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A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7564593" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>It is worse than just that, because there are all these vast dimensions to the 'unreality' of D&D. When a person is insisting on 'realism' and 'D&D' at the same time, they MUST perforce be using an EXTREMELY selective definition of realism! </p><p></p><p>Most of D&D, frankly, simply cannot be gauged on a scale of realistic to unrealistic at all, because it is entirely fantastic. Even the most generous interpretation of hit points as luck/skill/chutzpah/whatever with a little 'meat' thrown in is still completely crazy. Its impossible to imagine high level characters, there's simply nothing even vaguely like a person of 4th or higher level (in most classes) in AD&D. Sure, sometimes people are lucky and survive crazy things like falling 10 stories, or being mauled by a bear, or maybe sometimes we hear a story of a soldier who defeats 100 enemies single-handedly. However, there are NO stories about real people who do this kind of thing again and again. Luck isn't some sort of attribute that people have; in the real world its simply a statement about probabilities and our perception of certain outcomes as unusual. Likewise no amount of skill allows you to fall 30' over and over again onto hard surfaces and not die. </p><p></p><p>But this is only one SMALL example. I could point out 100 more, but they should be pretty obvious. Most of it ends up falling under the rubric of "but it is magical." So, why is it only certain things are allowed to be magical in this type of analysis? Oddly they generally seem to be selected such as to allow only for the 'traditional play' of D&D! It seems to me that, in general, the 'realism argument' is really an argument for playing D&D in a certain specific style. So it would be more effectively framed that way!</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Healing in AD&D isn't any more realistic than it is in 4e or 5e. I mean, spend even a few hours around people recovering from serious injuries such as would almost inevitably result from (and historically DO result from) melee combat. AD&D's model of recovery is preposterously unrealistic, in every particular. It is at least an order of magnitude too fast, for all but the most trivial injuries which would hardly inconvenience a hard-core combatant. It utterly ignores the devastatingly disabling nature of the vast majority of such injuries. Sure, people recover pretty well from a lot of injuries, EVENTUALLY and with lots of PT and whatnot, but they don't just get perfectly better after lying down for a week without significant care. Most often there is at least some permanent disability. This is not even to address the lack of realism in modeling injury to begin with.</p><p></p><p>I am always left questioning just what is any more unrealistic about healing at the end of a single day. Really, after all of the above THAT is the one straw that broke the camel's back? Again, I am left mostly with the impression that it is disliked merely because it isn't how EGG did it in 1974. That is FINE, really, but should more profitably be described as such, and not as some mythical search for 'realism'. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think there IS a principle that is engaged in terms of making things COHERENT. This isn't the same as realistic, but there are some parallels. Players need to be able to reason about the situations which their characters find themselves in, so that they can come up with mutually acceptable decisions about what is implied by the fictional positioning. This is important to the GM, in order to communicate what the meaning of a given scene is (IE what is at stake, how does the situation bear on the PC's interests/character/plans/resources). It is important to the players in terms of what they see as being 'in bounds' in terms of the actions they can take, realistic possible fiction they could introduce (in some games, not all allow this), etc. </p><p></p><p>Examples are of course trivial but could include:</p><p></p><p>1) Is this pit in the floor in front of me hazardous? To what degree? What is involved in climbing down into it?</p><p></p><p>2) Is it acceptable for me to leverage a game mechanic to produce a laser pistol which I find in the Duke's bathroom?</p><p></p><p>3) Am I risking my character's health if he plunges into the city sewers? </p><p></p><p>All of the above are questions which could be asked. #1 and #3 are significantly impacted by questions of 'realism' (IE how does gravity work, how does damage work, is disease a consideration and how does it work, etc.). It is certainly helpful, at a default baseline level, if the players can reason about these things in terms they are familiar from in the real world. Of course, few of us are well-versed in what the chances of infection are from plunging into real-world sewage, so the value of this approach is finite, but it still has value as a baseline. This is why you will see very few RPGs which don't at least begin by establishing their relation to real-world elements, nor do many assume that the most common fundamental elements of the world are radically different (IE they pretty much all assume gravity works like in reality). </p><p></p><p>#2 is a different question of course, but is still closely related in that it deals with 'genre coherency' which is a way of simplifying the task of deciding what the world is like even in unrealistic terms.