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

[Cadfan]

I don't think that's a safe assumption. It may be true in some cases, but I think most posters here are self-aware enough to know what they really want.

I dunno. I've read enough posts in which people complain about some perceived flaw in realism while lauding another wacky system to have some skepticism on this front. Healing all damage overnight versus healing all damage in three days bed rest? Spells as an almost tangible *thing* inside your brain versus spells as descriptions of magical effects you can create? These all have their partisans who insist that the other is unrealistic. To an outsider, I doubt there's a difference.

I think that the general assumption that your opponent knows what he wants and says what he means is one of politeness, not reality. Ditto the rule that I can say this about people in general, but never about any specific person.

 

[Mallus]

I dunno. I've read enough posts in which people complain about some perceived flaw in realism while lauding another wacky system to have some skepticism on this front.

I think this is indicative of people mistaking genre (and game) conventions for realism (not that they're unsure of what they actually want).

 

[Mournblade94]

I generally assume that calls for realism in RPGs are covers for other, underlying sources of dissatisfaction. Usually a dislike of change. We tend to internalize the abstractions that are part of games we like, while not understanding how those abstractions might appear to an outsider. Then, when we play a game we don't like, we take on the role of the outsider and are highly critical.

I personally like consistency. I demand realism and versimilitude so that a context exists, not because I have some nebulous problem with a game system.

I am self aware enough to know what my problems are with a system, and a complaint of no realism is just that... a complaint of no realism.

 

[billd91]

I dunno. I've read enough posts in which people complain about some perceived flaw in realism while lauding another wacky system to have some skepticism on this front. Healing all damage overnight versus healing all damage in three days bed rest? Spells as an almost tangible *thing* inside your brain versus spells as descriptions of magical effects you can create? These all have their partisans who insist that the other is unrealistic. To an outsider, I doubt there's a difference.

I think that the general assumption that your opponent knows what he wants and says what he means is one of politeness, not reality. Ditto the rule that I can say this about people in general, but never about any specific person.

It seems to me that you're ignoring whether or not someone might disagree with the degree of departure from reality. When it comes to the exceptions the rules introduce from reality, there may well be a threshold of departure in which a player can no longer accept the rule. In the case of recovering overnight vs 3 days, one is clearly closer to reality (even if not much). But if the downstream effects on the pacing of the game those 3 days require compared to overnight is more agreeable (you do have to pull up stakes out of the dungeon and all that implies, for example, rather than just catch 6 hours of rest), then it's fair to consider the overnight healing as too unrealistic.

 

[Wombat]

I think, as can be seen from the responses here, that "realism" is defined differently by different people.

There is, for example, "rules realism". This seems to be generally based on the notion that rules follow from each other -- if A1 is possible then A2 should be possible. This is something that i tend to look for in games quite a bit. Ultimately this falls under the purview of the rules designers. They are under an obligation to take such consistencies into account.

There is also "world realism" which is a very confused notion. A large part of the problem with this concept is essentially the reversal of my core axiom: match the rules to the world rather than the world to the rules. If there is a disconnect between what is perceived as "possible in the setting" and "possible under the rules set" many people get annoyed. This is particularly important with already established settings and places.

Take these two examples. One poster earlier mentioned Toon, a wonderful game. In Toon you would expect, given the world-rules, that if a character runs off a cliff, that character may continue running ... until the character looks down; at this point the character looks chagrined/worried and then plummets downwards towards pain, perhaps giving a little wave along the way. In Ars Magica, another wonderful game, there are assumptions about 13th century Europe and the social mores of the time -- peasants have no influence, dukes may raise vast armies, religion is vastly important, there are no gunpowder weapons, etc. If a peasant spits on a bishop, the peasant will be, at a minimum, severely roughed up and probably killed. These are two rather different takes on "world realities".

Another take on "world realism" is a level of consistency. I A begets B one time, but A begets aardarks another, people get to get worried. This becomes important in an otherwise unknown fantasy or science fiction setting, one where fewer of the "ground rules" are known. If, for example, giving a nah-flower to a priest of Floogey grants a peasant the ability to fly, that should always be the case. If the next time a peasant hands a nah-flower to a priest of Floogey the peasant is torn limb from limb, there needs to be a reason for this - perhaps the third moon is in the wrong phase or suchlike. If a spaceship can travel at faster-then-light speeds with a single pilot in one instance, then this should always be true for that ship; if there is an alteration to this situation, again there needs to be an explanation.

Much of the "world realism" falls on the shoulders of the GM -- this mighty individual may seem to have a lot of power, but also a horde of strange responsibilities.

A few people use "realism" to mean "I didn't get what I want"; in this case the problem is between the player and the group as a whole and there is no pat answer.

Again, "realism" is a variable term.

 

[Filcher]

I believe we are mistaking "realism" for "suspension of disbelief."

We don't want realism. We want flying dragons that can breath fire.

We do want our disbelief of flying dragons than can breath fire, suspended.

 

[billd91]

I believe we are mistaking "realism" for "suspension of disbelief."

We don't want realism. We want flying dragons that can breath fire.

We do want our disbelief of flying dragons than can breath fire, suspended.

