D&D 5E Realism and Simulationism in 5e: Is D&D Supposed to be Realistic?

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm personally willing to forgo "association" in the name of fun/convenience/ease of use/etc.

I could propose things to increase association, but then people would complain about how hard they are to use.

There is always the cost/benefit analysis. I don't see need to be fundamentalist about these issues. Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the ease of use.

 

[Helldritch]

Ok, I am problably in the minority here.
Back to the original post.

For me it is not the amount of realism or verisimilitude that will break the game. It is the amount of unrealism and unverisimilitude that is important. Too much of each, and the game becomes a saturday morning cartoon. I can accept that magic can do a lot of things. But players should be able to do the same given a chance. The BBEG made a pact with an elder god giving him powers beyond the normal level of mortals? So should the players be able to do the same, thus becoming a BBEG themselves. If it is in the book, it is fair game for the players to try it out. If a logical explanation can be given (even with magic) then it is ok. The same applies with verisimilitude, as long as some continuity in the campaign world is achieved, I am all for it. But when a player says:"Hey! We destroyed that town/boss/god/whatever with the last group and we are now 10 years later... how come?" Of course for one shot, it does not matter, but for an ongoing campaign...

 

[pemerton]

How I see is that the normal everyday reality works roughly like in the real world, to match the players' intuitive expectations. The underlying unobservable reality on the level of atoms or celestial bodies don't necessarily need to work the same, nor it really matters one bit whether it does or does not. The characters simply would never know anyway.

Overall, I really hate 'it is fantasy, so nothing needs to make sense' credo. No, fantasy can make sense and probably also should! This doesn't necessarily mean matching the real world, it means internal consistency.

The first paragraph seems true. But the second seems false, at least if we push the consistency any further than surface-level expectations of the sort mentioned in the first paragraph.

The simplest example in this respect is the economics of Middle Earth. Rivendell is full of stuff. Who made it, and how did the Elves acquire it? The same questions can be asked of Bree and the Shire.

The reason it doesn't have to be consistent, or make sense, beyond JRRT's surface-level presentation of it, is because it's just a literary backdrop. Much the same is true of (say) the social and political dynamics of the Forgotten Realms.

They roughly know badly the ogres previous hits have hurt them and can surmise that it is likely that they could still take couple of more. Of course the dice are random, and there are criticals etc, so it is unlikely that the the player could asses such things with 100% confidence. (Average damage of a stock ogre is 13 per hit, but the max is 36. There's a lot of variance.)

It seems to me that if a player knows that their PC can never be surprised (Alertness), or as per what I've quoted can know how many hits from an ogre they can take without falling - bizarre sorts of knowledge that no one in the real world has about themselves - then a PC can also know that (eg) they can perform this particular bit of swordplay once per encounter.

Yet the whole "dissociation" argument is supposed to rest on the notion that that is too bizarre a piece of knowledge for a character to have.

 

[pemerton]

Technically psionics were core in 1e. They were in the PHB.

They were in an Appendix of the PHB (Appendix I) and expressly presented as optional and not core.

 

[Maxperson]

They were in an Appendix of the PHB (Appendix I) and expressly presented as optional and not core.

Fair enough. I've shown molecules to be part of 1e without needing to go outside of core to psionics, so it doesn't really matter.

 

[Mordhau]

The player doesn't "forget" an encounter maneuver after using it, of course - the defence has just seen it before and won't fall for it a second time.

What if a new opponent enters the battlefield as a reinforcement in a later round? You get to use it on them then I take it?

It doesn't really work. The fact that you can come up with some sort of rationalisation or explanation that works most of the time doesn't change the fact that the mechanics are inherently dissociated.

You just need to look at Iron Heroes, as I mentioned earlier to see the difference in approach. In Iron Heroes your currency is specifically based on aiming at a particular target and gaining tokens to use on them to activate cool powers, to the extent that the class didn't really work as designed partly because it was too likely someone else would kill the target before the archer got to use their cool stuff.

A more modern approach would be to say the Archer gains tokens by aiming but gets to use them on anyone because the alternative sucks. If the player stops to ask how that makes sense you can just ask them "well would you rather suck?" and probably most players would be happy with the compromise, but it does mean the game is dissociated in a way Iron Heroes tried not to be (or perhaps more likely, given Mearls subsequent career, because it hadn't occured to him at that point that he could get away with not making the mechanics associated.)

 

[Mordhau]

Fair enough. I've shown molecules to be part of 1e without needing to go outside of core to psionics, so it doesn't really matter.

Although D&D is really lacking a lot elementals. Where's the potassium elementals, sulpur elementals etc?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The first paragraph seems true. But the second seems false, at least if we push the consistency any further than surface-level expectations of the sort mentioned in the first paragraph.

The simplest example in this respect is the economics of Middle Earth. Rivendell is full of stuff. Who made it, and how did the Elves acquire it? The same questions can be asked of Bree and the Shire.

The reason it doesn't have to be consistent, or make sense, beyond JRRT's surface-level presentation of it, is because it's just a literary backdrop. Much the same is true of (say) the social and political dynamics of the Forgotten Realms.

I don't think that consistency means that every possible aspect of the setting must be though out at the level of real world accuracy. Elven economics probably work somehow, but we simply are not told how and most people don't care. It is more about making sure that the things we are told about make sense in relation to each other.

It seems to me that if a player knows that their PC can never be surprised (Alertness), or as per what I've quoted can know how many hits from an ogre they can take without falling - bizarre sorts of knowledge that no one in the real world has about themselves - then a PC can also know that (eg) they can perform this particular bit of swordplay once per encounter.

Yet the whole "dissociation" argument is supposed to rest on the notion that that is too bizarre a piece of knowledge for a character to have.

Alertness if rather fantastical power, but I don't think it is particularly disassociated. The character knows that they have this sort of super awareness. It might be weird if it was a capability every character had, but it isn't. It is something special you've intentionally chose for your character. And with ogre hits, as I noted, the knowledge is far from perfect. There is so much variance in damage rolls, that you cannot make particularly accurate assessment. But yes, you have a point in a sense that a 5e character probably has a better understanding of their combat chances than a real person would. But as I said, this is a spectrum, not a binary. Being able to vaguely suss the ballpark of rounds you might last unless you're super unlucky is far less direct knowledge that the exact power uses. Not that I had a huge problem with the basic 4e power structure, but it was very in your face, and most decisions related to playing your moves like cards from your hand in a card game.

I am not super interested in edition warring about this though. I didn't hate 4e, but I haven't played it in a long time and have probably forgotten most of the mechanics anyway.

 

[Maxperson]

Although D&D is really lacking a lot elementals. Where's the potassium elementals, sulpur elementals etc?

Hiding out in some paraparaelemental plane I'd imagine.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Although D&D is really lacking a lot elementals. Where's the potassium elementals, sulpur elementals etc?

There are just four elements. There are only air, earth, water and fire atoms, and all molecules are composed of some combination of those.