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The Importance of Verisimilitude (or "Why you don't need realism to keep it real")
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<blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9176565" data-attributes="member: 8461"><p>The problem with referencing the importance/contributions of non-powered individuals, insofar as it comes to them existing alongside powered individuals in narrative media, is that you'll continually run up against the same issue: the narrative has been deliberately constructed in such a way that it essentially goes out of its way to justify their presence. It's how you put Batman on equal footing with Superman (to use a perennial example where this sort of thing comes up).</p><p></p><p>That's a lot harder to do in games that aren't built to support narrativism from the ground up, i.e. there are a lot of meta-mechanics that players can use but which don't necessarily correspond to any sort of action taken on the part of their PC. Where verisimilitude is a primary concern, the differences between what powered characters and non-powered characters can do quickly becomes rather stark, which is why we <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/you-cant-fix-the-class-imbalances-imho.700598/" target="_blank">keep having</a> so many <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-does-the-mundane-high-level-fighter-look-like.700299/" target="_blank">threads about</a> how to <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-fighter-martial-problem-in-depth-ponderings.700131/" target="_blank">square that circle</a>.</p><p></p><p>Now, you <em>can</em> still have such a paradigm under a more "gamist" paradigm as well, because in those types of games the differences between powered and non-powered largely become moot. Fourth Edition was a great example of this, where the nature and differences between power sources made little practical difference in the course of play; a warlord could restore hit points by yelling at someone just as much as a cleric could by casting a healing spell. But that breaks fairly hard from verisimilitude, which is why a lot of people had a problem with that in the context of D&D (which has always had a large amount of verisimilitude in its presentation, though it's varied between editions, and has always had areas where it compromised in that aspect).</p><p></p><p>The salient principle to keep in mind is that verisimilitude's central principle is building an in-character understanding of how and why the game world works in the way that it does. Once you've established those principles, everything is extrapolated out from there (including exceptions to the rules, once you've defined why they're exceptions). In that regard, nothing is capricious or arbitrary, short of what rules you've set up to begin with.</p><p></p><p>In that regard, a verisimilitudinous model is "arbitrary" only in that those rules had to be established in the first place, but that's no more "arbitrary" than someone designing a gamist set of rules ("the pawn can only move one square ahead...except on its first move; then it can move two" is an arbitrary decision) or really any other set of rules which govern a game. Sam Kass made the arbitrary decision that rock-paper-scissors was too limited, so he came up with rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, arbitrarily stopping at five choices instead of three. Why not seven? Or nine? Because arbitrariness!</p><p></p><p>Likewise, the fact that certain things are limited and others aren't available isn't anything particularly unique to a verisimilitude-based model either. All games have those, and all are enforced under a model called "the rules." Obviously, rules can be modified to the satisfaction of the people involved in a given instance of play, but that's not really here nor there. The point of this thread is to look at the virtues and advantages of a set of rules based on in-character design principles, as those allow players to intuit how the world works from their character's perspective, and so allow for a more immersive (and, by extension, more fun) experience of play.</p><p></p><p>Again, this isn't really an issue with verisimilitude; all games necessarily make certain choices about what is and is not allowed. You can't have you queen skip over pieces in chess, and people who'd prefer to can see that it's simply a choice not to allow that, a choice in supprt of a very specific and narrow set of preferences. To say "I don't care for the set of ideas that this model is built around" isn't to levy any sort of charge against verisimilitude in particular. At best, it's simply saying "this type of game isn't for me," which is fine, but it's not pointing out any kind of weakness or drawback unique to that mode of engagement.</p><p></p><p>I'll refer you back to the OP, where I noted that "realism" in the context of TTRPGs is typically used as a shorthand for "how things function in the real world." Now, as I likewise said, the problem is that it's very often <em>also</em> used as an attempt to discuss the easily-intuited-but-difficult-to-articulate idea of internal logic and/or self-consistency. In that regard, talking about "realism" is something that I think invites misunderstandings and lack of clarity in what's already an area fraught with a lack of common terms and definitions for things that a lot of us can clearly pick up on but have trouble talking about, especially when there are differing shades of understanding and nuance. To that end, there's nothing "subtle" or "wily" about verisimilitude, except that it attempts to more accurately reflect the difference between "realism as how the real world works" and "'realism' as how the game world works."</p><p></p><p>One thing to make clear here is that "groundedness" (and related terms such as "sensible" and "predictable"), which is one of the primary benefits of a verisimilitudinous model, is not the antithesis of either "supernatural" or "transmundane." Quite the contrary! One of the things to keep in mind is that discovering how the game world operates is quite often one of the primary goals of engaging with games designed around that principle, and as a natural extension to that, trying to figure out how to reconcile seemingly-contradictory things (if and when they happen) is one of the major areas of engagement. We see things like this quite often in narrative media, often when the protagonist(s) encounter some new villain with special powers, and there's some exclamation of "(s)he can use two different forms of magic at once?!" or "they can cast spells without an incantation?!" or "they can resist that irresistible attack?!" etc. What typically follows is an investigation into the how/why of it, followed by either a countermeasure or the heroes realizing that their existing knowledge was wrong/incomplete and training up their powers accordingly. It's verisimilitude that gets them there.