A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

Ovinomancer · Feb 11, 2019

Maxperson said:
In the real world, if you can do something 100% of the time after one try, it's unrealistic to think that they will suddenly fail 100% of the time after one try just because they got better at it.

What I understand right now is that Max's personal preference on realism is a very malleable bar. Your stand out example of how you do realism for the sake of realism is a partial adjustment of a timing issue inside of an arbitraily designated 6 second block of time (the arbitrariness here is the designers and 6 seconds) where you already have an unrealistic I-go-U-go timing mechanism and the general assumption that each turn takes 6 seconds, but it's all the same six seconds despite being adjudicated sequentially. And, your adjustment is that you still can't do the special thing until after you do the first thing, but, at a certain point, for some claases only, the first thing becomes interruptable by the special thing.

I get and follow all the rules arguments, here, but they have absolutely nothing to do with realism. Internal rules consistancy, maybe, but nit realism.

Maxperson · Feb 12, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
What I understand right now is that Max's personal preference on realism is a very malleable bar. Your stand out example of how you do realism for the sake of realism is a partial adjustment of a timing issue inside of an arbitraily designated 6 second block of time (the arbitrariness here is the designers and 6 seconds) where you already have an unrealistic I-go-U-go timing mechanism and the general assumption that each turn takes 6 seconds, but it's all the same six seconds despite being adjudicated sequentially. And, your adjustment is that you still can't do the special thing until after you do the first thing, but, at a certain point, for some claases only, the first thing becomes interruptable by the special thing.

No unrealistic thing outside of what I am altering is relevant. Realism isn't a dichotomy. It isn't all or nothing, so whether there is still things that are not realistic involved in other ways just doesn't matter. What I am doing still improves realism by some amount.

I get and follow all the rules arguments, here, but they have absolutely nothing to do with realism. Internal rules consistancy, maybe, but nit realism.

The ones about realism do, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not. You have no ability to change that with your declarations.

Ovinomancer · Feb 12, 2019

Maxperson said:
No unrealistic thing outside of what I am altering is relevant. Realism isn't a dichotomy. It isn't all or nothing, so whether there is still things that are not realistic involved in other ways just doesn't matter. What I am doing still improves realism by some amount.

You really think that's adding realism? Thar's rearrangung deck chairs, man.

If you really were interested on realism, you'd just completely uncouple the shield shove from attack actions instead of continuing to pretend it makes sense to shackle a special maneuver learned through extra training to a game mechanic. Instead, you say your into realism for the sake of and you picked that as your grand example.

The ones about realism do, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not. You have no ability to change that with your declarations.

If that's your realism, Max, I'm not sure there's a useful conversation to be had here.

Maxperson · Feb 12, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
If you really were interested on realism, you'd just completely uncouple the shield shove from attack actions instead of continuing to pretend it makes sense to shackle a special maneuver learned through extra training to a game mechanic. Instead, you say your into realism for the sake of and you picked that as your grand example.

That would be even more realism, sure. And you can repeat it all you want, but it won't make what I said my "grand example." It was just a little example I tossed out, not some grand thing to present to you.

Ovinomancer · Feb 12, 2019

Maxperson said:
That would be even more realism, sure. And you can repeat it all you want, but it won't make what I said my "grand example." It was just a little example I tossed out, not some grand thing to present to you.

You had the entire bredth of your experience, Max, yet you chose to put tgat example forward as your point's champion. It's really not my responsibility to imagine you a better one.

Aldarc · Feb 12, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
You had the entire bredth of your experience, Max, yet you chose to put tgat example forward as your point's champion. It's really not my responsibility to imagine you a better one.

As a general reminder, Max previously cited the simple fact that an RPG has a longsword listed as a weapon and the mere presence of healing mechanics as evidence of realism in RPGs and the valuing thereof. Max may be genuinely employing an exceedingly large, if not vague, sense of what constitutes realism.

Ovinomancer · Feb 12, 2019

Aldarc said:
As a general reminder, Max previously cited the simple fact that an RPG has a longsword listed as a weapon and the mere presence of healing mechanics as evidence of realism in RPGs and the valuing thereof. Max may be genuinely employing an exceedingly large, if not vague, sense of what constitutes realism.

Thank you, you've made me realize I misspelled breadth, which has, despite the normally high frequency my typos, specifically disheartened me.

Alexander Kalinowski · Feb 12, 2019

Aldarc said:
As a general reminder, Max previously cited the simple fact that an RPG has a longsword listed as a weapon and the mere presence of healing mechanics as evidence of realism in RPGs and the valuing thereof. Max may be genuinely employing an exceedingly large, if not vague, sense of what constitutes realism.

Well, sure. But we've got to acknowledge that realism is a continuum and where it starts is highly subjective. Some HEMA folks, for example, seem to have pretty high standards.
Otoh, I can see why, for example, someone would consider an axe strike on average doing more damage than a knife cut a mechanical attempt at realism.
That said, I guess realism in games generally requires some consistency across the entire system or at least across a subsystem.

Ovinomancer · Feb 12, 2019

Alexander Kalinowski said:
Well, sure. But we've got to acknowledge that realism is a continuum and where it starts is highly subjective. Some HEMA folks, for example, seem to have pretty high standards.
Otoh, I can see why, for example, someone would consider an axe strike on average doing more damage than a knife cut a mechanical attempt at realism.
That said, I guess realism in games generally requires some consistency across the entire system or at least across a subsystem.

Yes, but the argument here is about changes to the game to increase realism, done for the sake of realism. If the baseline for this is "longswords," we're at a point of no discussion. Firstly because that's not realism and secondly because it's utterly banal as an example of realism in RPGs. A "longsword* in D&D is a loose grouping of weapons given arbitrary* game mechanics. "But we have swords, that's realism!"

*and they are arbitrary, if you doubt it give me the reason that they do a d8 without indexing to anything else in D&D. That was picked out by indexing to an arbitray baseline of damage and could just as easily have been a d6.

Maxperson · Feb 12, 2019

Aldarc said:
As a general reminder, Max previously cited the simple fact that an RPG has a longsword listed as a weapon and the mere presence of healing mechanics as evidence of realism in RPGs and the valuing thereof. Max may be genuinely employing an exceedingly large, if not vague, sense of what constitutes realism.

Realism is not an all or nothing thing. You don't have to be attempting to mirror the real world exactly in order to be on the realism spectrum. All that you need to do to be on that spectrum somewhere is have something, anything that corresponds to some degree with something from the real world. If you then move that thing farther down the realism spectrum towards the "mirrors reality" end, you have increased the realism in the game. If you move it farther away, you have decreased it. My definition while large, is neither vague, nor without meaning.

A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!

Aldarc

Legend

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!

Alexander Kalinowski

Explorer

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus

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