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

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

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

Yeah, they were. And so they were boring to me.

I'm not sure if cinematics and realism have to be mutually exclusive, but I think if you try to use them both there's very little to work with.

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

Compared to what fantastic things exist in the non-real world the stuff I go through every do isn't worth thinking about.

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.

I don't think it should be dumbed-down either. But I view realism as dumbing it down because I know reality. I want something that I don't know, which in something speculative.

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

Isn't this what real life provides?

 

[Leatherhead]

Isn't this what real life provides?

Which is why people inject parts of real life into their games, even when the game has fantasy elements.

 

[pawsplay]

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.

If I say, "dragon," you picture something in your head. Therefore, dragons are not utter nonsense.

 

[Fanaelialae]

If I say, "dragon," you picture something in your head. Therefore, dragons are not utter nonsense.

If you know anything about physics, you're aware that a two ton lizard that can fly is absurd. Sure, you can say "it's magic", but I've never seen anti-magic/ dispel magic drop a dragon out of the sky.

Fantasy bends real world laws all the time. I admit that there comes a point where it can go too far and enter the "realm of the absurd", but in general I think it's okay if fantasy bends the rules from time to time. It's fantasy, not real world + magic.

 

[pawsplay]

If you know anything about physics, you're aware that a two ton lizard that can fly is absurd. Sure, you can say "it's magic", but I've never seen anti-magic/ dispel magic drop a dragon out of the sky.

Fantasy bends real world laws all the time. I admit that there comes a point where it can go too far and enter the "realm of the absurd", but in general I think it's okay if fantasy bends the rules from time to time. It's fantasy, not real world + magic.

Imagine a halfling is capable, in game mechanical terms, of tackling an ancient red dragon to the ground. In some game worlds, this is perfectly acceptable. In others, this is surreal to the extreme. Reality, in the game world, is whether this is an acceptable event.

As for dragons themselves... they may be physically impossible, but magic is a sufficient explanation. Anti-magic and dispel magic, by the way, will not case a golem to turn into a pile clay, will not work on any artifact, and will not cause a beholder to fall. In fact, anti-magic will not, naturally enough, cause itself to fail. Casting such a a spell does not mean "the rules of magic no longer apply," it just means, "certain magical effects in this area are suppressed." It's anti-magic zone, not "zone of things acting like the real world."

Realism is important if you decide to merge, say, Conan, with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. you have to decide what the new rules are. If you do not decide, the result is just incoherent.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Fantasy bends real world laws all the time. I admit that there comes a point where it can go too far and enter the "realm of the absurd", but in general I think it's okay if fantasy bends the rules from time to time. It's fantasy, not real world + magic.

But that's exactly what I want from a game. Real (medieval) world + magic + mythical creatures.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Imagine a halfling is capable, in game mechanical terms, of tackling an ancient red dragon to the ground. In some game worlds, this is perfectly acceptable. In others, this is surreal to the extreme. Reality, in the game world, is whether this is an acceptable event.

As for dragons themselves... they may be physically impossible, but magic is a sufficient explanation. Anti-magic and dispel magic, by the way, will not case a golem to turn into a pile clay, will not work on any artifact, and will not cause a beholder to fall. In fact, anti-magic will not, naturally enough, cause itself to fail. Casting such a a spell does not mean "the rules of magic no longer apply," it just means, "certain magical effects in this area are suppressed." It's anti-magic zone, not "zone of things acting like the real world."

Realism is important if you decide to merge, say, Conan, with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. you have to decide what the new rules are. If you do not decide, the result is just incoherent.

So why is it that it's okay for dragon flight to be explained away by magic but you can't have magic-infused lava that radiates less heat? Why is it okay for an anti-magic zone to suppress some magical effects but not others (beyond the fact that it would be so broken if beholders inside it couldn't do anything but flop around helplessly, dragons fell out of the sky, and golems deanimated)?

Don't get me wrong, I think the room filling with lava trap/test was inherently very flawed (encounter hammering, DM didn't think the trap through, etc), but I think it has more to do with the DM than anything else.

Magic is a very powerful dramatic tool in fantasy. If you want to have a fight over a pit of lava, then the cult currently inhabiting the volcano used rituals to reduce the radiant heat within so that the volcano could be habitable (and PCs can notice and decipher the runes used to enact this ritual using Arcana). Alternately, it could just be magic lava, prized by wizards for use in their eldritch research (which could also be why the cult chose this particular lair in the first place).

I think the "realism problem" often has more to do with DMs who don't consider the basic justifications/reasons (5 W's) and implications of their settings than anything else.

 

[Fanaelialae]

But that's exactly what I want from a game. Real (medieval) world + magic + mythical creatures.

For me, magic and the real world are incompatible unless magic is exceedingly rare. The defining laws of our universe are (usually) default in a fantasy setting, but as I see it the presence of magic automatically downgrades all laws into guidelines. IMO, in any setting with prevalent magic the default assumption of anyone living there would be, "everything is as it is, except when it isn't".

I mean sure, you can count on gravity to cause objects to fall downwards. Unless some magical beastie reverses gravity, or some mystical experiment has unintended consequences and suddenly the laws of our universe need no longer apply...

These don't have to be day to day occurrences in the lives of the common folk for this to hold true. They tell and retell the tales of wizards flagrantly disregarding the laws of physics, and therefore have a pretty good idea that those laws aren't rock solid, even if they haven't seen it for themselves.

The sun will rise tomorrow... unless some wizard stops it from traveling across the sky or the gods are peeved... let's just cross our fingers, say our prayers and hope for the best.

 

[Imban]

Fair enough. Have you seen the 4E lava rules?

The lava in Beyond the Mottled Tower actually deals 10d10 damage per round of immersion and none if you are not in direct contact with it, and is used in a lava trap exactly like the one he's complaining about here - it's a neat scene, but if you're bothered by being five feet or so above a rising column of lava, it's gonna bug you a lot.

 

[Rechan]

The problem is, if you see lava, and it behaves in a manner differently than you expect, i.e. more like lukewarm marmelade (it doesn't burn you unless you touch it.. you can relatively safely crawl over it etc.) and everything else in the room does as well, you really don't know where to stand (not on the cannons apparently) because your normal assumptions of how the physics works, how the room is shaped, how cannons and walls work etc. are all useless.

And the reverse of that is that if you make lava behave too realistically, it might become so annoying that it's not fun if you implement it.

If you're relatively close to lava, you're dead. Lava heats the surrounding area to 700 degrees, which would cook a person. Not to mention the gasses, ashes, and such that accompany lava and volcanos.

So, fighting in the heart of a volcano is just impossible if you're going to be realistic. But, we ignore that, because otherwise it's not fun.

bingo! We don't have to justify how a dragon exists. The player can accept that (suspension of disbelief). The player should not accept that 20' wide dragons can squeeze through 3' doors. That's not realistic.

At the same time, I have seen issues of "Realism", not as far as, "How can a dragon exist, how can it fly", but more a macro issue of, "Wait a minute. There simply cannot be that many dragons in the world, because based on the monster's size, it would have to eat so much things that it can't possibly exist."

You have folks calling unrealism due to the notion of lots and lots of monsters (apex predators) existing in a world. A dungeon of monsters would, respectively, have eaten all the normal woodland animals surrounding it to force the monsters into starvation, for instance.

Taking that level of Macro thinking too far forces you to fight against the genre itself.