Realism vs playability?

[John Dallman]

"Realism" is theoretically possible if everything going on in a game is possible in the real world. But where's the fun in that? When someone says their rules for impossible things are "realistic", all they can really claim is "in accordance with my imagining of how these things would work."

In practice, realism is too complicated, and all we can really try for is verisimilitude. The best way to achieve that is to have things that are easy in reality be easy in the game, and likewise for hard. Then you want the mechanisms of the game that have been doing that to handle as much else as possible. This helps the feeling of plausibility.

 

[Blue]

What are we playing? Roleplaying games. What words are in that? "Roleplaying" and "Game". What do we need to play - it says it right on the tin. Realism, verisimilitude, real world or genre simulation - as long as they are in service to "roleplaying" and/or "game" and not opposed, they can be good. But games with very high levels of them may be "games" to smaller niches of people - which is not a bad thing, but IS a thing. And it can be a bad thing if it's not intentional.