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

[ExploderWizard]

Perusing some of these responses, I tihnk the OP has received a definite answer. A roleplaying game, at least a traditional roleplaying game, needs to have a coherent world and inhabitants or the game is unplayable. The game, again for traditional RPGs, has been about creating and enacting strategies and tactics within a fictional world. The degree to which the game world is or isn't predictable is the degree to which the players can or cannot strategize within it. No plans or preparations can really be made in relation to an incoherent (or worse, inexistent) world. This is why we have adventure modules. And campaign worlds. And book after book of detailed characters and items and places and more. It is to define an understandable world for the players to discover.

I'm not going to get into the specifics defining between realism, verisimilitude, and fantasy realities. But a game world that cannot be understood by its' players definitively cannot be successfully roleplayed within.

I agree with this assessment. Expanding upon this premise of a world with a defined reality (no matter how realistic or unrealistic it may be) the players need to be informed about what is obviously perceptible about that reality. This doesn't mean that thier characters have to know how everything in the world works. There are a lot of people in our own world who don't understand the math behind basic physics but they can recognize "normal" behavior based on these physical principles when they see it.

Such basic understanding of baseline world knowledge is essential in order for the strange and mysterious to have any real meaning. I enjoy using different basic physical and magical laws for other planes of existance. These differences are only meaningful if the prime material plane is consistent in this regard.

Baseline realities don't have to be the same as those of the real world. A fantasy world could feature slightly less gravity than earth which would mean that heroic jumps, and leaps would be accepted as normal in such a world. The important thing would be that characters from this world know through common knowledge that such feats were "normal" and wouldn't have the same "Wow!!" factor that they would on a world with normal gravity.

I prefer using the realities of the real world with well defined exceptions. The trick to maintaining consistency isn't in sticking to reality its in ensuring that the players are not suprised by something that thier characters would know by default.

 

[Galloglaich]

The issue is ultimately internal consistency, and the confusion I think it comes back to whether or not you are in a Genre. We can recognize certain clear Genres that are well defined in pop culture: "Toon", Star Wars, Film Noire, Superhero, Western, etc. These are generally understood by most people, so non-gamers can fairly easily guess the basic rules of these worlds; falling doesn't kill you in a Toon world, spaceships make noise in outer space and "The Force" works like Magic in Star Wars etc. To me any game which is fairly accessible to regular folks is a healthier game.

When it comes to Fantasy RPG's, some people have always assumed a relatively consistent realistic / historically based world, with well defined magic and mythological elements laid over that. Many other people have always played in a variety of default Fantasy Genres of some kind.... which has brought great enjoyment to people playing with their friends in their own groups. The problem with these 'default' Genres is that they are not explicitly defined as such. The default FRPG Genre is actually a lot of baggage from a myriad of games, tv shows, films, books, which find their way into individual games and also rules systems. It's basically something wich comes out of gamer culture, and is always interpreted differently by each group of players.

The latter approach causes a serious problem for many people when certain rules systems enforce an (always slightly different) very specific type of pseudo-High Fantasy Genre, making the other realistic, historical, or specific literary subgenres (Tolkein, Vance, Moorcock, Leiber) based games all but impossible to play within the system (without heavy house-rules).

There are many clearly defined subGenres within Fantasy or Sci Fi which have been quite successful: Call of Cthulhu, Steampunk, Vampires, Paranoia, Space Opera, Post-Apocalypse, Conan, Dying Earth, Warhammer etc. etc. Games based on these genres are usually successful because people clearly know what they are getting into.

I think the problem with DnD is that a frankly rather cartoonish (but serious!) FRPG Genre enforcing a very specific type of game play has been imposed upon it. Some people really like this default Genre (in it's various wildly different incarnations 2nd, 3rd or 4th Ed, Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Grayhawk etc. etc.), but not everybody does, and more importantly, I personally think people who haven't already been playing RPGs for decades often find them rather alienating. For me personally, these are Genre I got into as a kid, but I can't get really enjoy any more as an adult.

I also think people don't realize how off-putting some of the assumptions which make up this Genre are to regular folks who aren't gamers, and how much this "default genre" isolates gamers and keeps games like DnD deep inside a niche. Anybody who saw Star Wars gets the Star Wars Genre. Maybe it's a little nerdy, but if you like Star Wars, you'll have no problem fitting into a Star Wars game. The only way you can really know this default FRPG genre is really to have memorized a lot of RPG manuals and / or played hundreds of hours of RPGs. This makes it much harder for 'normal' people to buy into, IMO. When I have tried to introduce people to DnD, and they ask me "Wait, that guy is an ordinary human fighter, but he fell off the fifth story of the building and he can still run away?" or "Why does being stabbed with a dagger hurt less than being hit with a stick? Isn't a Dagger a big knife like this big?" I don't really know what to tell them, other than "well that is just the rules of the game...".

