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

[Ed_Laprade]

Forked from: DMs: what have you learned from PLAYING that has made you a better DM?



I'm posing the above question to everyone who cares to read.

It's just something that I don't get when I read about "realism" OR "versimilitude":
Why do you expect things to act like reality, or act consistently, when they aren't real?

I can understand it if people just want to play in that kind of world, but I don't understand it when the tone is one of expectation that that's how things should always work.

I've only read the first post after this, and that answered the question. But I'm going to add my two pence anyway, to make it even simpler.

Its because my character lives there. So unless I've been told, at the start of the game, that something doesn't work the way it does in our world, you bet your @$$ that's how I'm going to expect it to work.

 

[RefinedBean]

Because utter nonsense is pointless and boring.

That's why we houserule anything related to dragons out of our D&D games.

C'mon now. Pretty much anything magical is utter nonsense to someone.

 

[Scribble]

For example, in the golden age of comics, Superman might have been seen holding an entire building above his head. It's perfectly fine to assume that Superman had the strength to hold that much weight, but it's silly to think that the building would remain structurally intact when in essence all of its weight is being compressed down in two teeny, tiny points (Superman's hands). Superman's arm would simply punch through the building, not hold it up.

What good is Superman's ability to hold up a building if someone is going to enforce physics on him? Rationality is the enemy of circus peanuts.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

But then I'm That Guy who gets annoyed when space battles have sound effects.

Well okay, at this point while I can't agree with you I at least can understand by comparason. I have the same problem with all forms of "mind power".

I must say, though, that I find myself the opposite of one thing you said: I feel insulted when someone decides that they're going to invoke realism over cinematics. I feel insulted that someone thought I either needed or wanted to see another boring piece of mundanity, and insulted that they didn't trust my imagination to suspend my knowledge of the real world to accept something that's satisfying image-wise.

For example, in the golden age of comics, Superman might have been seen holding an entire building above his head. It's perfectly fine to assume that Superman had the strength to hold that much weight, but it's silly to think that the building would remain structurally intact when in essence all of its weight is being compressed down in two teeny, tiny points (Superman's hands). Superman's arm would simply punch through the building, not hold it up.

So what? Why's it matter? You know it's not real.

 

[Galloglaich]

Realism and verisimilitude are two completely different things.

You can make things unrealistic and maintain verisimilitude. When you break verisimilitude is when things get silly.

For example, in the golden age of comics, Superman might have been seen holding an entire building above his head. It's perfectly fine to assume that Superman had the strength to hold that much weight, but it's silly to think that the building would remain structurally intact when in essence all of its weight is being compressed down in two teeny, tiny points (Superman's hands). Superman's arm would simply punch through the building, not hold it up.

The difference between realism and versimilitude vis a vis gaming is that internal consistency within a genre is all you need as long as you are familiar with that genre. Like say, Toon if you have ever seen a Buggs Bunny cartoon in your life, which most people have.

Realism is the expectation of verisimilitude when you aren't already within a clearly defined Genre (Superhero, Star Wars, Vampires, Steampunk, Cthulhu, etc. etc.)

I think the problem a lot of people have with most FRPGs is that the presumed fantasy genre baseline can range from the fairly realistic low-fantasy world many people know from early fantasy novels, (the Conan books, Jack Vances Dying Earth, Fafhred and Grey Mouser) to the rather zany worlds of World of Warcraft, anime, or the throw-away Sci Fi channel movie of the week (Gargoyles vs. the SS or whatever).

In the former case you can bring your own expectations of everymans knowledge of the real world and history into, with the expectation that there will be a few fantasy elements (dragons, magic spells, potions whatever) but by and large the world is one you can expect to find your way around in. In the latter case, who knows whats going on.


Still worse, often, rather than being consistently in one zone or another, many FRPGs are a rather ill-defined and often confusing mish-mash of realistic and cartoonish elements.

G.

 

[Galloglaich]

Because the non rationality of it is the part we find fun? It's only "unnecessarily complicated and baraoque" when you insist on trying to put it into some sort of rational assumption. It's just a different way of looking at things.

It's like a magic trick. When I see the trick, it's cool because of the fact that it seems to break the assumptions I have about the world around me. When I learn how to do the trick, it's still cool, but in a different way. (Now I can use it to break other people's assumptions about the world around them.)

