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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5465138" data-attributes="member: 54877">One of the things that the 4E brouhaha has taught me is that while I understand the definition of "verisimilitude," I did not understand the full scope of the practical ways in which it is applied in gaming. Namely, I had naively supposed that verisimilitude was achieved by applying a subset of true things--the subset that was easy, or necessary, or highly pertinent to the games' subject matter--or plausibly and dramatically derived from the same. And then one simply navigated around any issues that arose because of genre expectations and the like--for example, what magic can do or not do in a given fantasy game. However, verisimilitude is also broken by things that are true, but not known as such to someone at the table. For example, you are a running a "legal drama" modern game. You've got several players who get all their information about the courts from watching Law and Order. You go merrily about your business having "legal drama" and no verisimilitude is broken. Then you happen to read an account of an actual case that sounds interesting, and in a fit of insanity you introduce it to the game. Bam, someone is likely thinking that you've lost it. "That would never happen!"  Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is often dramatic and very much the epitome of not verisimilitude. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm    :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" /></blockquote>

Verification