</p><p></p><p>Which makes you sound like an advocate of verisimilitude yourself. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Alzrius, post: 9176565, member: 8461"] The problem with referencing the importance/contributions of non-powered individuals, insofar as it comes to them existing alongside powered individuals in narrative media, is that you'll continually run up against the same issue: the narrative has been deliberately constructed in such a way that it essentially goes out of its way to justify their presence. It's how you put Batman on equal footing with Superman (to use a perennial example where this sort of thing comes up). That's a lot harder to do in games that aren't built to support narrativism from the ground up, i.e. there are a lot of meta-mechanics that players can use but which don't necessarily correspond to any sort of action taken on the part of their PC. Where verisimilitude is a primary concern, the differences between what powered characters and non-powered characters can do quickly becomes rather stark, which is why we [url=https://www.enworld.org/threads/you-cant-fix-the-class-imbalances-imho.700598/]keep having[/url] so many [url=https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-does-the-mundane-high-level-fighter-look-like.700299/]threads about[/url] how to [url=https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-fighter-martial-problem-in-depth-ponderings.700131/]square that circle[/url]. Now, you [i]can[/i] still have such a paradigm under a more "gamist" paradigm as well, because in those types of games the differences between powered and non-powered largely become moot. Fourth Edition was a great example of this, where the nature and differences between power sources made little practical difference in the course of play; a warlord could restore hit points by yelling at someone just as much as a cleric could by casting a healing spell. But that breaks fairly hard from verisimilitude, which is why a lot of people had a problem with that in the context of D&D (which has always had a large amount of verisimilitude in its presentation, though it's varied between editions, and has always had areas where it compromised in that aspect). The salient principle to keep in mind is that verisimilitude's central principle is building an in-character understanding of how and why the game world works in the way that it does. Once you've established those principles, everything is extrapolated out from there (including exceptions to the rules, once you've defined why they're exceptions). In that regard, nothing is capricious or arbitrary, short of what rules you've set up to begin with. In that regard, a verisimilitudinous model is "arbitrary" only in that those rules had to be established in the first place, but that's no more "arbitrary" than someone designing a gamist set of rules ("the pawn can only move one square ahead...except on its first move; then it can move two" is an arbitrary decision) or really any other set of rules which govern a game. Sam Kass made the arbitrary decision that rock-paper-scissors was too limited, so he came up with rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, arbitrarily stopping at five choices instead of three. Why not seven? Or nine? Because arbitrariness! Likewise, the fact that certain things are limited and others aren't available isn't anything particularly unique to a verisimilitude-based model either. All games have those, and all are enforced under a model called "the rules." Obviously, rules can be modified to the satisfaction of the people involved in a given instance of play, but that's not really here nor there. The point of this thread is to look at the virtues and advantages of a set of rules based on in-character design principles, as those allow players to intuit how the world works from their character's perspective, and so allow for a more immersive (and, by extension, more fun) experience of play.[I][/I] Again, this isn't really an issue with verisimilitude; all games necessarily make certain choices about what is and is not allowed. You can't have you queen skip over pieces in chess, and people who'd prefer to can see that it's simply a choice not to allow that, a choice in supprt of a very specific and narrow set of preferences. To say "I don't care for the set of ideas that this model is built around" isn't to levy any sort of charge against verisimilitude in particular. At best, it's simply saying "this type of game isn't for me," which is fine, but it's not pointing out any kind of weakness or drawback unique to that mode of engagement. I'll refer you back to the OP, where I noted that "realism" in the context of TTRPGs is typically used as a shorthand for "how things function in the real world." Now, as I likewise said, the problem is that it's very often [i]also[/i] used as an attempt to discuss the easily-intuited-but-difficult-to-articulate idea of internal logic and/or self-consistency. In that regard, talking about "realism" is something that I think invites misunderstandings and lack of clarity in what's already an area fraught with a lack of common terms and definitions for things that a lot of us can clearly pick up on but have trouble talking about, especially when there are differing shades of understanding and nuance. To that end, there's nothing "subtle" or "wily" about verisimilitude, except that it attempts to more accurately reflect the difference between "realism as how the real world works" and "'realism' as how the game world works." One thing to make clear here is that "groundedness" (and related terms such as "sensible" and "predictable"), which is one of the primary benefits of a verisimilitudinous model, is not the antithesis of either "supernatural" or "transmundane." Quite the contrary! One of the things to keep in mind is that discovering how the game world operates is quite often one of the primary goals of engaging with games designed around that principle, and as a natural extension to that, trying to figure out how to reconcile seemingly-contradictory things (if and when they happen) is one of the major areas of engagement. We see things like this quite often in narrative media, often when the protagonist(s) encounter some new villain with special powers, and there's some exclamation of "(s)he can use two different forms of magic at once?!" or "they can cast spells without an incantation?!" or "they can resist that irresistible attack?!" etc. What typically follows is an investigation into the how/why of it, followed by either a countermeasure or the heroes realizing that their existing knowledge was wrong/incomplete and training up their powers accordingly. It's verisimilitude that gets them there. Which makes you sound like an advocate of verisimilitude yourself. ;) [/QUOTE]
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