Realism vs playability?

[Sanguinarious]

One game I like has great (some say excessive) detail in combat rules and devotes a lot of pages to being as realistic as possible in combat terms since it was created by a real combat veteran.

But the game rules system has some real issues with plausibility, in that there are some really incongruous issues dealing with the number of acts a character can commit per turn. Your actions are measured in points, but many acts are measured in half or full, meaning if you have to action points or 6 you can commit two half actions or one full action per turn.

This was done to prevent characters with high numbers of actions from dominating a turn. Now a character with a lot of action points can fire a lot of single shots but multiple shots in a thrn accumulate a penalty to hit to make them less effective. Again, to keep 'minmaxed' characters built for a lot of actions from dominating every turn.

Sure they contradict a lot of the detail given to combat rules but are necessary, the designers decided, to keep a single player from dominating a combat round.

So, playability, as in letting all players have a chance to play comes ahead of the realism of letting super minmaxed characters reign supreme.

DnD has it's own version of this, limiting spell users to keep them from dominating a group.

So how do people feel about rules to enforce balance and make artificial limits on super characters to give all players a shot at doing something? I feel that they're mostly only needed to keep power players from taking over groups, and I've seen that at it's ugliest.

 

[Lanefan]

There's two different issues here, that overlap a bit.

One is the question of rules to rein in specific classes or character types (e.g. the D&D spellcasters) in order to provide some semblance of balance. This one is, to me anyway and in the specific case of D&D casters, solvable in a number of ways that can be easily explained in the fiction. Casting being difficult to do, easy to interrupt, and taking time during which the caster is left vulnerable - that's a start. Things that don't make sense in the fiction e.g. a warrior who can arbitrarily only do her signature move x-times per y-time period I'm much less impressed with.

The other is the question of rules to rein in power players. Power players often thrive on options and choices, and on finding combinations among those options where the whole becomes - now or later - greater than the sum of the parts. The answer here, though probably unpopular, is to simply starve them of options by using a system that greatly downplays the "character build" aspect of the game. Make character generation fast and simple with as many things as possible baked in, leaving fewer choice points and options for the power player to exploit. The downside here, of course, is that this can result in "cookie-cutter characters"; and that's a trade-off which you-as-GM have to weigh up and decide upon.

 

[overgeeked]

Realism vs playability. It’s a fool’s errand to try to get proper realism in an RPG. The rules would be thousands of pages long and only a computer could run them. So yeah, you have to make concessions to playability.

The trick is to off load the attempts at realism to the GM rather than rules cruft. Simple, versatile systems work way better at verisimilitude than thousands of cruft-filled pages. Just look at free Kriegsspiel. No rules and used to train real military officers to fight wars. It worked. And still does. All you need is an experienced referee. Or a table of experts willing to referee their given specialties.

Balance vs charop. Yes, game balance should exist. This is why wargames have different point costs for different units. Some things are simply more effective than others. Nothing wrong with that, but they should be balanced somehow.

Old-school D&D did so by random stat generation, prime requisites, weapons and armor usage, hit points, and different progression rates.

Most superhero games intentionally nerf superspeed and overprice the nerfed version because it’s just a fancy I win button. It’s either that or everyone’s a speedster and you have a dull game.

 

[GMMichael]

So how do people feel about rules to enforce balance and make artificial limits on super characters to give all players a shot at doing something? I feel that they're mostly only needed to keep power players from taking over groups, and I've seen that at it's ugliest.

Sounds like wasted rules to me. Why write up a perfectly good set of rules, just to write more rules that nerf them? Answer: the first set wasn't perfectly good in the first place.

Realism vs playability. It’s a fool’s errand to try to get proper realism in an RPG. . .
The trick is to off load the attempts at realism to the GM rather than rules cruft. Simple, versatile systems work way better at verisimilitude than thousands of cruft-filled page.

Agreed. You could even offload the realism burden to the PCs as long as they have some incentives built-in to choose realism over personal goals.

My solution: the GM sets the tone of what's realistic and what isn't, and everyone gets a say in what realistically happens. (That's not a democracy endorsement. I wouldn't play a game that included rules for voting.)

 

[RivetGeekWil]

I don't care about realism in RPGs, at all. The best way I can describe the kind of games I like is they are fiction simulators...So all I care about is if the rules support the style of play I'm looking for.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't care about realism in RPGs, at all. The best way I can describe the kind of games I like is they are fiction simulators...So all I care about is if the rules support the style of play I'm looking for.

Agreed 100%.

