Why is realism "lame"?

[I'm A Banana]

If the hammer hasn't got that little claw on the back of it, using it to extract nails is probably not going to work very well. The argument here is pretty much about whether D&D has the little widgets that enable you to use it for "gritty realism", or at least whether it should have. Which of course is not the same thing as "realistic realistic".

The fact that people have played the game like this implies that the game has this ability, because if it was impossible, or even significantly difficult, then people wouldn't be doing it.

rather, that when you see people trying to pound screws with a hammer, it shouldn't be considered antagonistic to offer them a screwdriver.

This oversimplifies a complex issue of subculture identification, iconography, ingroup/outgroup dichotomy, gatekeepers, brand loyalty and identity, and actual suitedness.

Not to mention being largely arbitrary. It's not like running a gritty D&D game is half as difficult as pounding screws in with a hammer. It's more like pounding in slightly duller nails. Okay, maybe you need to swing a little harder, but this tool clearly gets that job done.

Why CAN'T D&D offer a gritty option? Well, because self-appointed gatekeepers have recently tried to exclude that mode from supported play. There's nothing about the mechanics of the game that make it very hard, inherently.

 

[CroBob]

absolutely. There is deinitely nothing wrong with suggesting alternatives or saying d&dmay not be the best option for a realistic campaign. You have been offering sound advice. But it is a tone issue. While you have ben polite, there has been an undercurrent of hostility in some other peoples' posts when rather than suggest she try another game, they demand she play omething else and then question the very idea of wanting realism. Two very different approaches here. One respects her tastes and offers alternatives to D&D, the other basically says her tastes are incomprehensible, is a bit "shouty" and doesnt make good faith arguments.

I haven't demanded anything. Someone said "Well, these other games totally do the realism thing better than D&D!", so I suggested playing those games instead of D&D, since the problem is realism. Well that was the wrong answer, too. I'm just looking for consistency, and I can't seem to find it. Falling and lava make HPs unbelievable, but so does basically every other situation HPs are relevant, so there's no consistency. I've never lied about this, I do not empathize with her view on the subject. I'm trying to. If I've come off as a jerk for pointing out inconsistency, then maybe I am, in fact, a jerk, but I still don't see any consistency in what makes something more or less realistic to her. It makes as much sense to me as someone saying "I like peanut butter, just not on Tuesdays." Which is fine and all, but it still doesn't make any sense. Nothing about Tuesday is relevant to peanut butter, nothing about falling or lava make HPs any more or less realistic.

It's like in D&D 3.5, where taking 50+ damage called for a fort save or you die. But then the higher level you got and the more difficult enemies you fought just meant you rolled those saves more often. A guy with two HPs who loses half his HPs is fine, but a guy with 100 HPs who loses half his HPs is at risk of dying if he rolls a low save? It just punished players, it didn't make anything any more or less realistic. Just like removing the relevance of HPs to falling and your risk of dying only punishes players. What use are having HPs as a measure of how much punishment you can take if you're just going to ignore them in some situations?

I'm not saying anybody's wrong, I'm sincerely trying to understand this line of thinking. If that makes me an ass, then I'm an ass. Fine. Whatever.

 

[Derren]

The "realism is lame" was not limited to the rules by the way (or the main focus). I meant by it more the world most fantasy settings play in. While there are people who enjoy, I think "gritty" would be the name even though it is just realistic most persons want caricatures. Paved roads everywhere, everyone can read with cities having libraries and of course sewers (for adventures) etc. and everything is available everywhere for enough money.
Or maybe I am just unlucky with the players I come across.

 

[Elf Witch]

Meh, I always try to take the Wikipedia approach - always presume good faith until you can show otherwise.

Like I said, lots of people make claims about what D&D is about without being able to point to any real concrete evidence supporting that. D&D as grim and gritty fantasy, is a prime example. There is very, very little grim or gritty in D&D. Healing is a cure light wounds away. You almost never suffer debilitation or long term consequences. Even death becomes a speed bump. There's a list as long as my arm showing how D&D isn't grim and gritty.

Yet people will swear up and down that D&D is all about grim and gritty play.

It does get very frustrating to see these claims, time and time again, with hardly a shred of evidence to back it up. And, any counter claim gets buried under "well in my game we do this and that" as if that somehow countered anything.

I think I just get annoyed when people confuse their personal idiosyncratic take on the game with how the game is actually presented.

I can understand getting annoyed when people try and claim that DnD is not presented the way it is. Take all the magic arguments DnD magic is very powerful and keeps getting powerful and even though there was less ways to get as many spells before 3E and some spells had consequences magic has always been powerful. It is very hard to make it a low magic game unless you tweak the living daylights out of the game.

I have never claimed that DnD was designed to be gritty even back before 3E when the game was less friendly to PC it still could not be considered gritty though it was more gritty then it is now. But that does not mean that certain things can't be tweaked to make it more gritty.

There is a way to suggest a different system and I have valued some of the suggestions I have gotten when I brought up my frustration of trying to run my campaign as a DnD campaign. And there is a way not to. I agree with Bedrockgames in this you should not have to defend, and that is what I feel like it has become, liking a certain style. When I first read this topic is what about realism in gaming not just realism in DnD. And since DnD makes up the majority of my gaming experiences I was using it to illustrate points as well as how I have fixed them and how I would like to see other fixes.

I know that game designers some times look at this threads and since I would like to see a way to make DnD more gritty I speak up hoping that maybe one day there might be a supplement on how to accomplish this. Some gamers didn't like how powerful PCs get so the created E6 which is a really brilliant fix for that imo.

