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

pemerton said:

The bit of that rabbit hole that I ignored was the completely unsubstantiated assertion that the meaning of "realism" in RPGing has changed in the past 40 years. Obviously I missed that memo (despite playing Rolemaster continuously from early 1990 to late 2008!).

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That is one [em]huge[/em] rabbit hole. I think it is more like a dragon's den! Who wants to march into that thing??!

I was a wargamer before I was an RPG gamer. I don't think there is a different definition of realistic. There may be some differences in the two genre of game, not surprisingly, but the same considerations faced Gygax in designing D&D as faced Gygax in designing Chain Mail. In either case you need relatively succinct mechanics which can provide a range of outcomes which would occur in the thing you are simulating.

In the case of Chain Mail, the designer probably hoped that the mechanics of combat also produced results which were reasonably true to life. If a Roman cohort in good order stood on an even piece of ground facing off against some Celtic irregular warriors, guess what would happen about 99.9% of the time? You can produce this sort of outcome pretty reasonably in Chain Mail, and it can be run in a fair amount of time.

Note, however, that Chain Mail does recommend (I don't think they demand it as a necessity) that there be a referee, who would likely adjudicate things not explicitly covered in the rules (IE decide what the effects of heavy rain might be on some archers).

D&D obviously evolved from this, as we know, but the areas which it covers are much more diverse and this is probably why Gygax puts 'realism' in quotes when talking about D&D. Not because he is using a different definition, but because he simply has different goals and depicting heroic fantasy adventure doesn't need to be realistic in the same way that Chain Mail does.

AbdulAlhazred said:

I was a wargamer before I was an RPG gamer. I don't think there is a different definition of realistic. There may be some differences in the two genre of game, not surprisingly, but the same considerations faced Gygax in designing D&D as faced Gygax in designing Chain Mail. In either case you need relatively succinct mechanics which can provide a range of outcomes which would occur in the thing you are simulating.

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They didn't sit down and write out a definition. It was in how they treated realism. They attempted to mirror reality as closely as possible. That's what realism meant in those days.

Note, however, that Chain Mail does recommend (I don't think they demand it as a necessity) that there be a referee, who would likely adjudicate things not explicitly covered in the rules (IE decide what the effects of heavy rain might be on some archers).

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And that referee would endeavor to figure out the effects of the rain as closely to reality as he could.

D&D obviously evolved from this, as we know, but the areas which it covers are much more diverse and this is probably why Gygax puts 'realism' in quotes when talking about D&D. Not because he is using a different definition, but because he simply has different goals and depicting heroic fantasy adventure doesn't need to be realistic in the same way that Chain Mail does.

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Correct. He's not using a different definition. He's using the one that wargamers used. Mirroring reality as closely as possible.

Read 1e and 2e. He engages in realism as it is used now all over the place.

From 1e strength: "Strength is a measure of muscle, endurance, and stamina combined. For purposes of relating this ability to some reality, assume that a character with a strength of 3 is able to lift a maximum of 30 pounds weight above his or her head in a military press, while a character with 18 strength will be able to press 180 pounds in the same manner."

That's rife with realism. He even states he is relating it to some reality. With the exception of the statement about relating it to reality, all of his stats are written with realism. The same with races and sexes. He didn't give female characters a lower maximum strength because fantasy. He did it because realism. Throughout all of his books it's like that.

Maxperson said:

They didn't sit down and write out a definition. It was in how they treated realism. They attempted to mirror reality as closely as possible. That's what realism meant in those days.

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"In those days", come now, the horse potatoes are dropping with great regularity here.

And that referee would endeavor to figure out the effects of the rain as closely to reality as he could.

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I'll accept this statement, sure. That would be expected, though I'd not be surprised if other considerations came into play.

Correct. He's not using a different definition. He's using the one that wargamers used. Mirroring reality as closely as possible.

Read 1e and 2e. He engages in realism as it is used now all over the place.

From 1e strength: "Strength is a measure of muscle, endurance, and stamina combined. For purposes of relating this ability to some reality, assume that a character with a strength of 3 is able to lift a maximum of 30 pounds weight above his or her head in a military press, while a character with 18 strength will be able to press 180 pounds in the same manner."