 

[MGibster]

I always like to say realism isn't my primary concern it's versimilitude. I don't want to spend 5 minutes each time a PC decides to fire a burst of automatic fire from his Thompson submachine gun to see how many hit the target, where they hit the target, and what kind of damage it does to the target.

 

[Aldarc]

Realism vs playability. It’s a fool’s errand to try to get proper realism in an RPG. The rules would be thousands of pages long and only a computer could run them. So yeah, you have to make concessions to playability.

The trick is to off load the attempts at realism to the GM rather than rules cruft. Simple, versatile systems work way better at verisimilitude than thousands of cruft-filled pages. Just look at free Kriegsspiel. No rules and used to train real military officers to fight wars. It worked. And still does. All you need is an experienced referee. Or a table of experts willing to referee their given specialties.

I agree that "realism" is a fool's errand in RPGs. If the solution is off-loading realism to a human participant, however, I would change the emphasis here from "off load the attempts at realism to the GM" to "off load the attempts at realism to the group/table." Here I also understand "realism" to be more about simulating some reality, which may be our own sense of realism but also a genre or sub-genre. I think that it's more important for the table to be on the same page about the shared fiction rather than simply the GM. This is how games like Fate, Cortex, and Fabula Ultima do it.

 

[aramis erak]

Realism vs playability. It’s a fool’s errand to try to get proper realism in an RPG. The rules would be thousands of pages long and only a computer could run them. So yeah, you have to make concessions to playability.

QFT

The trick is to off load the attempts at realism to the GM rather than rules cruft.

No. It's to create a player culture where realism is the norm for actions. If the players aren't on board, the GM's just going to get frustrated and the players annoyed at him trying to reign them in. If the players self restrict to reasonably believable attempts, the realism flows from the gestalt of the group. If the group wants Monty Python or Greyskull, and the GM's trying to do 1917, (Great movie, by the way), that disconnect will run it off the verisimilitude train faster than if its the other way 'round.

Simple, versatile systems work way better at verisimilitude than thousands of cruft-filled pages. Just look at free Kriegsspiel. No rules and used to train real military officers to fight wars. It worked. And still does. All you need is an experienced referee. Or a table of experts willing to referee their given specialties.

It's effectiveness for warfighting is arguable. The key element is those last few elements - both strength and weakness as training.

A Gunny once taught me, "sometimes, experience leads to wrong judgements. Especially in the military."
He was thinking 1 stars and up, officer and enlisted... (Enlisted with stars on their insignia include USMC & US Army SgtMaj, USN & USCG SCPO, MCPO; Officers with stars being generals and admirals. And all USN line officers) As has oft been said in analysis of failures in warfare, the generals are always trying to fight the current war based upon what worked in the last one, not what's working in this one. Kreigspiel moderators tend to do likewise.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I'm kinda intrigued by the OP scenario: -- someone wanted the most realistic thing they could, but that challenge became self-defeating in spots; then they wanted things balanced and able to prevent optimization-seeking power-players. This is interesting because game balance is usually framed as opposed to fitting iconic roles or fun; and realism is usually framed as opposed to playability (no one wants the 1-10 second rounds to take 10-20 minutes to resolve), or even whether realism was a primary goal (the old 'I don't care that you have X00 hours of training with Y and want to tell me how fiction Z gets them wrong, I came here to play a game which emulates fiction Z because it is cooler than real life').

I think the first issue is a semi-universal experience -- someone wants to design a system, wants something realistic, finds a downstream consequence (either impacting realism or balance), makes change, finds a consequence, and so on. Certainly I've seen lots of time spent hyperfocused on finer details, only to see any value wiped away by overall system conceits. Those can be as specific as the game doesn't have weapon reach or wearability/draw rules*, or as broad as your system being one (like most RPGs) where each person acts on their turn and then freezes in place while the next person acts**--which by itself can dwarf all the effort you might make in having the combat play out realistically.
*or whatever else makes spears or shortswords preferable to longswords
**with some exceptions such as reserved APs or reactions or abort-to-dodge

I always like to say realism isn't my primary concern it's versimilitude. I don't want to spend 5 minutes each time a PC decides to fire a burst of automatic fire from his Thompson submachine gun to see how many hit the target, where they hit the target, and what kind of damage it does to the target.