I think there are a variety of ways to play RPGs, there is no reason why people can't play any way they want including games where you can surf on lava if you want to. But people new to RPGs, and even people who have played for years but have some knowledge of history, weapons, martial arts, biology etc. etc., may feel more comfortable with a game that isn't based on this particular, frankly rather strange FRPG Genre that has come to seem normal to us by default, in much the same way as a Renaissance Faire comes to be the 'normal' version of Medieval History for a lot of people.

By contrast, a realistic basis for your game means you have a world you can understand without already being immersed in gamer culture, and has the additional advantage that it is automatically internally consistent, without tons of wierd gymnastic tinkering with the rules to make them balance.

G.

 

[Scribble]

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.

I understand what you're saying, but I also think maybe I'm not making the right point. I though about it a bit over the weekend:

Even when it comes to some things magical and some things mundane, sometimes you have to be willing to kind of recanoiter the mundane in order for the two to mesh. Afterall what good is superman's ability to lift a building if physics never lets him do it?

That's where what I like to call the FUNdane comes in. It's the part where the two meet. In order to showcase superman's great stregnth he lifts a building, and doesn't break through it instead. In order to have a "cool" thing like a dragon, we make fundane say sure, lizards can fly if they just had wings.

In D&D this also doesn't just mean a magic layer connected to a mundane layer. The "magic" layer can sometimes simply mean the outrageous parts. IE the dragon... it's not really magic, but we fundane physics a bit so that for the most part it's the same but some stuff is different. (Because it's fun.)

We see this in other artistic mediums as well... IE in real life watching someone run a DNA test over the course of a number of weeks in a sterile lab is BORRING. But if you fundane it a bit, and make it happen much faster, in a visualy stimulating fashion that meshes well to a techno beat? Now it's fun!

The problem is that everyone's level of fundane they're willing to accept is different.

My wife is in fact a research biologist studying breast cancer, so CSI really bugs her. It's all done too quickly and easily, they aren't at all sterile, and too small of a group to do as much as they do. The pay off just isn't worth it for her.

On the other hand she really likes Fringe. Half the time he's just babbling scientific buzz words when he talks about mundane science, but the end result is so much fun that she doesn't mind.

In a social game like D&D this can cause issues though. IE the DM's fundane annoys one of his players, and it's especialy true if it hinder's the player in some way. "What do you mean he made it accross the lava and did that much damage??? Lava should kill him instanty there's no way he could do that!"

I think in the end it's just going to be one of those things that's different for everyone, and various groups have to come to their own consensus about the level of fundane they're willing to accept.

 

[Janx]

The bulk of the "that's not realistic" arguments I see in games come from one side arguing against something that happened in the game, or somebody trying to screw the other side with "realisim". In both cases, it's trying to manipulate the rules and game events to a favorable outcome.

In a game with a good GM, a scene with lava will be introduced with description and clues as to what's dangerous, and what's not.

If there's a bridge, the implication is the party will cross it (and it's safe, or it's a trap).

If it's too hot, the PC will be told about searing heat, before he gets too close to actually take damage.

If there's dangerous gases, the PC will be told that the air is hard to breathe, and gets worse the close he gets to the lava.


In a game with a bad GM, the GM will say nothing like this. He's waiting for the PC to get within range of the lava to announce heat damage. The PC has no common sense "this is too hot" warnings before he gets too close.

On the player side, it's the same thing. If the orcs start crossing the bridge, they'll bring up that the orcs should die from the heat and gasses because they saw a show on National Geographic about it. Never mind that they wouldn't bring that up, if the PCs were needing to cross that bridge.

It's a known characteristic, that if you try to accurately simulate reality, the game rules become complex and numerous. This slows down game play, and reduces fun. People bring up realisim, specifically to attack what's happening in game, to try to gain an advantage.

 

[Galloglaich]

It's a known characteristic, that if you try to accurately simulate reality, the game rules become complex and numerous. This slows down game play, and reduces fun. .

Thats funny, because I actually find the opposite to be the case. In my opinion, a realistic system can allow the rules to be more in the background.

DnD 3.5 could hardly be called a realistic game by any stretch of the imagination, I think a lot of it's high-complexity comes from trying to tweak a system based on an artificial faux medieval Universe with an almost irreconcilable mish=mash of elements without any connection to historical reality or recognizable literary genres.

By comparison, when I play Call of Cthulhu, I almost never think about the rules, (other than my SAN points). The genre is an extremely realistic, highly detailed historical background, onto which are layered distinct Lovecreaft mythos elements (and a few non-existent towns). As a player, I'm thinking about the last clue we just found, whether an NPC we met is part of a dangerous cult, of staying one step ahead of the law etc., not the rules. If I decide to climb on a window ledge, I know it will involve a relatively simple die roll with fairly realistic odds of success, and if I fall, I can predict what will happen based on my experiences of real life (i.e. I'm in trouble).

There is this really persistent myth that realistic = complex, and unrealistic=simple. Thats a completely false dichotomy. Whether your system is based on a historical world or a completely new made up one isn't even necessarily related to the level of abstraction.

The real problem with some 'realistic' systems in the past is a lot of game designers didn't do much research about things like martial arts or weapons, physiology or animals, or history, so when they do tried to make something realistic tend to make poorly educated guesses about reality based on re-hashed research done 30 years ago. And nothing fits together very well as a result.

