Mythbusters: Reality Or Dramatic? What Do You Allow In Your RPGS?

The Shaman

First Post

• Mar 29, 2010

• #11

Real life is pretty friggin' dramatic.*

You get a roll for just about everything in my games. The drama usually takes care of itself that way.



* Captain Sullenberger: "Got any ideas?" First Officer Skiles: "Actually, no."

 

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Celebrim

Legend

• Mar 29, 2010

• #12

I don't have a good answer for this.

If the game is simulating a particular drama, then the rules of the drama prevail over reality. In a 'Spaghetti Western Game', you can shoot the rope and cut it in a single shot. In a grim and gritty game of post apocalyptic survival, probably not. On the other hand, in one with radioactive mutants and old west mythic tropes, probably the western's genra emulation gets borrowed into the game along with clock punk and whatever.

In a game that is openly emulating TV cop dramas, then you can pull out a service revolver, fire a shot or two at point blank range into a deadbolt, and blow open the door without injuring or killing yourself with richocets and spalled fragments. In a game that is a realistic crime simulation, that wouldn't be true.

In a game that is emulating Wuxia movies, I'll make available the ability to cut the air and create whirlwinds of energy that knock people off their feat as a ranged attack. In a game featuring realistic martial combat, that ability won't be available.

 

R

Raven Crowking

First Post

• Mar 29, 2010

• #13

The D&D I like enforces reality, except when the fantasy takes over.

So, the rope is assigned an AC, Hardness, and hit points. These are based on an "average man" standard. If the PCs are better than that "average man" standard, it is because they are better than the average man. Not because I simply deemed that it was dramatic.

Note, however, that in RCFG, Clint Eastwood's character could take weapon skill ranks in a specific trick, "Part rope with one shot", that would greatly increase his chances of success.

(And, of course, MB didn't have the "greatest marksman in the world" to fall back upon. Remember the MB with splitting an arrow ala Robin Hood? When the Errol Flynn movie was made, they hired a guy to do the stunt. The MB team couldn't reproduce it for love or money, except with an arrow crafted especially for that purpose. However, that doesn't mean that the actual archer hired couldn't do it, and they admitted as much. They also had some film of the guy firing one arrow, and then consistently shooting it out of the sky with another, which I would have thought unlikely at best.)


RC

 

R

Rechan

Adventurer

• Mar 29, 2010

• #14

Forget reality. If it's Cool or Dramatic, it Happens (within reason; no leaping 40 foot wide gorges).

Whether there are repercussions or not is another issue.

I'm a big fan of systems where you pay resources to pull off dramatic effects, and have a much better time pulling off effects that fit your character's Archetype.

 

Last edited: Mar 29, 2010

El Mahdi

Muad'Dib of the Anauroch

• Mar 29, 2010

• #15

deleted

 

Last edited: Jan 19, 2015

Silvercat Moonpaw

Adventurer

• Mar 29, 2010

• #16

One problem with that question: it assumes we're going to require that the hanging be realistic.

Why? Why can't we let we let the guy being hung have an improbable lung capacity such that the PCs have time to shoot the rope off in more than one go? Why can't the bullet not cut the rope but instead set off a series of improbable coincidences that get the guy free anyway? Or the PCs charge in, guns blazing so they can get close enough to cut him free with a knife? Or maybe the gunshot is just a distraction so that Mr. Escape Artist has the distraction he needs to slip free?

Your question is a legitimate one, but even being a continuum it leaves out and even larger matrix of questions. Game worlds do not have to fall under a 1-dimensional framework but can answer "Dramatic or Realistic?" for individual elements.

 

Steel_Wind

Legend

• Mar 29, 2010

• #17

Cool is cool - provided it has some grounding in reality.

When everything that is attempted is justified by resorting to the Rule of Cool or "it's cinematic"...the "cool factor" can itself start to become mundane. That's what I don't want.

No light without dark, no good without evil - and no cool without the impossible and the mundane.

All by way of saying "it depends" and there has to be some balance in order for it to be fun on a longterm basis, too.

 

Umbran

Mod Squad

Staff member

Supporter

• Mar 29, 2010

• #18

I think it really varies from game to game. Some call for more real-world physics, some call for more heroics, and some call for fantastic wizbang.

I'm running a "Getting Started" session of Deadlands tonight. And if someone gets him- or herself strung up with a hemp knecktie, you can darn tootin' sure I'll let someone shoot 'em down.

If I were running a game that didn't have fantastic and horror elements in it, I might not allow it.

 

K

Kinneus

Explorer

• Mar 29, 2010

• #19

As an aside, this is one of the reasons I've always preferred fantasy games or way-out there sci-fi to realistic, modern settings or "hard" sci-fi. I'm bad at research and know surprisingly little about the real world, so I always feel like I have to slog through a billion questions of "realism" whenever I try to set up or participate in a "realistic" game. Would a police station really be staffed with so few cops? Would the loading entrance to the mall really be unlocked and accessible to the public? I know that throwing a hand grenade at a truck wouldn't actually make it explode... would it?

With extreme sci-fi or fantasy, though, stuff just happens. Magic does what it needs to do based on coolness or plot. And in sci-fi, well, maybe these special grenades are specifically created to blow up cars better. It lets me cut through the bull and get to the awesome. I find it freeing to not have to worry about realism too much.

 

The Shaman

First Post

• Mar 30, 2010

• #20

Kinneus said:

As an aside, this is one of the reasons I've always preferred fantasy games or way-out there sci-fi to realistic, modern settings or "hard" sci-fi. . . . I find it freeing to not have to worry about realism too much.

Click to expand...

Whereas I prefer realistic modern or historical settings to fantasy or way-out there sci-fi, because I can relate to the characters and their world in historical or modern games in ways I can't with fantasy and sci-fi.

Funny ol' thing, ain't it?