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7564593, member: 82106"] It is worse than just that, because there are all these vast dimensions to the 'unreality' of D&D. When a person is insisting on 'realism' and 'D&D' at the same time, they MUST perforce be using an EXTREMELY selective definition of realism! Most of D&D, frankly, simply cannot be gauged on a scale of realistic to unrealistic at all, because it is entirely fantastic. Even the most generous interpretation of hit points as luck/skill/chutzpah/whatever with a little 'meat' thrown in is still completely crazy. Its impossible to imagine high level characters, there's simply nothing even vaguely like a person of 4th or higher level (in most classes) in AD&D. Sure, sometimes people are lucky and survive crazy things like falling 10 stories, or being mauled by a bear, or maybe sometimes we hear a story of a soldier who defeats 100 enemies single-handedly. However, there are NO stories about real people who do this kind of thing again and again. Luck isn't some sort of attribute that people have; in the real world its simply a statement about probabilities and our perception of certain outcomes as unusual. Likewise no amount of skill allows you to fall 30' over and over again onto hard surfaces and not die. But this is only one SMALL example. I could point out 100 more, but they should be pretty obvious. Most of it ends up falling under the rubric of "but it is magical." So, why is it only certain things are allowed to be magical in this type of analysis? Oddly they generally seem to be selected such as to allow only for the 'traditional play' of D&D! It seems to me that, in general, the 'realism argument' is really an argument for playing D&D in a certain specific style. So it would be more effectively framed that way! Healing in AD&D isn't any more realistic than it is in 4e or 5e. I mean, spend even a few hours around people recovering from serious injuries such as would almost inevitably result from (and historically DO result from) melee combat. AD&D's model of recovery is preposterously unrealistic, in every particular. It is at least an order of magnitude too fast, for all but the most trivial injuries which would hardly inconvenience a hard-core combatant. It utterly ignores the devastatingly disabling nature of the vast majority of such injuries. Sure, people recover pretty well from a lot of injuries, EVENTUALLY and with lots of PT and whatnot, but they don't just get perfectly better after lying down for a week without significant care. Most often there is at least some permanent disability. This is not even to address the lack of realism in modeling injury to begin with. I am always left questioning just what is any more unrealistic about healing at the end of a single day. Really, after all of the above THAT is the one straw that broke the camel's back? Again, I am left mostly with the impression that it is disliked merely because it isn't how EGG did it in 1974. That is FINE, really, but should more profitably be described as such, and not as some mythical search for 'realism'. I think there IS a principle that is engaged in terms of making things COHERENT. This isn't the same as realistic, but there are some parallels. Players need to be able to reason about the situations which their characters find themselves in, so that they can come up with mutually acceptable decisions about what is implied by the fictional positioning. This is important to the GM, in order to communicate what the meaning of a given scene is (IE what is at stake, how does the situation bear on the PC's interests/character/plans/resources). It is important to the players in terms of what they see as being 'in bounds' in terms of the actions they can take, realistic possible fiction they could introduce (in some games, not all allow this), etc. Examples are of course trivial but could include: 1) Is this pit in the floor in front of me hazardous? To what degree? What is involved in climbing down into it? 2) Is it acceptable for me to leverage a game mechanic to produce a laser pistol which I find in the Duke's bathroom? 3) Am I risking my character's health if he plunges into the city sewers? All of the above are questions which could be asked. #1 and #3 are significantly impacted by questions of 'realism' (IE how does gravity work, how does damage work, is disease a consideration and how does it work, etc.). It is certainly helpful, at a default baseline level, if the players can reason about these things in terms they are familiar from in the real world. Of course, few of us are well-versed in what the chances of infection are from plunging into real-world sewage, so the value of this approach is finite, but it still has value as a baseline. This is why you will see very few RPGs which don't at least begin by establishing their relation to real-world elements, nor do many assume that the most common fundamental elements of the world are radically different (IE they pretty much all assume gravity works like in reality). #2 is a different question of course, but is still closely related in that it deals with 'genre coherency' which is a way of simplifying the task of deciding what the world is like even in unrealistic terms. [/QUOTE]
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