A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[Aldarc]

Realism is not an all or nothing thing. You don't have to be attempting to mirror the real world exactly in order to be on the realism spectrum. All that you need to do to be on that spectrum somewhere is have something, anything that corresponds to some degree with something from the real world. If you then move that thing farther down the realism spectrum towards the "mirrors reality" end, you have increased the realism in the game. If you move it farther away, you have decreased it. My definition while large, is neither vague, nor without meaning.

So any and everything? Again, you seem to argue using self-redundant words devoid of practical discursive meaning.

 

[Maxperson]

So any and everything? Again, you seem to argue using self-redundant words devoid of practical discursive meaning.

It's broad yes, but that still doesn't make it vague as it's easily defined and understandable, nor useless as once you understand it, which everyone here in the thread easily does, then you can discuss how adding or subtracting from aspects of realism as a goal, is something that some people have. Broad does not equal vague or useless.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It's broad yes, but that still doesn't make it vague as it's easily defined and understandable, nor useless as once you understand it, which everyone here in the thread easily does, then you can discuss how adding or subtracting from aspects of realism as a goal, is something that some people have. Broad does not equal vague or useless.

But, it doesn't, really. If you're on the end of the spectrum where having longswords is the benchmark, adding incremental realism isn't very meaningful at all. For adding realism to be meaningful, large strides are needed from the shallow end of the realism pool. It's really hard to meaningfully claim you lurve the realism enough for it to be a design goal in and of itself when your wearing floaties in the shallow end.

To whit, despite your claim above that your modification to shield master incrementally increased realism, it really doesn't do so at all. It remains just as gamey as it was before, you've just modified the rules a bit. It's functionality to the game is improved, as it now benefits the user more directly in game terms, but it hasn't noticably increased realism at all. It has improved your feeling of internal consistency, but that's not synomymous with realism (even if they may often correlate). A magic system, for instance, is not realistic, but removing contradictions makes it more consistent.

 

[Maxperson]

But, it doesn't, really. If you're on the end of the spectrum where having longswords is the benchmark, adding incremental realism isn't very meaningful at all. For adding realism to be meaningful, large strides are needed from the shallow end of the realism pool. It's really hard to meaningfully claim you lurve the realism enough for it to be a design goal in and of itself when your wearing floaties in the shallow end.

Um, why on earth would you think that longswords are at any end of the spectrum? If you aren't even going to make an attempt to discuss in good faith, why are you even here discussing at all?

 

[Sadras]

To whit, despite your claim above that your modification to shield master incrementally increased realism, it really doesn't do so at all. It remains just as gamey as it was before, you've just modified the rules a bit. It's functionality to the game is improved, as it now benefits the user more directly in game terms, but it hasn't noticably increased realism at all. It has improved your feeling of internal consistency, but that's not synomymous with realism (even if they may often correlate). A magic system, for instance, is not realistic, but removing contradictions makes it more consistent.

I'm thinking the phrase more applicable is logical sense (or internal logic) as opposed to internal consistency. Maybe that is part of where you guys may be missing one another.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Um, why on earth would you think that longswords are at any end of the spectrum? If you aren't even going to make an attempt to discuss in good faith, why are you even here discussing at all?

Sigh. It was recently mentioned and was used as an illuminating example for my point. If you are going to demand good faith, practice it yourself.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm thinking the phrase more applicable is logical sense (or internal logic) as opposed to internal consistency. Maybe that is part of where you guys may be missing one another.

I honestly don't see a difference between internally consitent and having internal logic, so I don't really care which is used. Pick one.

 

[Aldarc]

It's broad yes, but that still doesn't make it vague as it's easily defined and understandable, nor useless as once you understand it, which everyone here in the thread easily does, then you can discuss how adding or subtracting from aspects of realism as a goal, is something that some people have. Broad does not equal vague or useless.

I think that other people in this thread are operating from their own notions of realism rather than yours. You seem to constantly move the goalposts regarding what constitutes "realism," so it does become quite vague, useless, and meaningless. You have suggested, for example, that the presence of dragons in D&D also constitutes "realism," as the idea for dragons exists in the real world. This is a bizarre criteria for realism, a sort of chimera argument combining solipsism, Platonic Idealism, and Anselm's ontological argument. So I have a question: "What isn't realism?" or "What is not within the parameters or spectrum of realism?"

 

[pemerton]

I tend to think of "realism" as meaning something like in play, the events and outcomes in this game are somewhat like real life.

D&D tends to be somewhat realisitic, at least at lower levels, insofar as fighting things can get your killed, people tend to go from place to place in much the same way as people did in pre-modern real life, and water is wet. Even at low levels there are elements of D&D that are obviously unrealistic: the social and economic presuppositions of the game; magic; dungeons. And then there are mechanical conventions that are clearly not intended to evoke real life but rather serve a mix of gameplay and genre purposes: combat rounds, hit points and healing, etc.

Systems like Runequest and Rolemaster try to reduce the scope of that last category by itroducing more granular and combat rules that allow for attacks and parries and the infliction of wounds; and try to reduce the middle category as well, by offering gameworlds that offer more coherence in their geographic and social elements.

One feature of these more "simulationist" games is that resolution can become slower than in more simple systems. Is it realistic to take 5 minutes to resolve 10-seconds of action? And what about mechancial features like bird's/general's eye-view vs blind declaration - is the latter more realistic because it emulates the uncertainy of a real fight?

Is Classic Traveller realistic? As a member of our grouip put it, it has a very 60s'/70s social science view of the social aspects of the gameworld - true to a certain conceptoin of life, but perhaps not true to life as such. But it does have rules for dealing with bureaucrats, which is a realistic thing in a modern-world game.

It has FTL travel, and by contemporary standards very backwards infotech - but is that unrealistic, or a realistic example of a society that devoted all its innovative and industrial resources to some aspects of cosmology rather than to computing?

In the end I'm not persuaded that realism serves as a very useful descriptive or evaluative category for RPG systems.

 

[Shasarak]

*and they are arbitrary, if you doubt it give me the reason that they do a d8 without indexing to anything else in D&D. That was picked out by indexing to an arbitray baseline of damage and could just as easily have been a d6.

Everything that humans do is arbitrary so indexing longswords to a d8 is realistic like indexing a second to "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K) is realistic.