 

[Elf Witch]

The "realism is lame" was not limited to the rules by the way (or the main focus). I meant by it more the world most fantasy settings play in. While there are people who enjoy, I think "gritty" would be the name even though it is just realistic most persons want caricatures. Paved roads everywhere, everyone can read with cities having libraries and of course sewers (for adventures) etc. and everything is available everywhere for enough money.
Or maybe I am just unlucky with the players I come across.

I get what you are saying and it is true for the most part that most published settings are very pseudo medieval in flavor.

I prefer a world where not everyone speaks the same language like setting Kalamar does. Yes there is a trade tongue but it usually only found in the big cities. I have incorporated the optional language rules in many a campaign. Now some players may hate it because they may feel that it interferes with the lets just get on with it others really enjoy figuring out to communicate.

There are times I prefer a world that is less modern in flavor and more ancient. In those settings not everyone can read even PCs it depends on their backgrounds. While some roads may be paved after look at what the Romans accomplished with roads not all will be.

And in all my games money can't buy you everything most magical weapons and armor have to be quested for. I rarely have Ye Magical Shoppe in my games.

I also rarely have all the good churches interchangeable the church of say St Cuthbert may not be willing to go above and beyond o help a cleric of Pelor. And the gods can get feisty about being asked to do things for non believers.

Now some of this might not be everyone cup of tea but for me and the majority of the people I game with they enjoy it because it gives some really good role playing challenges.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I

I'm not saying anybody's wrong, I'm sincerely trying to understand this line of thinking. If that makes me an ass, then I'm an ass. Fine. Whatever.

No you are not. You are being the furthest thing from sincrere right now. You are not trying to find consistency, you re desperately creating inconsistency where there isn't any. What you are oing is obvious, and you ave one it before in the past on similar disussions. I really doubt after this many attempts to get at the heart of what this preference for realism is all about, that you honestly still don't understand.

Mod Note: Please see my post a little ways down - don't make it personal! ~Umbran

 

[CroBob]

No you are not. You are being the furthest thing from sincrere right now. You are not trying to find consistency, you re desperately creating inconsistency where there isn't any. What you are oing is obvious, and you ave one it before in the past on similar disussions. I really doubt after this many attempts to get at the heart of what this preference for realism is all about, that you honestly still don't understand.

You can dislike me, you can dislike my manner, but I'm not lying. Maybe I'm incapable of really understanding, maybe there is no consistency and it's all just arbitrary, maybe something in-between, maybe people don't like being questioned about their tastes and beliefs, presuming any kind of serious questioning is akin to an attack, but I'm not lying. Or, if I am, I'm unaware of it. Could you point it out?

 

[Hussar]

The fact that people have played the game like this implies that the game has this ability, because if it was impossible, or even significantly difficult, then people wouldn't be doing it.



This oversimplifies a complex issue of subculture identification, iconography, ingroup/outgroup dichotomy, gatekeepers, brand loyalty and identity, and actual suitedness.

Not to mention being largely arbitrary. It's not like running a gritty D&D game is half as difficult as pounding screws in with a hammer. It's more like pounding in slightly duller nails. Okay, maybe you need to swing a little harder, but this tool clearly gets that job done.

Why CAN'T D&D offer a gritty option? Well, because self-appointed gatekeepers have recently tried to exclude that mode from supported play. There's nothing about the mechanics of the game that make it very hard, inherently.

See this last bit I strongly disagree with. It's not some recent thing. The game has never really supported this style of play and imo actively worked against it. Even something as fundamental as the level system makes grim and gritty very difficult. By the time you hit "name" level, your PC is pretty close to a superhero. A character that can stand toe to toe with dragons (plural) and reasonably expect to win.

By the time a PC hits about fifth level, he's far, far beyond grim and gritty.

 

[billd91]

See this last bit I strongly disagree with. It's not some recent thing. The game has never really supported this style of play and imo actively worked against it. Even something as fundamental as the level system makes grim and gritty very difficult. By the time you hit "name" level, your PC is pretty close to a superhero. A character that can stand toe to toe with dragons (plural) and reasonably expect to win.

By the time a PC hits about fifth level, he's far, far beyond grim and gritty.

If that's what you think, then I think you have a far, far too narrow definition of grim and gritty. Mid-level party but with limited magic and healing in the game (actually quite easy to do in D&D) and you're still staring grim and gritty right in the face. You can take a few hits but each hit point becomes a precious resource. Name level PCs, in a typical magic-rich D&D campaign, are potent. No doubt about it. But that doesn't prevent a DM from adjusting a few assumptions and playing much more gritty. And it really does only take a few adjustments for the rules to work gritty. Check out the Thieves World supplements for d20. Not many changes, game much grittier than base assumption D&D.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You can dislike me, you can dislike my manner, but I'm not lying. Maybe I'm incapable of really understanding, maybe there is no consistency and it's all just arbitrary, maybe something in-between, maybe people don't like being questioned about their tastes and beliefs, presuming any kind of serious questioning is akin to an attack, but I'm not lying. Or, if I am, I'm unaware of it. Could you point it out?

I am sorry CroBob, but I am too familiar with your posts to believe this. Its sophistry, not much more. You can do it with anything, from a person's taste in chocolate to a person's preference for healing surges or vancian spells. Keep questioning the perosn until you can trick them into opening up some possble inconsistencies (and eventually that does happen because you are questioning with the aim of establishing them). It is quite easy to do. And its obvious.