Wik
First Post
So, I was going to post this on another thread, or maybe my blog, but I decided it'd work better here. It is, in essence, my view on "realism" in Role-playing games. feel free to argue/agree/expand upon.
***
There is a certain notion among many gamers that "realism" must be reflected in the game world. When an event happens in the game world, some player will point out "That's not realistic!". Taken to an extreme, you start getting some weird extensions of the game - Invisible Characters cannot see, because light is no longer able to reflect off their eyes, or a character with 100 hit points gets hit by a katana for 8 damage and dies, because "katana are very sharp weapons, and would kill a man if it hit".
This, of course, is a topic that has been discussed at length on every RPG-centred thread board time and time again, and it's not really something I care to discuss here.
Instead, I'm wondering - how is reality reflected in a game system? And to that, I say - every game system reflects their own view of reality. A game that encourages swashbuckling should have rules that encourage swashbuckling, and promote a reality similar to that in a swashbuckling movie. A post-apocalyptic RPG should probably have very gritty rules, but it could add things that are very unrealistic (radiation that causes mutations, for example) to enhance it's own reality.
In essence, the goal of any game is not to promote reality, but instead a vision of reality - much like films. I mention films because this drive for "realism" is just as present in that art form - how many times have fans argued against something in a film because it just wasn't "realistic"? While the obvious fantasies - Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and the like - can be ignored, this "realism" charge is trumped against even many dramas. How realistic, some critics will bring up, are some of the scenes in Saving Private Ryan? Or The Thin Red Line?
Also much like films, the goal of RPG design is not just to promote one form of reality, but to make that vision consistent. If your swashbuckling game is fairly loose and fluid in most of the rules, and then it has some really strange rules involving drinking dirty water (which goes against 99% of the source material) because, historically, people drank fermented beverages to avoid water-bourne illnesses, the rules have actually broken away from their assumed reality and consistency, in the hopes of capturing the "realism" of the period.
Now, I've been thinking about "reality" in games for a while, and I've come to the conclusion that if you want a "realistic" game, avoid rules-heavy systems. This may seem to be counterintuitive, but I'll do my best to explain my position.
In a rules-heavy game (I would define Shadowrun as a rules-heavy game, as well as most incarnations of 3.5E; 4e I think is heading in that direction, as well... but this is a different topic entirely, and if someone wants to bring it up, feel free to do so in a different thread), there are rules for many different aspects of character behaviour - there are usually rules for running, taking damage, healing, vision, exploration, interpersonal communications, and so on. Many of these rules are there to promote the game's vision of reality, but many of them are there to cover things not pertaining to the game's "reality" - in 3.5E, for example, I'd point at the aging rules as a prime suspect.
The problem is, once you start tryign to reflect "Reality" with a rules system, strange artefacts begin to develop. IN 3.5E, for example, your wisdom increases as you gets older, which could be argued a realistic development. However, because perception is based off wisdom, your character's vision and hearing actually improve as you get older, which is decidedly "Unrealistic". Similarly, the 3.5E rules have all sorts of rules for things like Grappling and Disarming, which could lead to some fairly unrealistic (and against the implied reality of the game) situations where PCs would become grapple-fiends.
In other words, rules-heavy games must, by nature, encourage some choices over others. And sometimes, these choices go against both "reality" and "game reality" (i.e., the rules by which the game world lives by). A clever player can exploit these rules to tweak the system to suit his needs.
In contrast, a rules-light system can better reflect "Reality" (both true reality and in-game reality), simply because the absence of tight rules mean the GM is required to describe things more to fill the void. Rather than consulting game rules, many times the GM is required to make a judgement call in response to a player action, based on what he thinks is realistic (whether it is real-world realistic or game-world realistic is an important choice for the GM). Because this is a human element adjudicating player actions, the presence of rules-artefacts will arise less frequently.
***
There is a certain notion among many gamers that "realism" must be reflected in the game world. When an event happens in the game world, some player will point out "That's not realistic!". Taken to an extreme, you start getting some weird extensions of the game - Invisible Characters cannot see, because light is no longer able to reflect off their eyes, or a character with 100 hit points gets hit by a katana for 8 damage and dies, because "katana are very sharp weapons, and would kill a man if it hit".
This, of course, is a topic that has been discussed at length on every RPG-centred thread board time and time again, and it's not really something I care to discuss here.
Instead, I'm wondering - how is reality reflected in a game system? And to that, I say - every game system reflects their own view of reality. A game that encourages swashbuckling should have rules that encourage swashbuckling, and promote a reality similar to that in a swashbuckling movie. A post-apocalyptic RPG should probably have very gritty rules, but it could add things that are very unrealistic (radiation that causes mutations, for example) to enhance it's own reality.
In essence, the goal of any game is not to promote reality, but instead a vision of reality - much like films. I mention films because this drive for "realism" is just as present in that art form - how many times have fans argued against something in a film because it just wasn't "realistic"? While the obvious fantasies - Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and the like - can be ignored, this "realism" charge is trumped against even many dramas. How realistic, some critics will bring up, are some of the scenes in Saving Private Ryan? Or The Thin Red Line?
Also much like films, the goal of RPG design is not just to promote one form of reality, but to make that vision consistent. If your swashbuckling game is fairly loose and fluid in most of the rules, and then it has some really strange rules involving drinking dirty water (which goes against 99% of the source material) because, historically, people drank fermented beverages to avoid water-bourne illnesses, the rules have actually broken away from their assumed reality and consistency, in the hopes of capturing the "realism" of the period.
Now, I've been thinking about "reality" in games for a while, and I've come to the conclusion that if you want a "realistic" game, avoid rules-heavy systems. This may seem to be counterintuitive, but I'll do my best to explain my position.
In a rules-heavy game (I would define Shadowrun as a rules-heavy game, as well as most incarnations of 3.5E; 4e I think is heading in that direction, as well... but this is a different topic entirely, and if someone wants to bring it up, feel free to do so in a different thread), there are rules for many different aspects of character behaviour - there are usually rules for running, taking damage, healing, vision, exploration, interpersonal communications, and so on. Many of these rules are there to promote the game's vision of reality, but many of them are there to cover things not pertaining to the game's "reality" - in 3.5E, for example, I'd point at the aging rules as a prime suspect.
The problem is, once you start tryign to reflect "Reality" with a rules system, strange artefacts begin to develop. IN 3.5E, for example, your wisdom increases as you gets older, which could be argued a realistic development. However, because perception is based off wisdom, your character's vision and hearing actually improve as you get older, which is decidedly "Unrealistic". Similarly, the 3.5E rules have all sorts of rules for things like Grappling and Disarming, which could lead to some fairly unrealistic (and against the implied reality of the game) situations where PCs would become grapple-fiends.
In other words, rules-heavy games must, by nature, encourage some choices over others. And sometimes, these choices go against both "reality" and "game reality" (i.e., the rules by which the game world lives by). A clever player can exploit these rules to tweak the system to suit his needs.
In contrast, a rules-light system can better reflect "Reality" (both true reality and in-game reality), simply because the absence of tight rules mean the GM is required to describe things more to fill the void. Rather than consulting game rules, many times the GM is required to make a judgement call in response to a player action, based on what he thinks is realistic (whether it is real-world realistic or game-world realistic is an important choice for the GM). Because this is a human element adjudicating player actions, the presence of rules-artefacts will arise less frequently.