People bring up realisim, specifically to attack what's happening in game, to try to gain an advantage.

I find that people tend to use the excuse that it's fantasy and not meant to be realistic to cover poorly thought out, randomly fluctuating game environments that tend to become more rather than less complex over time as they get patched together like a rube-goldeberg machine in a doomed effort to achieve some kind of consistency.

G.

 

[fanboy2000]

There's a rule I remember about fiction writing that's always stuck with me: people will accept the impossible, but not the improbable. Many people who have no problem with Superman flying (to go back a bit in the thread), have a problem with the glasses as a disguise.

I chalk this up to personal taste. People call for realism in unrealistic situations because calling for realism sounds objective while saying something isn't to your particular taste does not, and I've noticed a preference to be objective in this culture.

Similar terms seem to mask personal taste with objectivity: suspension of disbelief and consistency to name two.

Suspension of disbelief is usually used to counter the realism argument by saying that whatever brought them out of the game is objectively bad and most others would agree with them. This is false because what takes one person out of the moment will not affect another.

Consistency sounds the most objective but it falls short in that many stories are inconsistent with each other. The history of the Marvel and DC universes are notoriously inconsistent, yet people still read them. TV shows are often inconsistent, sitcoms are notorious for keeping kids in school far longer than should. Soap operas are notable for their loose rules on character aging and other such things. Yet still people watch them and enjoy them.

As a DM I don't deal with generalities with my group. Either A is fun or it is not fun. If it's not fun I don't do it. Generalities get in the way my total domination of the game by encouraging players to make arguments based on generalities to try to get away with things that aren't fun for me.

Remember, happiness is mandatory. The players are required to have fun.

 

[Galloglaich]

Consistency sounds the most objective but it falls short in that many stories are inconsistent with each other. The history of the Marvel and DC universes are notoriously inconsistent, yet people still read them. TV shows are often inconsistent, sitcoms are notorious for keeping kids in school far longer than should. Soap operas are notable for their loose rules on character aging and other such things. Yet still people watch them and enjoy them..

This is a good analogy, and there is another way to look at it. DC or Marvel Comic books and Soap operas may be highly enjoyable for certain demographics who never get tired of them, but usually the very young and the very old respectively... A lot of people (myself included) are too old for the former and not senile enough yet for the latter .

More to the point, comic books and soap operas are both well established, recognizable Genres which evolved over the course of generations. So the particular quirks are pretty well understood by their fans.

G.

 

[Mallus]

The history of the Marvel and DC universes are notoriously inconsistent, yet people still read them.

This is because rigorous consistency is merely one of the pleasures a fictional universe can offer. There are a lot of others.

Someone once remarked consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. While I wouldn't go that far -- everyone is entitled to their fetishes-- I would say rigorous consistency is, frankly, close-to-impossible in certain of the more fanciful fictional genres, and a kind of 'just-so logic' and 'just-so consistency' are the most you can expect.

 

[Galloglaich]

This is because rigorous consistency is merely one of the pleasures a fictional universe can offer. There are a lot of others.

Someone once remarked consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. While I wouldn't go that far -- everyone is entitled to their fetishes-- I would say rigorous consistency is, frankly, close-to-impossible in certain of the more fanciful fictional genres, and a kind of 'just-so logic' and 'just-so consistency' are the most you can expect.

I guess it kind of depends what kind of grasp of reality you have. What seems like a niggling detail to one person strikes another as complete derailment.

When I was eight, the idea of Superman flying around, picking up skyscrapers, wearing tights and a cape, and fooling his close associates by wearing glasses all seemed pretty reasonable. Schoolmates who argued about this or that superhero power struck me as petty and small minded.

But by the time I was thirteen or fourteen superheroes in general seemed pretty corny... today I couldn't follow a story about superman to save my life, let alone act one out as a serious participant, I would just get bored and my mind would wander after two seconds. It takes something a bit more grown up to catch my attention. I really don't think I'm alone in this.

G.

 

[Ariosto]

The movie The Matrix early on smashed my suspension of disbelief by throwing the laws of thermodynamics out the window with its fundamental premise. That was a little hard for me to take in stride because the movie seemed otherwise somewhat intelligently and carefully put together -- and there was no need for such a stupid explanation (worse really than none at all). Dark City worked better for me partly because it lacked the "cyberpunk" trappings inspiring science-fiction expectations.

The Core, on the other hand, was obviously and thoroughly absurd. I expected no less going in, and it kept up the "so bad the badness itself is entertaining" aspect enough to sustain my interest. I could see much more interesting possibilities, though, in a story not so determinedly clueless.

It was hard to avoid sensing some contempt for the audience in both cases. Apparently, the film makers could not be bothered to educate themselves (even to a barely passable high-school level) on very basic matters -- because they assumed of the audience a deep-seated ignorance. The assumption might generally be correct, but taking that as an excuse for such laziness is insulting. It's like the things children of a certain age notice with distaste in works by authors who have the notion that stories for children should be childish.