Bring Back Verisimilitude, add in More Excitement!

[Herschel]

...a subjectively high tolerance level for suspension of disbelief -- regardless of context -- is objectively some sort of virtue.

Calling it a virtue is assigning a stronger value than it should have. It is what it is.

Take action movies, for example. "G.I. Joe" made millions and they're coming out with a sequel. The movie is incredibly shallow but big, loud and expressive. I didn't like it. I just couldn't get in to it, and it wasn't all Marlon Wayans' fault. Obviuosly a few million people could get in to it. does that make eitehr of us good or bad? No, it just means we had expectations and biases that were either met or not. The mnovie itself was what the film company produced that millions would like.

 

[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.
.....

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.

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

The gist of it is this: Anyone claiming the WotC needs to "bring back" versimilitude or "realism" is utterly wrong and quite frankly directly insulting EVERYONE who likes the other thing. There are things you like, there are things I like, but claiming either is "more realistic" than the other is pure bias and is in no way, shape or form objective. It's passive-aggresive, self-righteous edition warring, nothing more.

Take crafting armor, for example. The character's job is Adventurer and they spend their days killing monsters, not perfecting the creation of masterwork armor. Yet some like a system where creating armor and gaining those master skills are available because it makes them feel their character is more well-rounded and has interests and goals besides killing things and taking their stuff. In other words, it helps them be more immersed in their character. If that's something someone enjoys and wants in the game they play there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not "realistic".

 

[SlyDoubt]

verisimilitude comes from the DM, not the rules. All the rules do is facilitate that by being easy to use for a huge range of situations. How 'real' it seems and what you're able to do is all in the DMs hands.

You're never going to create a ruleset to make something feel 'realistic' because the sense of verisimilitude or realism is not based on rolling dice. it's based on available options and how things react which are waaay too many to ever be made into rules. you would be moving towards a bad version of 3e.

 

[Elf Witch]

The gist of it is this: Anyone claiming the WotC needs to "bring back" versimilitude or "realism" is utterly wrong and quite frankly directly insulting EVERYONE who likes the other thing. There are things you like, there are things I like, but claiming either is "more realistic" than the other is pure bias and is in no way, shape or form objective. It's passive-aggresive, self-righteous edition warring, nothing more.

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I find a lot of this post to be edition waring you are coming out and saying that those of us who feel that 4E lacks the verisimilitude to make the game enjoyable for us are just wrong in our opinions and that we are being passive aggressive to boot. That is very insulting and rather arrogant of you.

One of the reason I get to the point where I have to take a break for talking about DnD is because of this.

There are so many rules that just jar me out of my immersion in the game world. Now there were times this has happened in every RPG game I have played in no game is perfect. But for me 4E was the worst for doing it then any other edition.

So I chose not to play it. I don't bash on anyone who does like it everybody is different when it comes to their taste in games. I don't go into 4E threads and complain about the rule system I don't like.

WOTC has announced a new edition one that they hope will fill everyone needs. So people are talking about what they would like to see I don't agree with a lot of what some people want but I state my opinion on why I may not like it but I don't argue that they are wrong for wanting it.

I left En World for almost two years over this when 4E came out because it got to the point that I was tired of all the name calling and arguing over a hobby especially since there was no wrong or right just difference opinions on taste.

 

[Herschel]

I find a lot of this post to be edition waring you are coming out and saying that those of us who feel that 4E lacks the verisimilitude to make the game enjoyable for us are just wrong in our opinions and that we are being passive aggressive to boot. That is very insulting and rather arrogant of you.

LoL, I'm not the one claiming any edition lacks verisimilitude/realism and is therefore a worse game or has 'ruined' the game. I'm also saying what you like is what you like and that's fine but you like what you like because of your personal tastes/bias, not because any edition has more/less versimilitude. There's a BIG difference.

 

[nnms]

The gist of it is this: Anyone claiming the WotC needs to "bring back" versimilitude or "realism" is utterly wrong and quite frankly directly insulting EVERYONE who likes the other thing. There are things you like, there are things I like, but claiming either is "more realistic" than the other is pure bias and is in no way, shape or form objective. It's passive-aggresive, self-righteous edition warring, nothing more.

You're missing one very key thing that was stated by WotC when they announced the 5e project.

Modular rules and universal appeal.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the core part of the game to operate more like the type of play common to both older editions and the majority of RPGs ever published, and then have modules people can add to either accentuate plausibility even further or different modules people can add that don't prioritize verisimilitude.

You may find someone pointing towards the general way RPG play has worked since it's been around and how it generally worked in the majority of RPGS (including the majority of D&D editions) to be "passive aggressive" or insulting. It is certainly less insulting than your proclamations of people's preferences being crocks or that the problem is with the player rather than the system if they have trouble with immersion.

 

[nnms]

verisimilitude comes from the DM, not the rules. All the rules do is facilitate that by being easy to use for a huge range of situations. How 'real' it seems and what you're able to do is all in the DMs hands.

And yet, you can have the same DM use two different editions/rules sets and get different results in terms of verisimilitude and immersion.

 

[Herschel]

You're missing one very key thing that was stated by WotC when they announced the 5e project.

Modular rules and universal appeal.

LoL, nice try, but you're way off. The point is regardless of what helps you or I become immersed in the game, what those elements are are opinion and tastes, not a factual part of the game system.

You seem to be under the assumption that Modular rules and universal appeal means designing the game to your tastes rather than the base system being rather "generic" where we add the elements that we prefer to our games rather than deciding what's the features needed for everyone else.

 

[nnms]

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.

Have you ever considered that it might be a matter of thresholds and a continuum rather than absolutes?

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.

I stopped playing D&D during 3.x. 4E got me back into playing D&D (I was playing other RPGs at the time). I ran 4E atleast once a week (sometimes more) since the quick start rules in Keep on the Shadowfell came out until a couple months ago when I handed my game over to a friend to DM.

4E is indeed a fun game. It creates a certain style of game. I got tired of that and wanted to play something more like most other RPGs (including most other editions of D&D).

Then WotC announced D&D Next and explicitly stated that the game would appeal to players of all editions.

Guess what? The players of all editions don't all like 4E's emphasis on game play and self referencing mechanics that are disconnected from the fiction to the same degree. If they did, WotC would have no reason to publish anything other than more 4E.

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".

And during that time I ardently defended 4E as a fun game that produced good results of a very focused and particular kind. 4E's designers decided what the game was about and wrote rules to make playing it produce play that matched up with what it was about.

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.

Can we replace "bias" with "tastes" or "preferences"?

We can't have a meaningful discussion about this as long as you are writing off anyone who dislikes your pet edition as biased.

It's also worth noting, that you totally missed the point of the posts pointing out that something in the fantasy genre needs to have a solid amount of realism or plausibility because it both strengthens the fantastic through contrast and prevents the breaking of suspension of disbelief.

 

[Herschel]

And yet, you can have the same DM use two different editions/rules sets and get different results in terms of verisimilitude and immersion.

You can also have that same DM use the same edition/rules on different days and get different results.

You can also have two different DMs use the same edition/rules and get different results.

The common denomonator: people.