But we also want it to behave with some semblance of realism or have its effect on the environment reflected realistically. It moves through the air like a large winged creature, it needs accessways large enough in its lair, its breath can light things on fire, etc.
The elements of the dragon's presence that conform to our understanding of reality (or at least fit in with them) help in the suspension of disbelief.

 

[Galloglaich]

"Realism" is one of those lightning rod terms which cause very angry debates in the RPG world. This is because it's broad enough and subjective enough that it can be percieved in different ways, it's important to many if not most RPGs (depending on how you define it of course ), and due to these two reasons alone, people willfully misinterpret what is meant by the term (as so often happens in any discussion of gaming theory) and discussions of the concept consist of people talking past each other.

Another major problem with realism is that many more or less sincere interpretations of "realistic" games in the early days of RPGs went off on rather odd, and notoriously unsuccessful tangents, which were subsequently internalized by many gamers as the meaning of realism (i.e. complexity). So as a result it has a really bad name in role playing gaming, people think realism in combat rules means things like fatigue points or hit locations, and that realism in terms of a setting means something from Monty Python's Holy Grail.

Realism is important in gaming for the reasons a lot of people cited here upthread, in practical terms it essentially means internal consistency which contributes to verisimilitude, immersion, and other things quite a few gamers really like (though many hate the term). And contributes to non-gamers being able to get into RPGs without too much investment in learning entirely new ways of thinking.

But it is usually conflated for detail or complexity, due to games like Rolemaster or even GURPS. Somehow we lost the concept from wargames that a realistic game can also be abstract and simple. As a result, the explicit rejection of realism by many game designers including Gary Gygax, leaving AD&D a wierd amalgum of fairly well researched (but flawed) medieval background with high fantasy, low fantasy, and comic book themes.

In 3.5 we had the mixed blessing of returning to an idea of balance, but by then the 'realistic' basis was so far astray that a largely artificial system was created which was highly complex while having very little relation to reality. This actually makes it harder for non gamers to get into it, since the shared reality of real people is useless, instead you have to speak the made up "klingon" language of this entirely artificial world. I think this contributed to shrinking the RPG demographic even more than it was, which in turn increased the 'drift' of basing game world physics (in things like combat rules or historical settings) further into "klingon" land, alienating non gamers from the genre still further. Which I think some gamers actually really like. Now we have the further complication that some of the strange ideas of early RPGs have been successfully introduced to a much wider audience by MMORPG's, and we are now seeing a second retrenching of these themes.

But one of the biggest problems with rejecting realism utterly is that you do lose this common ground, and unless you have already bought into the strange ideas of RPG gaming (like the notion that a 10" knife is essentially a nuisance weapon, or falling off a cliff sort of tickles) then many of the fundamental notions of the game strike newcomers as absurd, and are a turn-off. (assuming they aren't already MMORPG gamers of course!)

Another major problem which we saw in 3.5 was that trying to make logical sense (or 'balance') of a fundamentally unrealistic system causes the same kind of complexity creep that the early misguided attempts to apply "realism" did.

Historically, things like weapons and armor, fighting styles and techniques balanced each other out in a rather elegant way. Trying to reinvent that from scratch leaves you down a road paved with with double bladed swords and spiked chains that eventually leads you into a level of geekdom most people find a little off-putting.

Of course dragons and flying carpets are unrealistic, but they exist in fairy tales, films, and novels which are a lot more broadly popular than RPG's are. It is the underlying fabric of interneal consistency which makes them stand out and seem magical in literature. In RPG's, if everything is magical, nothing is. Conversely, making the underlying reality convincing can really make the strange and magical seem strange and magic, such as in such widely popular games as Call of Cthulhu.

Genre based games like TOON, or Paranoia, or SpellJammer are perfectly sound, even "realistic" in their own way, since they are internally consistent and match expectations people in the broader culture (everyone who watched a cartoon, say) can predict at least to some extent. Much of the mush-mash of particularly fantasy RPGs suffers from a distinct lack of grounding in realism, and the urge to just throw it out the window entirely won't solve these problems.

Realism is just a tool, a means toward the end of having a fun game. Some games may not require it at all, but you shouldn't make "unrealistic" assumptions about what it actually is and throw the baby out with the bathwater as a result

G.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I believe we are mistaking "realism" for "suspension of disbelief."

We don't want realism. We want flying dragons that can breath fire.

We do want our disbelief of flying dragons than can breath fire, suspended.

Which is an interesting thing because I find that my disbelief is suspended by the very existence of anything made to be realistic.

Really, I find that any attempt to build something in a game (such as a setting/world), especially if it's called out as being done that way, in a "realistic"/"versimilitudinous"/"internally consistent" way to be very jarring. It sits there and proclaims that everything around it isn't real.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I think one aspect that needs to be addressed especially when it concerns mechanics is simply; "do you view mechanics as a in-game property." In which I mean, when a mechanic says "resting overnight causes 100 HP", do you view that as meaning in-world this is what happens. Or do you view it simply as a gameplay element and that in-world something different is occurring, ie; "they are still injured but able to perform as they would normally."

This I think can play a strong role in one's Suspension of Disbelief. Do they view the rules as a element of the actual game-world, or simply a means to interact with this game world. Myself I view it as simply a way to interact and thus I think my ability to Suspend Disbelief is probably somewhat higher then others.