If it's not real then why call for "realism"?

[Galloglaich]

Well talking past eachother may be the case because that's not at all what I was saying.

My statement (maybe I said it poorly) was that people have different ways of looking at a situation. I think it's a right brain vrs left brain thing.

Some people want things (even fantastic things) to have a rationality to them. They want the rules of the world, and they want the rules to be consistant. If there are no rules, or they don't know the rules they're uncomfortable, and will even make "standard" rules for use going forward.

Some people don't want (or care) things to have that rationality. The fantastic does fantastic stuff, and it doesn't matter if the fantastic stuff has a logical explaination. It's just cool, so it exists. These people don't care if they know the rules so much, and tend to change the rules to match their ideal anyway.

For me it's not at all an issue of making the special or magic things rational (this is what I mean by talking past each other) but of making the non-special or magic things rational so that the special or magic things stand out all the more.

G.

 

[Galloglaich]

And the reverse of that is that if you make lava behave too realistically, it might become so annoying that it's not fun if you implement it.

If you're relatively close to lava, you're dead. Lava heats the surrounding area to 700 degrees, which would cook a person. Not to mention the gasses, ashes, and such that accompany lava and volcanos.

So, fighting in the heart of a volcano is just impossible if you're going to be realistic. But, we ignore that, because otherwise it's not fun. .

I don't follow your logic. if lava behaves like lava, just as water behaves like water and air behaves like air, and you still can add a new force we could call Magic. Magic can trump these other forces. Magic could for example make you temporarily or permanently immune to the effects of Heat. To me that would make sense.

The problem with just arbitrarily fudging lava to behave more like it does in say, a particular cartoon you saw when you were 14, is how do I know where you got that idea from, how do I know whether to expect anything else to work in this universe differently from what I expect from my intuitive understanding of the real world, and if I find something else that is strange, how can I tell if it's Magic causing it to be strange or simply another fudge from the DM or the game designer?

If I'm playing in a world where I expect things to more or less make sense, and I see someone playing near Lava, I can assume that there is Magic afoot. Or maybe I should just play along and assume Lava doesn't burn you unless you touch it in this universe, ( it better or I'll get mad when I'm burned to a cinder because I don't have Magical protection.... )

And maybe later when I see a talking dog, instead of thinking there is anything unusual about it, I'll just throw it a scooby snack... that's fine for TOON, I would find it a little disconcerting in a standard FRPG.

G.

 

[Galloglaich]

Imagine a halfling is capable, in game mechanical terms, of tackling an ancient red dragon to the ground. In some game worlds, this is perfectly acceptable. In others, this is surreal to the extreme. Reality, in the game world, is whether this is an acceptable event.

As for dragons themselves... they may be physically impossible, but magic is a sufficient explanation. Anti-magic and dispel magic, by the way, will not case a golem to turn into a pile clay, will not work on any artifact, and will not cause a beholder to fall. In fact, anti-magic will not, naturally enough, cause itself to fail. Casting such a a spell does not mean "the rules of magic no longer apply," it just means, "certain magical effects in this area are suppressed." It's anti-magic zone, not "zone of things acting like the real world."

Realism is important if you decide to merge, say, Conan, with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. you have to decide what the new rules are. If you do not decide, the result is just incoherent.

Really well put.

G.

 

[Galloglaich]

I'm a little exasperated by the idea that reality is the bottom line for acceptable cinimatics.

It doesn't have to be, but for some types of cinematic enjoyment, you have to set reality aside for it to work. Wuxia, movies like The Matrix or Wanted, or "stuff blows up" action film.

To me, the Matrix was extremely realistic. I haven't seen the other films so can't comment on those. But the Matrix (at least the original one) had a highly plausible, carefully thought out and well reationalized "magical" reality layered on top of the 'real' reality we were all familiar with. When people slowed down to watch bullets going by, you could see the sonic disruption of the air from the bullets. Having someone who was able to bend reality because reality itself is virtual, is quite analagous to having a Wizard who can invoke Magic that distorts an otherwise rational Medieval world.

To me unrealistic is something like a shootout in the A-Team, a first person shooter like Halo, or your typical mainstream FRPG system .

G.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I think one aspect of realism that should be addressed is "shifting realism" based on the narrative at the time. This is probably not something some people would like, but I find it has worked quite well for me. I shift my realism depending on what the scene needs.

If a scene requires something to go beyond the norms then it does. But if scaling it back suits the mood of another scene it does. This can get confusing yes, but if properly managed by having good atmosphere and understanding between the Player and DM then it can work wonderfully.

So to bring in lava, if you want a fight near lava without a magical reason to be alive, the DM pumps up the action and the over-the-top feel of the scene. Make the players feel like, "yeah we can do this". In another where they must evade lava and watch their breathing because of ash pump up a feeling of dread or danger. This requires trust between the player and DM, but if known before hand as the means of the DM then in my experience works.

It doesn't feel like there is a disconnect to, or that the consistency has gone either since it is the consistency with the mood, atmosphere and plot that keeps things going not the world element.

 

[Rechan]

I don't follow your logic. if lava behaves like lava, just as water behaves like water and air behaves like air, and you still can add a new force we could call Magic. Magic can trump these other forces. Magic could for example make you temporarily or permanently immune to the effects of Heat. To me that would make sense.