That's rife with realism. He even states he is relating it to some reality. With the exception of the statement about relating it to reality, all of his stats are written with realism. The same with races and sexes. He didn't give female characters a lower maximum strength because fantasy. He did it because realism. Throughout all of his books it's like that.

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And what other definition of 'realism' do you think exists? Apparently you DO think there's some other, because one thing is for sure. The one YOU use ain't nothin' like the one Gygax used! Any modern politician would be proud of you Max. You bend the language with the best of them.

AbdulAlhazred said:

And what other definition of 'realism' do you think exists? Apparently you DO think there's some other, because one thing is for sure. The one YOU use ain't nothin' like the one Gygax used!

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I just showed you with multiple examples pulled from just the first few pages of the PHB that he uses my definition. What's certain is that when he said realism doesn't belong in D&D, is that he meant mirroring reality. The alternative is that he's a hypocrite that said realism doesn't belong in D&D, and then spent page after page after page putting realism into D&D. I don't think he was a hypocrite.

lowkey13 said:

Were you discussing the crisis in social sciences (aka, the replication crisis)?

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No.

EDIT: I was talking about the ways in which empirical claims can be justified. Thinking really hard isn't one of those ways.

Maxperson said:

Perhaps if you paid more attention to how terms are used by the gaming industry at large, and not how you personally choose to define terms, you wouldn't have missed it.

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Maxperson said:

Aside from being an Appeal to Authority, experts are irrelevant here.

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These two posts were made within a span of less than 2 hours. How am I meant to reconcile them?

Maxperson said:

All it takes for the level of realism I seek is for me to have a system that generally works towards representing something in real life.

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I don't really know what you mean by this.
[MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] has a system - whetstones on equipment lists - for "representing" (in some tenable sense of that word) something that occurs in real life, namely, warriors sharpening their blades.

But you say that that is not an element of realism.

Declaring that a PC comes down with a disease every time the clock strikes during the course of play would be a system for introducing disease - an element of real life - into gameplay. But upthread you seemed to assert that a system of that sort does not increase realism - I think (though am not sure) on the basis that the decision-making process doesn't model the ingame infection process.

But when some of us express doubt that the AD&D DMG disease rules work towards representing something like real life, because the "model"/"simulation" (if one wants to call it that) seems to have little basis in reality, and furthermore is apt to produce inconsistencies in game play that don't mirror corresponding facets of real life, you say that we're missing the point of what you mean by realism.

I have almost no idea of what it is that you're defending.

Maxperson said:

Experts are irrelevant, because you only need an expert if you intend to mirror reality as closely as possible, which is not generally the goal of realism in D&D. It's certainly not my goal. All it takes for the level of realism I seek is for me to have a system that generally works towards representing something in real life. It doesn't have to be accurate or even anywhere remotely close to being accurate.

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But you proceeded all this by appealing to how these weapons would work in real life - your own subjective sense of what is "realistic" - and that assertion could be disputed by people who actually know better than you about the subject matter. You are just ignoring reality when it's inconvenient for your game while also appealing to your sense of reality about that same matter.

pemerton said:

These two posts were made within a span of less than 2 hours. How am I meant to reconcile them?

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The first is not an authority. I'm not pointing to a single person and saying, "Listen to him." I'm pointing to how the entire industry as a whole is defining something. Nor are the individuals in the industry all experts. The vast majority are not.

pemerton said:

[MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] has a system - whetstones on equipment lists - for "representing" (in some tenable sense of that word) something that occurs in real life, namely, warriors sharpening their blades.

But you say that that is not an element of realism.

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No I didn't, and you know that. What I said is that it's not a rule.

Declaring that a PC comes down with a disease every time the clock strikes during the course of play would be a system for introducing disease - an element of real life - into gameplay. But upthread you seemed to assert that a system of that sort does not increase realism - I think (though am not sure) on the basis that the decision-making process doesn't model the ingame infection process.

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I didn't say that, either.

But when some of us express doubt that the AD&D DMG disease rules work towards representing something like real life, because the "model"/"simulation" (if one wants to call it that) seems to have little basis in reality, and furthermore is apt to produce inconsistencies in game play that don't mirror corresponding facets of real life, you say that we're missing the point of what you mean by realism.

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I don't think you are missing it. You twist things I say in my posts too consistently for them to be accidents. You know what I mean and do this deliberately.