanical ramifications with this, in that with a shifting realism on different aspects of the world the mechanics put into place would also adjust.

Just you know throwing it out there as another debate point. Another point on the spectrum as it were.

No, it's a valid point, but it comes back to the idea of having some structure that you deviate from... based in realistic assumptions we normally have.

It's kind of like, if you know the rules of Grammar and punctuation, you can break the rules and get away with it (especially if you are James Joyce or Shakespeare). But if you are just muddled and can't tell that you are writing one run-on sentence or double negative after another, you come across as semi-literate. If you follow me.

G.

[Rechan]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

I think I was much more tolerant of that when I was young.

And thus the disconnect. Because I don't care if it's illogical, improbable, impossible, or whatever. If it's cool, or if you put enough effort/production into something, then there's a high likelihood of it being allowed.

Games like Spirit of the Century, which are high cinematic Pulp (people with jet packs or fighting on the wings of planes, or dispatching a squad of ninja without breaking a sweat), are great to me, and they run like this.

I come to an RPG to be entertained with my friends, not to over-think it.

And here I am, almost 30, with a degree in a (social) science, and well read. Everyone in my gaming group are 35 or up.

To go back to Spirit of the Century, the game's mechanics reinforce the feel. You can spend a Fate point to simply declare, "I have a lighter!" even though your character doesn't smoke, simply because it would be dramatically useful to have a lighter at that moment. Compare that to a game (or a GM) that expects you to have that lighter in your inventory, purchased and the GP subtracted from your total, well in advance. So there is no "learning curve", if you agree by how the game works.

[Fallen Seraph]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

No, it's a valid point, but it comes back to the idea of having some structure that you deviate from... based in realistic assumptions we normally have.

It's kind of like, if you know the rules of Grammar and punctuation, you can break the rules and get away with it (especially if you are James Joyce or Shakespeare). But if you are just muddled and can't tell that you are writing one run-on sentence or double negative after another, you come across as semi-literate. If you follow me.

G.

Well it depends, the baseline itself can alter on what is viewed as the "norm", in that gaming world. A game like Exalted will have a very different norm-view of lava then a game like WH. Essentially, my view is realism need not apply as long as the focus of the game, be it through themes, atmosphere, style, etc. works. If a game is one that a realistic view works then that is what be in place.

So thus with my shifting reality model, the baseline that is deviated from for different specific scenes is dependent on the baseline of that game's genre and style. Basically style and gameplay influences reality and mechanics not vice-versa.

Edit: To Rechan, I keep meaning to pick up SoTC but keep getting side-tracked (just like with me planning to pick of SR (though now waiting for anniversary book to come out)).

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Realism, Consistency, Verisimilitude what they actually mean to someone seems to depend on the individual.

The real important thing of "consistency" to me seems to be that the player can make predictions on what happens, and if something happens, he would have the ability to figure out what happened.

And this can apply both to mechanics as it can apply to the "game world".

Spend an Action Point grants you an extra action. It does so consistently.
If that changed, the rules are either inconsistent, or you can figure out there is another rule at work you weren't aware before. But there is still a rule that describes this different outcome happening. (Maybe you took a feat to get a different ability, or it is a property of a monster/ally/environment).

If you do a favor for the Mayor, he will be thankful. If you meet him again, you expect him to still be thankful and have a positive attitude towards you.
If you later come back and he is not thankful, a consistent world means that that something changed his attitude. Maybe you figure out he is dominated, or someone claimed you had attacked his son unprovoked, or something like that. You can investigate and figure out what was different.


Lava being deadly or not being deadly is a question of realism. But it's not inconsistent if the lava is not deadly and you can fight in its vicinity It would become inconsistent if it suddenly turned deadly - unless other rules describe why it is so deadly now.


Verisimilitude seems to be about whether you can accept the world as it is described or you can't. The less closer the game world or its rule system seems to the real world, the less verisimilitude it has.
Maybe you just can't believe that the Mayor could get angry at you after all you did, and figuring out it was just some advisor's lie turning him against you doesn't feel right to you.
Maybe you find it perfectly acceptable that fighting over a pool of lava is okay. You might acknowledge it's probably harmful/deadly in the real world, but you can accept it because it makes an awesome scene.

It doesn't seem clear to me where anyones need for verisimilitude is "broken". It depends a lot on what preconceived notions you have about the game and what you find important elements and what not.
Sometimes it might be cruicial to "break" verisimilitude. If you want a action-laden game system, you really don't want a "realistic" rendition of injuries, wounds and infections.

[Rechan]

Originally Posted by Fallen Seraph

Edit: To Rechan, I keep meaning to pick up SoTC but keep getting side-tracked (just like with me planning to pick of SR (though now waiting for anniversary book to come out)).

Tangent

Honestly, I have never got a chance to play it, but I'm very familiar with the rules and I like them, conceptually.

Funnily enough, I was turned on to SotC because the same system is being used for the Dresden Files RPG. And the DFRPG is a different genre, and more realistic (even though it has magic and suchlike).

In fact, the DF treats magic as if it were real. I.e. magic has to behave in accordance with the laws of physics. If you try to create fire in a room with little oxygen, it's not going to work too well because fire needs air to burn. Now, I don't know where the system meets the book's narrative on that level of realism, but we'll just have to see.

