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

[Plane Sailing]

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 .

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.

I don't know whether you are realise you are doing it, but your recent posts (I've included two above) are rather condescending.

Stop it, or you'll be banned from the thread.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I must be missing something, because I thought the majority of the 'magical' scenes in the Matrix, at least in the first film (the one everybody liked), took place in a virtual reality. Therefore it was realistic. I think that is what a lot of people liked about it.

I don't think the issue was the Matrix itself as a virtual reality, but the reason why the machines created it - to get energy from the humans.

That doesn't make any sense. It would have been better to claim they need the processing power of the human brain or whatever. (That doesn't make much more sense, since we actually need the processing power of our brain for ourselves , even in a virtual reality).

 

[Galloglaich]

I don't know whether you are realise you are doing it, but your recent posts (I've included two above) are rather condescending.

Stop it, or you'll be banned from the thread.

Hey, I was describing my own life experiences, if somebody took that as a put down of Superman comics I can't help that.

G.

 

[Mournblade94]

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

G.

There is very little difference between the age maturity of superhero comics and fantasy.

To say you are too old for comics, yet somehow the fantasy genre is in your age group, is just a bit silly.

Monsters evolving the shape of garments to eat Dungeon Delvers (Cloaker) just as ridiculous as humans developing strange mutation powers.

A table top rules system will not achieve realism unless in the construction experimentation is done, and lots of variables are isolated for effect. Otherwise it is all a matter of opinion of what is realistic. By their nature, all combat systems are abstractions, as they cannot account for 'realistic' forcings.

 

[Mort]

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.

The first thing I thought of when reading this post (and a few others like it) is the old quote "anyone driving slower than me is an idiot; anyone driving faster is a maniac." It's too easy to assume that your opinion and or view is the obviously correct one and talk down accordingly.

Ironically, realism in an RPG is quite subjective, in the sense that quite a lot of things many people assume are realistic (for better or worse) are not - death spirals come to mind as an example.

 

[Serra]

It's just something that I don't get when I read about "realism" OR "versimilitude":
Why do you expect things to act like reality, or act consistently, when they aren't real?

Certainly it's not reality. For myself, I call it suspension of disbeilef, World cohesion, and In-game believability.

I have deeper immersion into the game world with ~some~ consistancy to it.

 

[prosfilaes]

The FTC Balrogs won't show up, but try this in my game and the DM Smackdown Agency sure will.

I *refuse* to DM a game revolving around profit-based economics. It's perhaps my biggest intentional back-turn on how the game-world's reality would normally function, but I despise econonics as a science in real life and if I can avoid it in my game, I will.

That, and my players in-character are greedy enough as it is.

Lanefan

But that's a bit of a horse of a different color. The GM saying that they don't want to play a mercantile campaign is one thing. Personally, I'd go with the solution that there just isn't enough free demand for the things to make scribing them profitable except as a full-time business. But just declaring that they sell for less then they cost to make is hacky and annoying.

Unrealistic rules that are just there to block the players are generally more annoying than unrealistic rules that enable fun things.

 

[Derren]

Or, when you take a rule, and expand it in terms of a realistic world, the rule breaks down. For instance, the old "Wall of Iron". A wizard can cast Wall of Iron and create a Wall of Iron that doesn't go away. He could then take that wall and melt it down and have a whole lot of iron. He could wreck the Iron economy just by casting a spell over and over. And, if you have more than one wizard, then...

Let me ressurect this post to make my point

When I talk about "realism" (and I do it rather often) I do not mean that wizards should not be able to create iron. If I would be against that I should not be really playing fantasy RPGs. No, what I mean is the society and economy should take into account that iron can be aquired without mining.

Or to use a common D&D problem. In practically every edition its rather easy to ressurect dead people. And when I complain about the lack of realism it is not because clerics are able to do that, but because the society still works like in the real world and everyone assumes that dead is final, even though it is not.

So in the end, a world which would be completely fantastic and nearly unrecognizable when compared to the real world it would still be more "real" to me than a 1:1 copy of mediveal earth with magic tacked on.

Knowing a dragon is a magical beast that breathes fire is sufficient. Everything else follows from that; any explanation need bend only in the direction of explaining why.

Explaining what, however, is an important matter; if a dragon gets killed and falls on someone, we would expect that to be catastrophic, even if we assume dragons are fairly light for their size. Similarly, if economics in a world look strange, we want to know why; "people are not like Earth people" is acceptable but changes the milieu significantly.

For me its more important that the existence of fire breathing dragons affects the world beyond having a big "no go" mark on maps and later a quest to slay one. How does the existence of such creatures affect politics or architecture?
I can accept the existence of fantastic creatures because its fantasy. I can accept PCs somehow escaping them when a dragon falls on them because its a game. But having dragons, magic and many other fantastic things in the world without it changing in some way to accomodate them I can not accept.

 

[Serra]

Let me ressurect this post to make my point


Or to use a common D&D problem. In practically every edition its rather easy to ressurect dead people. And when I complain about the lack of realism it is not because clerics are able to do that, but because the society still works like in the real world and everyone assumes that dead is final, even though it is not.

I flagged this point as to me it's a good example of game believability/ world cohesion with realism so to speak.

 

[Votan]

I flagged this point as to me it's a good example of game believability/ world cohesion with realism so to speak.

Steven Brust was a fantasy author who did an extremely good job of demonstrating the sort of implications that it would have on a society for death to be reversible.

Of course, the most immediate reaction was an attempt to make death permanent in ways that spells could not reverse.