Bring Back Verisimilitude, add in More Excitement!

[Argyle King]

Did Legends & Lore ever publish the vote results of the 'Nod to realism' poll?

I've been curious about that too.

 

[Herschel]

No, it's definitely been the contention of people in this thread that the desire for verisimilitude is nonsense and should be abandoned wholesale. And that if rules present people with moments that break their immersion, the problem is with the people and not rules.

It's not abandoning it, it's realizing that and why there are barriers to it that aren't "fault" of the edition. When you choose a game, you choose a game's style, be it WoD, Traveller, D&D or whatever. On a micro level, you choose an edition or rules set you're most comfortable with, most often the one you learned first or one that evokes that feeling for you. Nothing on the micro level changes the higher level theme of the game. It's still swords & sorcery with big flying lizards with weapons, armor, spells, tavernkeepers, treasure, etc.

Any perceived "lack of immersion" is on the part of the player and is something the entire company team tries to account for because they're dealing with the psychology of the customer base as well as making a product. Why else do you think trillions of any money unit you care to imagine are spent on advertising and marketing every year?

 

[mmadsen]

Nothing on the micro level changes the higher level theme of the game. It's still swords & sorcery with big flying lizards with weapons, armor, spells, tavernkeepers, treasure, etc.

If you play through, say, the Keep on the Borderlands with Basic D&D, 3E, 4E, and GURPS Fantasy, the higher-level themes of the game won't change, but it will feel like a different game each time.

That is, it's still D&D, for the most part, even if you go with GURPS, but it's certainly not the same D&D from system to system, and some will feel more "realistic" than others -- and not purely as a matter of taste.

Any perceived "lack of immersion" is on the part of the player...

You still stand by that? Any perceived "lack of immersion" is on the part of the player?

Why else do you think trillions of any money unit you care to imagine are spent on advertising and marketing every year?

Propaganda is not magic. It is powerful, but limited in what it can do, and how it can do it. It is much easier to move people in some directions than others.

 

[Wormwood]

Instead of putting the metagame restrictions in to dumb down wizards, we could expand the abilities of the non-magic guys. Make them a little more like batman or ironman at the higher levels. No big power boost in attacking, but a huge boost in ability to handle problems in other ways.

One could argue that was approach taken by 4e, and the one that has generated the most ire from the old guard.

and ps. If we could get a 5e magic system that even remotely resembled Unisystem (Lite), I'd be thrilled. But let's be realistic.

 

[Herschel]

You still stand by that? Any perceived "lack of immersion" is on the part of the player?

Yes, it's a game of imagination. If you can't imagine it and other people can, that's on you. Deal with it. I can't watch "Dumb & Dumber", but lots of people think it's hilarious and can get in to it. Yet I love "Zoolander" which is a similar style of film. But as for Carey and Daniels, I can't get in to it and that's on me.

 

[mmadsen]

If you can't imagine it and other people can, that's on you.

And if you and those same other people can imagine things better or worse with another game, that's on the game.

It's a function of both the players and the game.

 

[LurkAway]

Yes, it's a game of imagination. If you can't imagine it and other people can, that's on you.

I suspect that more likely than not, the other people are not imagining it all, or just shallowly, or their tolerance limits are high, or their expectations are low. Then there's a very small minority, I think, that is actually more imaginative and creative and genuinely is able to imagine something genuinely satisfying that suspends disbelief for them. But I think you're flat wrong or overly simplistic to imply that a subjectively high tolerance level for suspension of disbelief -- regardless of context -- is objectively some sort of virtue.

Sometimes it takes more imagination to realize that something feels off or contrived.

 

[Elf Witch]

I have noticed that when ever people bring up the argument about wanting more verisimilitude in a game someone will always say something along the lines of what you wanting realism in a game with dragons and wizards.

I had a conversation with Ellen Datlow who edits SF and Fantasy novels for living and this subject came up. She said one of the major flaws she would see in a lot of fantasy novels is that the writer thought just because it was a fantasy anything could happen. That there were no rules and no realism.