This almost seems like a classic example of talking past each other in these kinds of discussions. I don't recall anyone advocating realism in this thread who seriously suggested playing FRPG in an entirely mundane world - a world with no magic tricks.

In fact, the idea we have been discussing of introducing Magic elements into an otherwise realistic world is exactly like seeing a good Magic trick.

The flipside strikes me as more like drifting into an entirely magical world, through the looking glass as it were, which is fine if it has an internal logical all it's own, like the world of Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan, or The Wizard of Oz. If you have a game going that is truly magical in this sense, my hat is off to you.


The problem is precious few game designers and DM's rise up to the level of a Lewis Caroll, and you end up playing in a game that is more like a bad episode of Thundar the Barbarian...

G.

 

[Galloglaich]

I must say, though, that I find myself the opposite of one thing you said: I feel insulted when someone decides that they're going to invoke realism over cinematics.

Why does cinematics and realism have to be mutually exclusive? Was The Thing realistic? Was Alien? Aliens? Blade Runner?

I feel insulted that someone thought I either needed or wanted to see another boring piece of mundanity, and insulted that they didn't trust my imagination to suspend my knowledge of the real world to accept something that's satisfying image-wise.

I'm a little exasperated by the idea that reality is boring or mundane...

When playing an RPG, if it's meant to be a relatively serious game (a rather big iF) I feel insulted if I'm expected to play in a crude sophomoric mish mash that doesn't make even the least bit of sense, for the same reason I wouldn't go to a movie theater and pay to watch the latest made for Sci Fi Channel masterpiece "Mansquito" or whatever.

If you are a Dali, paint me a surreal landscape I'll be glad to play in it, but I'm a grown man, I don't waste my time with juvenile pablum. I personally don't think RPG's need to be dumbed down, I don't play with action figures or hot wheels cars, I can go to the gym and spar with somebody for real if I want to fight and I have a real car. And there is nothing boring or mundane about my life.

G.

 

[Lanefan]

Some semblance of realism-mirroring is necessary (in, as others have mentioned, a non-genre system) if only so as not to have to design one's game-world physics, chemistry, and biology from the Big Bang on down in order to explain how things work as they do. So, we assume basics such as gravity; moons orbiting planets orbiting stars etc.; that solids and liquids and gases generally behave as they do in reality; that water freezes at 0 (32) and boils at 100 (212); that life exists, functions, and reproduces much as in reality; and so on.

Then, we overlay whatever amount of non-reality required to achieve the game we're looking to play: living gods; magic as a 5th force of physics that can be manipulated by some lifeforms and in rare instances can manipulate itself; non-invention of gunpowder or any other industrial-revolution stuff; fantastic lifeforms; the alternate planes and how they affect the game world, etc.

The questions (and for some, problems) arise when we try to explain the non-real overlays in terms relating to reality, as I do with magic above. Should we bother? I say yes, as far as possible, as it adds to internal consistency and by extension to "believability"; here defined as "a situation where things make enough sense to the players in and out of character such that they do not find themselves asking on a meta-game level how and why something works the way it does".

Lan-"nothing's really real"-efan

 

[Scribble]

This almost seems like a classic example of talking past each other in these kinds of discussions. I don't recall anyone advocating realism in this thread who seriously suggested playing FRPG in an entirely mundane world - a world with no magic tricks.

Well talking past eachother may be the case because that's not at all what I was saying.

My statement (maybe I said it poorly) was that people have different ways of looking at a situation. I think it's a right brain vrs left brain thing.

Some people want things (even fantastic things) to have a rationality to them. They want the rules of the world, and they want the rules to be consistant. If there are no rules, or they don't know the rules they're uncomfortable, and will even make "standard" rules for use going forward.

Some people don't want (or care) things to have that rationality. The fantastic does fantastic stuff, and it doesn't matter if the fantastic stuff has a logical explaination. It's just cool, so it exists. These people don't care if they know the rules so much, and tend to change the rules to match their ideal anyway.

 

[Leatherhead]

Without realistic things to contrast with, the fantastic becomes meaningless.

Also, because there seems to be more than one argument here: What is the point of having rules if everything seems to ignore them? In most works of fiction, even magic has rules. Excessive handwaving gets a little frustrating.