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Game Design 108: Realism vs. Fun
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<blockquote data-quote="Mishihari Lord" data-source="post: 7650631" data-attributes="member: 128"><p>Overall, a very good article. Hitting the sweet spot for realism is a really important design goal in RPG design. Thanks for sharing your insights.</p><p></p><p>I do have a couple of small quibbles. </p><p></p><p>Verisimilitude is generally a better word than realism as it encompasses a greater area of design. E.g., the design goal of Toon is certainly not realism, but it is fidelity to its source material.</p><p></p><p>As others mentioned, "fun" isn't quite the right word, though I certainly understood what you were talking about. There's a tension between realism and creative play, simplicity, rules completeness, and speed of play which affects fun for many people.</p><p></p><p>Finally, a point that wasn't addressed is that players have very different preferences when it comes to realism vs creative play, simplicity, rules completeness, speed of play, etc. There are people that really enjoy Harn and GURPS, which I consider relatively realistic, there are people who enjoy TOON and Paranoia, entirely at the opposite end of the spectrum, and there are people whose preferences are in between. A game designer should keep their chosen target audience in mind when making the necessary compromises between realism and other aspects of enjoyable play.</p><p></p><p>Personally, I strongly prefer realistic games. (Not just games with verisimilitude.) I like the rules to define the fantastic elements of a game, and for the rest, ideally, I shouldn't have to know the rules at all. I should be able to use my knowledge of how things work IRL to make optimal choices in-game. This speeds things up immensely and makes a game feel like it has depth.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mishihari Lord, post: 7650631, member: 128"] Overall, a very good article. Hitting the sweet spot for realism is a really important design goal in RPG design. Thanks for sharing your insights. I do have a couple of small quibbles. Verisimilitude is generally a better word than realism as it encompasses a greater area of design. E.g., the design goal of Toon is certainly not realism, but it is fidelity to its source material. As others mentioned, "fun" isn't quite the right word, though I certainly understood what you were talking about. There's a tension between realism and creative play, simplicity, rules completeness, and speed of play which affects fun for many people. Finally, a point that wasn't addressed is that players have very different preferences when it comes to realism vs creative play, simplicity, rules completeness, speed of play, etc. There are people that really enjoy Harn and GURPS, which I consider relatively realistic, there are people who enjoy TOON and Paranoia, entirely at the opposite end of the spectrum, and there are people whose preferences are in between. A game designer should keep their chosen target audience in mind when making the necessary compromises between realism and other aspects of enjoyable play. Personally, I strongly prefer realistic games. (Not just games with verisimilitude.) I like the rules to define the fantastic elements of a game, and for the rest, ideally, I shouldn't have to know the rules at all. I should be able to use my knowledge of how things work IRL to make optimal choices in-game. This speeds things up immensely and makes a game feel like it has depth. [/QUOTE]
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