Personally, I hope I don't have to compute the volume of a fireball cast in a smaller space and how far it's going to flow down a hallway like ye olde 2e fireball.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by Rechan

How did that contribute at all to the discussion?

By pointing out that's not awesome to everyone. Whereas I am very curious why you trimmed the context and made it seem as if Greg K simply wrote "No." with a period and everything.

[Greg K]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

By pointing out that's not awesome to everyone. Whereas I am very curious why you trimmed the context and made it seem as if Greg K simply wrote "No." with a period and everything.

In all fairness to Rechan, he probably didn't trim it. I think that I had, originally, typed "No" and hit submit and realized that I had left off the qualifier and immediately went back to add it. Rechan probably responded before I finished making the change.

(I can't remember for sure. Yesterday was a bit of a blur as I had to take one of my friends from his work to Emergency Urgent Care.)

[Nai_Calus]

Indeed, some of us don't really find that sort of thing awesome in the context of something we're trying to take seriously.

Now, one of my favourite movies is The Fifth Element, which has a ton of utterly ridiculous stuff in it, which in the context of the movie is awesome. But it's not a serious movie, at all. It's more serious than, say, Spaceballs, but it's definitely not trying to be anything but what it is. In the movie, Leeloo's fight scenes are plausible, that Diva Plavalaguna can actually sing like that with the stones inside her presumably wreaking all sorts of havoc on her diaphragm if it's anywhere near where it is on humans is perfectly OK, etc. That's the genre they're going for there, comedic sci-fi. In the context of *that* I would possibly almost be willing to accept a fight five feet above lava. We've already established that this is That Kind Of World.

Now, D&D with the group I'm in tends to be more Serious Business. The campaign with the lava especially so, since the DM had a story he was beating into us whether we liked it or not. It was a serious campaign with serious elements, frequent and important NPC interaction, and a world that was apparently mostly low-magic and gritty. So to run into that, in that context, ugh. It's a serious campaign with a serious world, so a sudden cartoon element is massively jarring, plus it's one of my bugaboos at that, so it's very disconnecting and offputting and leaves me going 'well what the hell do I assume now'. Which is why I asked the DM what he was even allowing to be possible there instead of just assuming I could jump onto/through things. My assumptions about what is normal are suddenly useless, because suddenly the world has taken a turn for the non-normal.

In a campaign in a setting more like The Fifth Element, high magic and manliness and not taking it seriously, that I've been told in advance is this way and where similar stuff has happened? I'm still going to roll my eyes, but I'm not going to be utterly thrown out of things. I knew something like this was coming sooner or later when I joined.

Now even in a realistic setting with lava that works like real lava, I'm not saying you can't have your epic fight five feet above a rising column of lava - As long as it is *plausible*. The BBEG has his lair in an active volcano, or even on the Paraelemental Plane of Magma. He's a high-level wizard easily capable of protecting himself and creating items to protect himself and his minions there from the lava. Just the location itself is going to keep most people out. The PCs, though, are a resourceful, capable lot who have after much investigation and preparation been able to find his lair and how to get there, and been able to procure or produce items for themselves to use that will protect them. Thus protected, they may happily charge right into the heart of that volcano or the PEPoM and have an epic, awesome fight with him there. This *is* awesome, because there's a *reason* for it and it is the direct reflection of an accomplishment on the part of the PCs that they are able to have this crowning moment of awesome in which the rules of reality simply do not apply to them - Because they've been able to come into the ability to make it not apply. Lava is still generally deadly. It just isn't right now, for you, because you came prepared.

By the time you can, say, make that DC90 Balance check to stand on liquid, you're generally so soaked in magic items and possibly your own magical abilities that it stops throwing anyone for a loop. You know what's possible and what isn't, but your ability and your magic simply don't care anymore. At that point it's perfectly acceptable. I *expect* that in certain settings and levels of PC competence.

My original point that has been lost here that I was making in the other thread with the example of 'running around a half-full magma chamber' was "Don't use totally unbelievable obstacles." In the situation I was facing, the lava was totally unbelievable. In another situation with plenty of magic and preparation for just exactly that where lava is trivial? Sure. Bring it on.

But I don't believe in selective or even worse inconsistent application of reality just for the sake of 'cool' if that isn't what the tone of the campaign is *about*. There is plenty, plenty of opportunity in D&D for cool that doesn't necessitate things like selectively hot lava. Cool that makes the players feel great because their good thinking and ingenuity allowed them to spit on reality.

And a question must be asked: What about fighting on a narrow catwalk over a flow of lava is so much cooler than, say, fighting on a narrow bridge over a roaring, swollen river filled with jagged rocks, rapids and whirlpools? Either way if you go off the side you're going to be in a world of hurt and trouble and probably dead. But the river is a lot more believable as a setting for characters who are not quite utterly heat-resistant badasses.

[jdrakeh]

Originally Posted by Galloglaich

But the other factor at work. If you take a low level of realism, you have the problem that people entering into a given game are going to be faced with an exponentially larger learning curve.

And? This doesn't have any bearing on what I stated. Some people like lots of verisimilitude. Some people prefer very little. Neither group of people is right or wrong.