The problem with just arbitrarily fudging lava to behave more like it does in say, a particular cartoon you saw when you were 14, is how do I know where you got that idea from, how do I know whether to expect anything else to work in this universe differently from what I expect from my intuitive understanding of the real world, and if I find something else that is strange, how can I tell if it's Magic causing it to be strange or simply another fudge from the DM or the game designer?

If I'm playing in a world where I expect things to more or less make sense, and I see someone playing near Lava, I can assume that there is Magic afoot. Or maybe I should just play along and assume Lava doesn't burn you unless you touch it in this universe, ( it better or I'll get mad when I'm burned to a cinder because I don't have Magical protection.... )

Or you could assume that I don't know Lava doesn't kill you unless you touch it, because quite simply some do not. DMs/game designers aren't all-knowing, in terms of the realistic applications of things.

Forget "Cartoon I saw at age 14"; one of the damn BOND movies has a villain with a base in a volcano. I didn't know "Lava kills you if you're in the room with it" until I read it on TvTropes.com, and I took Geology in college!

If you're standing on a flying city about three miles above the ground, you might assume "hey, there's magic afoot keeping me from getting hypothermia up here" whereas the next guy doesn't realize it's really windy/cold/hard to breathe that high up, and therefore doesn't take that into consideration.

Once I was running a game where the PCs were in the desert, and looking through an abandoned town. They come to a door, and open it, and there are stairs leading down. Suddenly one of the players announces, "Something bad must be going down here; people in the desert don't dig underground, the earth is too hard! Something sinister is afoot."

I just looked at him and said, "Huh? Basements/cellars aren't universal?"

The player assumed something was intentionally done, in the game, when really it was that way because of ignorance.

 

[Rechan]

Here's what I've been seeing missing from this whole talk of realism and player/dm assumptions:

People saying "Well I expect this to happen if I do this" well - what happened to asking instead of just acting without instead consulting? Do people not ask the DM if there are any differences of how his world works to the real world, or do these issues not come up until people just stumble into them?

Using the running example of the Lava/Volcano... if there's lava in the room, shouldn't you ask the DM what the rules are? Or, if the plot seems to be directing you to a Volcano where a Dragon lives in the heart of it... then either the DM is assuming you are going to go in, or he's going to assume that you aren't.

Wouldn't checking be advisable?

 

[Galloglaich]

Some people simply desire more or less reflection in that regard, depending upon why they pursue RPGs and what the conditions of their personal existence are. There is no 'correct' level of verisimiltude. It's a matter of personal preference. Like salt on food. Some people want a lot of verisimilitude in their fantasy, while some people want very little.

But the other factor at work. If you take a low level of realism, you have the problem that people entering into a given game are going to be faced with an exponentially larger learning curve.


If you will indulge a flight of fantasy (which I can assure you is not unrealistic) Lets premise a person, I'll call her "Brunette Girlfriend", or BG for short. is not a hard core gamer by any stretch of the imagination. BG is of a different demographic than the typical hard core gamer, but she is fun to be around. More fun than games even.

Lets say BG has a moderate interest or tolerance for playing games once in a while. We have friends over on weekends, play poker one night, board games like pictionary another night, and play drinking games on yet another.

If Galloglaich tried to get BG to play an RPG #1, "E&E", which has a rather complex low verisimilitude world and physics based on a mish mash of the expectations of hard core gamers, trekkies, anime fans and comic book collectors, she is going to have an exponentially more difficult time relating to the new game. As she encounters one illogical oddity after another, pretty soon BG is getting annoyed asking snarky questions, and quickly gets fed up. Before Galloglaich knows it, game night is over.

On the other hand, when Galloglaich tries introducing RPG #2, "Call of ToolHoo", which is relatively simple and mostly based on familar concepts from the real world, onto which are layered a well developed, engaging and strangely compelling literary horror genre which is internally consistent, he finds BG relates to it fairly easily. They have a good time and RPGs become an occasional part of game night, which continues.


This is why I like realism.

G.

 

[Galloglaich]

I think one aspect of realism that should be addressed is "shifting realism" based on the narrative at the time. This is probably not something some people would like, but I find it has worked quite well for me. I shift my realism depending on what the scene needs.

If a scene requires something to go beyond the norms then it does. But if scaling it back suits the mood of another scene it does. This can get confusing yes, but if properly managed by having good atmosphere and understanding between the Player and DM then it can work wonderfully.

So to bring in lava, if you want a fight near lava without a magical reason to be alive, the DM pumps up the action and the over-the-top feel of the scene. Make the players feel like, "yeah we can do this". In another where they must evade lava and watch their breathing because of ash pump up a feeling of dread or danger. This requires trust between the player and DM, but if known before hand as the means of the DM then in my experience works.

It doesn't feel like there is a disconnect to, or that the consistency has gone either since it is the consistency with the mood, atmosphere and plot that keeps things going not the world element.

That seems reasonable to me, but something which you would develop as part of the rapport between DM and players, if not necessarily built into a game system per se.

G.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

That seems reasonable to me, but something which you would develop as part of the rapport between DM and players, if not necessarily built into a game system per se.

G.

*Nods, nods* Yeah that is why I made sure to mention the trust issue. Though I do think there is mechanical ramifications with this, in that with a shifting realism on different aspects of the world the mechanics put into place would also adjust.

Just you know throwing it out there as another debate point. Another point on the spectrum as it were.