Every world needs rules on how things work. If you present it right people will willing suspend their disbelief as long as you don't do anything to break it.

In the Die Hard movies people buy into the idea that John McClane can take more damage then most people and still keep going. That is the realism of that world but I can pretty much guarantee that if the bad guy shot him point blank in the head with a shot gun and that didn't kill him most people would going that is so unbelievable what a bunch of garbage.

When I play DnD I get that the rules will sometimes get in the way of my realism. If it happens to much then I end up not liking the game. One of my biggest peeves on this and it has been every edition is the ability of high level characters not to be challenged by overwhelming numbers of lower level characters.

Take the high level characters who stand in bow range of the city gates and taunt the guards because the players know that there is no way unless the archer crits that they will be able to hit is AC. Right there because of my knowledge of history and knowing how devastating the bow was to armored fighters blows my ability to take it seriously.

It is my opinion that 4E went to far in trying to balance the classes that they break my ability to suspend my disbelief. Yes that is on me but it also on the game designers if they want me to buy their game.

And since WOTC is bringing out a new version one in which they hope to lure people who did not make the switch to 4E then it behooves the designers to look at the mechanics and see what they did to turn people off the game.

 

[nnms]

I had a conversation with Ellen Datlow who edits SF and Fantasy novels for living and this subject came up. She said one of the major flaws she would see in a lot of fantasy novels is that the writer thought just because it was a fantasy anything could happen. That there were no rules and no realism.

Every world needs rules on how things work. If you present it right people will willing suspend their disbelief as long as you don't do anything to break it.

What Herschel is missing (and many others do as well) is that when you have the fantastic as the defining element of your fictional work, it actually helps to be more realistic rather than less.

And by realistic I mean in keeping with people's expectations about the fiction as well as the normal world. Remaining plausible.

There are two main reasons for this.

The first is Ellen Datlow's point. That you can break people's willing suspension of disbelief and the fantastic ends up being fancy nonsense.

The second is for contrast. If you want to avoid surrealism, then the non-fantastic elements in the fiction operating in a plausible manner will further accentuate just how fantastic those elements are.

Herschel is very wrong about this. it's not all a crock. In fact, verisimilitude is actually the opposite of a crock. It makes the fantastic more fantastic and serves to both safeguard the suspension of disbelief and to serve as a contrast for the fantastic.

Versimiitude and plausibility actually help fantasy shine. It's not a matter of chucking it out because the genre is inherently unrealistic.

For a clear example of this, think back to the Harry Potter novels. Having Harry be raised by muggles was important for the themes in the novels, but it was also very useful as it presented a perspective to the reader where the fantastic elements of the wizarding world could be contrasted neatly with Harry's expectations of things acting "normal." Rowling does this again and again, setting up normal world expectations to make the fantastic seem even more so.

It's a controvesial and misunderstood statement, but plausibility is actually more important in fantasy than not.

 

[Herschel]

What Herschel is missing (and many others do as well) is that when you have the fantastic as the defining element of your fictional work, it actually helps to be more realistic rather than less.

And by realistic I mean in keeping with people's expectations about the fiction as well as the normal world. Remaining plausible.

You hit it right there. Personal expectations are where it al breaks down. Your expectations and biases are the issue, not the game's. Others don't have an issue with it yet you do.

WotC wants to produce the best game they can for the most people they can and in 4E they created a really great game. However, numerous peoples' biases kept them from understanding or enjoying the game that was created. Numerous other people saw it for the great game it was and embraced it.

People who expected basically a cleaned-up re-hash of 3.5E didn't get what they anticipated. Some people got over it, some didn't, hence the "edition wars". There's also a group that didn't want to move on to any game regardless and never said a word while keeping to the game they were playing. This happened in OD&D, 1E, 2E and 3E previously.

That doesn't mean any game that came before it or will come after it is badwrongfun. It also means you're not forced to play anything you don't want to. The old game is still around, new games will come and there's scads of others on the market.

But trying to blame a fantasy game for a "lack of realism" is really a lame excuse. The reason for liking or not liking a game is a person's bias, period.