Automatic weapons are a key example -- realistically, automatic weapons are often (in interpersonal warfare) used as suppression, yet lots of systems either don't have such rules, or the rules are such that it is mechanically preferable to use it just as a normal weapon, but with a lot more attack rolls. This and the above situation (rules don't exist which highlight the IRL benefits or limits of an option) lead to situations like (IIRC, it's been a while) Shadowrun 1E where everyone either used submachine guns for maximum ROF or sniper rifles (for maximum damage, since all the reasons you don't bring a long-barrel rifle to aback-alley fights weren't in the ruleset).

The second part -- someone finds an exploit in the 'realistic' rules that becomes immanently exploitable-- seems to happen (or at least is more likely to make it to the finished product) whenever not doing so isn't a high priority (when realism, role, fun, and/or narrative priorities take the for). One of the reasons why it's sometimes important to consider whether perfect balance is even the goal. However, when someone finds an 'always best option' exploit/choice like the OP's character with the most action points, it's usually getting in the way of role, fun, and narrative focus as well as balance.

In such a case, you can either 1. (as OP suggested) include some kind of 'artificial' balancing metric, or 2. recognize that realistically, one given thing is rarely always best in all cases, and if the so-called realistic optimal choice probably isn't just realistically favored, but also favored by selective advantage in the mechanistic benefit chosen to represent this real-world trait. Continuing with the OP example--quicker reflexes and being able to do more in a given time is, realistically, a huge benefit. However, having situational knowledge, and thus spending your actions only on things which actually help achieve your goal is also a huge advantage (Speedy McFasterthanyou can be just as doomed as anyone else if he barrels into a room and starts shredding enemies, but walked right by the guy behind the door who is now lining up a shot...). If the 'realistic' game favors Action Points, but doesn't favor awareness (and many games unrealistically treat combatants as knowing about any non-hidden thing in the battle scene), well then it isn't really more realistic (it's just favoring a strategy/rule-component with a realism justification).

Most superhero games intentionally nerf superspeed and overprice the nerfed version because it’s just a fancy I win button. It’s either that or everyone’s a speedster and you have a dull game.

This would be an example of the above. In the cases of comics DC Flash and Sony-version Marvel Quicksilver (who in effect lives in a world of near-frozen people), this is reasonable, but then those powers should be super high in build-component cost. MCU Quicksilver is a good example of how it could work out counter to this -- super speed might mean you can outrun bullets, but not so fast that you can deflect them out of their trajectory towards your friends (so that your only option is taking the bullets for them), and no specific benefit for noticing all the things you need to use your speed to take care of. Super speed could also only mean more actions (including action points spent on defense rolls, if that's a thing in your game), but not auto-dodge nor auto-armor-pierce. So Flash gets an attack on each opponent and a dodge on each opponent but Bullseye gets their one shot back on him and has such a high to-hit that the dodge-action they have isn't sufficient (hope Flash has some HP as well), or they can take 50 attack actions against Collossus, but none of them penetrate, and then Marvel Girl grabs him with telekinesis and they take turns slamming him into things. Maybe his speed is so great that he can dodge everything his opponents can do, and run fast enough to overpower the telekinesis, and has so much time between clock-second-tics that of course he's going to notice the important things; but that's moving back to a strategy-favoring set of mechanics (with a realism justification) someone decided had to be the one to represent a speedster.

DnD has it's own version of this, limiting spell users to keep them from dominating a group.

This seems like kind of an outlier to the scenario. Yes, magic has the per-day limits as a means of keeping casters and non-casters playable together. However, there isn't a realistic way that spellcasting is supposed to work. I don't think I can say that it is an 'artificial' limit. The spellcaster who could cast infinite 1-round-casting-time, battlefield-convenient, no-other-cost spells; who needed to be nerfed for balance reasons; wasn't otherwise on the table. Most iconic images of casters have additional limits which would keep them out of dungeoncrawls -- They are one-of-a-king demigodlike beings whose primary concerns are getting rings to Mount Doom or King Arthur on the throne; their spells take days of incantations and ritual chanting by them and their closest dozen cultist friends; you are a ten thousand year old sorcerer whose life force is protectected by a fist-sized jewel Conan and the priests of Mitra keep trying to steel and destroy; all spells are deals with minor spirits and each one has a cost in life-force (or just tasks you agree to do); etc. There is no specific reason that there would be an limitless caster interested in adventuring with knights and priests and thieves that is only receiving these X/day limitations as a form of balance. Instead the D&D casters are built from the ground with both the conveniences they have and the limits they have both to facilitate their role alongside non-casters. It is still a limitation made for balance, but I guess I just don't see it as a good parallel to mechanisms or build which 'realistically' should dominate but games don't let them for balance concerns.