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

When I run a game, dramatic is far more important than realistic, mainly because I get the dramatic less wrong.

Frankly, the idea that any DM --outside side of a few rare fatbeard polymaths whose names should be venerated in secret rites-- could actually run a realistic game environment is more-or-less absurd. Pure gamer hubris. The sheer amount of knowledge, of practical experience you'd need to, well, sim a world, is... staggering, no?

I can tell you if an action seems genre-appropriate --like Celebirm said in his smart post earlier. Outside of that, all bets are off, unless we're talking about a swim lava. Mostly what I've seen over the years are DM's/GM's conflating expertise in a specific area --firearms, fencing, wilderness survival-- with general 'realism'.

So make mine 'dramatic'... because the idea I could evaluate and enforce anything deserving of the term 'realism' is laughable.

I tend toward the dramatic but gaming as an engineer with a bunch of engineers, we probably do go for "realism" more than in some groups.

In the specific example of shooting the rope with one shot, I'm sure we would all allow that. But that might be more because we have seen it in so many movies and might not question the physics as much as we should.

In a science fiction game, I tend toward high realism which honestly, makes the games less fun sometimes but, again as an engineer, I just have a harder time being loose with the facts and physics in a game setting like that.

In a fantasy setting, there is a different level of suspension of disbelief for me so it is easier to be flexible. But as a player and ref, we will hit the "reality" side of things for many aspects of the game: in the old days of fireballs expanding to a certain volume, you would be sure we would calculate the whole expanion, nook by nook and argue about whether the rules really mean a sphere or hemisphere Or I remember a Dark Sun module saying we could excavate an entrance buried in sand in an hour or some such and you can bet the engineers, a civil engineer among them, were all scratching our heads on that one (it was a very large volume of sand IIRC).

These days we try not to let these things side track us too much but its sooooo hard with so many engineers and techies.

Perhaps you can get a sense for how I view these by checking out my 2 recent blog posts- "How much food does a griffin eat?" and "Can a griffin really carry a human?" I would never slow a game session down for such things nor question it in a campaign (it's a fantasy game after all) but as an engineer game-geek, I would and did sit down and take a stab at it Sort of my own version of FRPG Mythbusters.

Mallus said:

Frankly, the idea that any DM --outside side of a few rare fatbeard polymaths whose names should be venerated in secret rites-- could actually run a realistic game environment is more-or-less absurd. Pure gamer hubris. The sheer amount of knowledge, of practical experience you'd need to, well, sim a word, is... staggering, no?

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No.

I live in the real world. I have a lifetime of practical experience to draw from, plus the whole of recorded history and knowledge to reference for things I don't know.

The Shaman said:

I have a lifetime of practical experience to draw from, plus the whole of recorded history and knowledge to reference for things I don't know.

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Two things...

... do you have a lifetime of experience doing all the things adventurers --in their various genres-- do? Have you been in a car case, forged a horseshoe, conspired against a Pope or mafia boss? Ever been EVA? Built a bridge? Fenced? Have you been paragliding while being shot at by former KGB?

See where this is going? I have no doubt many participants in our hobby are more knowledgeable and talented than me. I also have no doubt --well, little-- that most GM's are called on to adjudicate such a wide variety of usually unusual actions --par for the course, really-- that most of the time they're talking out of their asses, plausibility-wise. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

...and two... do you have the time in the middle of a session to look up all things you don't readily know, to reference the whole of recorded history, or, barring that, wikipedia? I'm sure a competent DM could maintain a significant level of realism given enough research time.

I don't mean to come off like I'm denigrating anyone's preference for realism, or their skill sets, or for that matter their common sense and judgment. It's just my experience that 'realism' when discussed by gamers means something like 'I get my area of expertise/hobbies correct and everything else is a crap shoot'.

Mallus said:

Two things...

... do you have a lifetime of experience doing all the things adventurers --in their various genres-- do? Have you been in a car case, forged a horseshoe, conspired against a Pope or mafia boss? Ever been EVA? Built a bridge? Fenced? Have you been paragliding while being shot at by former KGB?

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And beyond that, are you more of an expert on all these topics than your players? Two of my players are expert fencers. One of my players has been a math professor, another was working towards her doctorate in Medieval History and still another a mechanical engineer. One of them has a doctorate in Chemistry, while another is a manager for a large power company. One of my players is a talented seamstress and graphics designer, while another works in an occult bookshop and does tarot readings.

I couldn't even pretend to mold reality accurately unless I avoid anything resembling depth and avoided topics they all knew. Nor would I want to try or they want me to bother.


I would always favor whatever would be fun for the situation. For any but a grim or 'realistic' game, I would totally allow the chance of shooting the rope (or something similarly dramatic happening). I am a pretty cinematic DM, overall, so I'l always give the player a shot, at the very least.

Mallus said:

Two things...

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While Shaman's very historically based setting is not my cup of tea, it certainly gives him a wealth of information to draw on. I don't see why he can't run a "realistic" campaign. While my settings are more exotic, they are fairly realistic and the only reason they aren't more "realistic" is that my players don't appreciate it much and it takes time out of the game to drive it that way.

There is certainly enough discussion on these forums and similar ones about how things would be in a "real" fantasy world that it is clear to me that there are plenty of people who can make a good go of it. At the very least it suggests sufficient "verisimilitude" to carry the game convincingly for the players. You can see from my blog topics that I can't resist imagining what a real fantasy setting world might look like and I seem to have lots of company.

Of course, those threads also make it clear there is wide disagreement on what realistic would be. But it certainly seems sufficient to sustain a veneer of realism.

Raven Crowking said:

And, of course, MB didn't have the "greatest marksman in the world" to fall back upon.

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I don't really understand why they didn't stick a rifle in a vice and aim it perfectly at the rope and not worry about having an expert marksman... That would have shown whether or not the ultimate marksman would have been able to pull it off.

Saeviomagy said:

I don't really understand why they didn't stick a rifle in a vice and aim it perfectly at the rope and not worry about having an expert marksman... That would have shown whether or not the ultimate marksman would have been able to pull it off.

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They did that with the arrow, firing it mechanically.


RC

Piratecat said:

I'm definitely not a simulationist gamer. People have a chance to fail when they try something cinematic and cool, but I'll almost always give them a chance -- even if it's a tiny one.

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I am definitely a simulationist game... but that doesn't mean that I want to make everything conform 100% to reality, and within the confines of pretty much any RPG I can think of, I'd be OK with someone attempting to shoot the rope in two.

Verisimilitude? Yes. Realism? No. I routinely do things that make no sense because it makes the story better (or out of simple human error).