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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7572245" data-attributes="member: 16814">Waving your hands about it taking more than one check doesn't change the fact that it's your GM that's deciding things.  It could be 1 in 10,000 all the way down.It's not a matter of asshats, Max.  You could think it's reasonable, and your DM may not, and you lose.  There's an example of a barbarian's wife being used that showcases this entirely.Sigh.  Yes, that's exactly what I understood you to mean.  I'm not confused at all, you're not listening.Your game is a pretend world.  It lives in your imagination.  You imagine it to be like the real world, but it's not, it's like how you imagine the real world.  At no time does anything in your game adhere to quantum mechanics, even a little bit.  So, the idea that your imagination can be more or less like the real world is silly.  It's just your idea of how the world is.So, if we can categorically say that your imagination cannot be the real world because it has none of the qualities of the real world, we can also say that your imagination cannot be a little bit like the real world.  Categorically it's not the same and cannot share qualities.Instead, what you mean by "realism" is that it hangs together, it makes sense to you, and you can imagine that things might be causal (they aren't).  This is the proof.  Your imagination cannot be at all like the real world because your imagination cannot share any of the qualities that define the real world, even a little bit.I've imagined a dragon.  Does the dragon exist in the real world or does the particular chemical and electrical combination inside my brain at that precise moment exist in the real world?This is like playing Doom, and looking at the code and the computer and saying that since the code and the computer exist in the real world, the BFG9000 and the demon I just shot with it also both exist in the real world.  They do not.   No.  You can't imagine a more realistic version of anything -- it's still your imagination.  At least so long as you hold to the definition of 'mirrors the real world'.  If you'll accept the change to 'is internally consistent and coherent and I can believe it" then, sure, onboard.  But, you've fought this change tooth and nail and insist that it's the relationship to the real world that's the crux of things.  I think because you really, really want your imagination to be tied to real things and therefore better instead of the actually subjective opinion that it actually is.  I run a game that I strive very much to be internally consistent and coherent and presents a believable.  I crib from common experience as much as possible so that the fantastic elements are grounded in expectation and shared world assumptions.  I have gravity work at least in a manner that's understandable to a normal person.  But it's not gravity and has nothing in common with gravity except things go down.  I can increase the fidelity of my model, but that's not making things more realistic at all.  It might improve the coherent and consistency, and, for some, be more believable, but that has nothing to do with mirroring the real world in any way, and increased fidelity might be less a mirror but still have more fidelity.  It doesn't bother me at all to realize that what I do in my game is just my imagination of how things work.  If anything, it's improved my games, because I'm not mired in the idea that "realism" is a goal of play, which could lead me to poor choices.</blockquote>

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