Bring Back Verisimilitude, add in More Excitement!

[herrozerro]

personally im a fan of 4e's method, it provides the rules and it leave each player to come up with their own reasons why things work the way they do.

Player 1's barbarian's rage could be some kind of limit break where he roleplays that his rage kicks in after his guy builds up an emotional state while player 2's barbarian is a conduit of primal rage and can only sustain it for so long or so many times a day.

honestly Verisimilitude is such a subjective subject that what breaks your Verisimilitude might just enhance mine. There is no one way to make it better.

 

[Herschel]

If that was true, I wouldnt own more than one RPG, and I'd certainly have no reason to ever buy into a new one if I already had one on the shelf. Hell, I'd probably just narrate over the pieces of a chess board.

Actually, your conclusion is patently false. What we choose to accept is based on expectations and assumptions and, in the case of gaming, often stems directly from the rules we learned and enjoyed first. That does not in any way, shape or form mean that things won't be added to what we'll accept when they are introduced, just that our personal biases come in no small part because of those earlier influences.

I had a BIG problem with a number of things in the 4E previews, but then sat down with some friemds and actually broke down the thinking on different things and you Know what, it opened my mind and I saw my preconceived notions were holding back my honest assessment. It has since become my favorite gaming system.

 

[Herschel]

I really hate the idea that if you allow some concessions to verisimilitude for a fantasy genre you have to concede to any and every other verisimilitude breaking thing that comes along.

It's not the allowing or disallowing of concessions, per se, it's realizing ANY concession is the same as any other in the end and how the concessions you make are shaped.

In other words, it's not THAT we make concessions, it's WHY we make the concessions we do.

 

[Herschel]

Are you honestly claiming that no rule set is even the slightest bit more realistic than any other?

They're all imperfect, of course -- sometimes on purpose -- but it's pretty easy to make a rule set less realistic, so it's obvious that the degree of realism is far from immutable.

Not quite. When looking at a game, no set of rules is really any more realistic than the others. It doesn't matter which edition of World of Darkess you look at, for example, they're all the same "realistically" for any practical purpose. The same with D&D. Note if you compare WoD TO D&D, or D&D to old school MERP you may then find differences but that's differing games and styles.

 

[keterys]

The systems that have felt the most realistic to me tend to be the ones with the least constraining rules, because most rules break immersion simply by existing and intruding on the experience.

So, yeah, trying to be more realistic with lots of rules is a deal breaker for me, which usually means I can never agree with those who push hard for more realistic rulesets.

"This man is a blacksmith who crafts exceptional short swords and is an endurance runner" can be real to me without needing to know that the blacksmith can create 1.32 swords per day, with a .25% chance of an exceptional work and 1% chance of failure, while his running speed tends to be 7mph and he can move at that speed for an average of 32.7 hours.

Especially if you start thinking about those numbers, like the ones for running, and what that really means

(Various #s are assuming multiple rolls used - for example, maybe the blacksmith needs to roll a 20 twice to crit on the sword, and a 1-2 twice to fail, and he can run for 6 hours, then has to start making hourly Endurance checks - which he's really good at, but with a -1 penalty per hour. Those are all not surprising rules for a system to have.)

 

[DonTadow]

I agree that TB is far from perfect, but that the mentality behind it and the process of creating it were better than most of what we've seen. Hopefully WotC can learn from them as well.

I wake up in the morning when the party member on watch cries out that we are under attack by ogres. Furious, I jump to my feet, grab my axe, and hack them to pieces. When I'm done, I'm tired and I go back to sleep.

Now, no matter how mad I get, I cannot fly into a rage again until I get another full night's sleep after that. It doesn't matter if my family is kidnapped by ghasts and I have to save them, there's no way I could possibly generate that berserk rage again...until I get a full night's sleep.

Unless of course, I'm fourth level. In which case I could do it twice in a day! The number of times I can do this has no relation to my toughness and endurance, how fatigued I am in general, or what my emotional state is as a character. It does relate to a metagame variable that my character doesn't understand. How does my character even know how many rages he has in a day?

It's the sort of thing that doesn't come into play all that often (barbarian was never the most popular class, fighting multiple battles in a day is somewhat unusual, and you don't use rage for the easy ones anyway), but if you think about it, it's really nonsensical. It's a lousy balance mechanism because you don't know how many battles a particular DM will have in a day, how many will be difficult, what decisions the player will make regarding rage use, and it doesn't model combat fatigue very well either. Basically, it's lazy design.

A well-designed rage would limit its use by some fatigue mechanic, if you wanted to limit it.

Use your imagination

Seriously, this is what I tell my players. Nothing is stopping that barbarian in an RPG world of going into a rage again. You just gain no mechanical benefit from it, because of game balance.

The other day, I had aplayer ask me why he can't use diplomacy to bargain down the price of something. And I told him the same thing. For game reasons you can't.

Now, can they come up with a rage system that doesnt have a limit per day, maybe, but there's nothing wrong with the rules as is.

Off the top of my head, a rage system involving a limitation to the # of encounters until you can use the next rage would be suitable. But then you run into the problem of some new thing to track.

 

[Sylrae]

Actually, your conclusion is patently false.

You said "There is no more or less "realism" in any edition if you sit down and honestly look at it." Which means that they all model reality equally well. None of them model it perfectly, and I definitely disagree with the notion that they all model reality equally well, but I'm going to not give details, because I'm not interested in an edition flame war.

What we choose to accept is based on expectations and assumptions and, in the case of gaming, often stems directly from the rules we learned and enjoyed first. That does not in any way, shape or form mean that things won't be added to what we'll accept when they are introduced, just that our personal biases come in no small part because of those earlier influences.

Sure. some people are willing to accept things others are not. That's a given. However, you're not necessarily going to like everything that you come across first.

And the parts I found I liked most were the parts where I felt I could forget I was playing a game and get in a zone like it was a fully interactive novel. the parts I found I disliked were the parts that drew attention to the fact that it was a game. It's why I'm not a fan of the Barbarian Rage Mechanic, or Bo9S, or (after having played a game for a year and given it a shot, 4e's, well - mechanics). But then I've explained all this before in this thread. I'm skeptical that explaining why I have the position I do will accomplish much.

I had a BIG problem with a number of things in the 4E previews, but then sat down with some friemds and actually broke down the thinking on different things and you Know what, it opened my mind and I saw my preconceived notions were holding back my honest assessment. It has since become my favorite gaming system.

Which is great for you. I gave it a shot, played in a campaign for a year, and decided I didn't care for it. The only part I really liked was how much easier it was for a DM to make up a new monster.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Verisimilitude is an end, not a means. This distinguishes it from things like "elegant design" or "nifty mechanics". There is often a hierarchy of means where one things is clearly better than another, even if the comparison to a third thing is more questionble. (For example, "d20+mod versus target number" is not inarguably the "best" means for task resolution. It is almost assuredly better for D&D than "5d4+27 different mod categories versus an opposed check with variable basis." And it is inarguably better than "slap the DM until he agrees that you succeed" for any normal game. )

But "verisimilitude" by itself is not just any end, but also a conceptual end, not a discrete one. This distinguishes it from from more concrete ends like "a system with combats that take place quickly" or "a system with combats that provide lots of meaningful decision points."

Saying you want "verisimilitude" is thus almost meaningless. It is like saying, "I want some nifty mechanics that produce the goals I want for combat." OK, what are your goals for combat? You want fast combats, meaningful decision points, or some hybrid, and how much?

For verisimilitude to have meaning, you have to say what reality you want approximated, and how much, and at what costs. Then those things can be usefully discussed, one after the other, classified, weighed, etc. But if your argument for any one of them is that it is a good choice because it will aid "verisimilitude" then you are trying to shift the ground from an end to a means. Instead, your argument should be the popularity of this particular item, and how many people want that "reality" established, and how little it will impede on people who want something else. If you can't, then it is your mere personal preference for a design goal, and carries no weight.

That's like me saying that everyone here should give me $100. Then when someone ask why they should give me $100, I said, "because then I'll be richer." Well, yeah! But I need something else to work with before I part with the cash.

 

[mmadsen]

Use your imagination

Seriously, this is what I tell my players. Nothing is stopping that barbarian in an RPG world of going into a rage again. You just gain no mechanical benefit from it, because of game balance.

I think it's perfectly reasonable and mature to accept that the game is a flawed simulation and, at the table, to "use your imagination" and ignore the flaws.

On the other hand, it's perfectly reasonable to note the flaws and to want to improve the game in a way that improves the simulation without ruining it as a game.

 

[Sylrae]

Nothing is stopping that barbarian in an RPG world of going into a rage again. You just gain no mechanical benefit from it, because of game balance.

The other day, I had a player ask me why he can't use diplomacy to bargain down the price of something. And I told him the same thing. For game reasons you can't.

And where the disagreement on this is coming from is we don't consider that a valid justification (in an RPG).

Off the top of my head, a rage system involving a limitation to the # of encounters until you can use the next rage would be suitable. But then you run into the problem of some new thing to track.

That wouldn't be a better approach though, because we'd have the same problem with that setup as the one its replacing. It's the arbitrary restrictions we have issue with.

Now, can they come up with a rage system that doesnt have a limit per day, maybe, but there's nothing wrong with the rules as is.

Unless you're not okay with "because of game balance" as an explanation, and you expect better than that.

In my opinion if you have to limit something that *narratively speaking, doesn't make sense to have the limit work that way* "because of game balance", that means it's a poorly designed mechanic.