Bring Back Verisimilitude, add in More Excitement!

[Plane Sailing]

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.

I've warned you before in this forum, and now you are going to take a 3 day suspension.

You can't post provocative stuff like this and then 'report' people who respond to it.

When people say that 'WotC need to bring back verisimilitude' they are expressing their opinion, which is OK for them to do.

It is stupid of you to take umbrage with them because they think something differently to you.

When you come back, you'd better calm down or you'll face longer suspensions.

Feel free to email or PM me if you can't understand what you are doing wrong

 

[Sylrae]

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.

And if your bias is toward a "greater degree of realism", then you won't be satisfied by the game.

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.

If you're happy suspending different parts of disbelief, or more disbelief, good on you. Not all of us are. And 5e is supposed to be appealing to a wider audience, IE the people who weren't satisfied with 4e.

Breaking my sense of verisimilitude in too many large ways is the main reason I don't enjoy 4e. Judging by the replies, I'm not the only one bothered by it.

And where I want a higher degree of verisimilitude to well written fantasy fiction and (in a way, to the real world*), then if the main rules are filled with daily and encounter abilities, I wont have much interest in buying into the modular parts will I.

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.

More realistic is hardly an issue of bias. I suppose you could say "more realistic towards what", if you're not using the real world as your measuring stick.

So More Realistic, in this sense could either be "better modeling reality" or "Breaking your sense of verisimilitude less".

In my case I mean a bit of both. "Better modeling reality - (while maintaining playability)" is my minimum starting point, before you start adding on the fantasy elements.

Breaking my sense of verisimilitude in large ways is how to pull me out of immersion from the game, and how to stop me from enjoying it.

Many of us won't be interested in 5e if it doesn't manage a great deal more verisimilitude than 4e managed. Like it or not, we are a part of the 5e target demographic.

 

[nnms]

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.

How could an element that is part of the play of a game not be a factual part of the game system?

 

[nnms]

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

Because they are doing different things. Carrying out different procedures. In a lot of cases, it will be to the degree that they are effectively house ruling the game.

For example, if I take 4E and make it mandatory at my table that after you use a combat power and get the results, you must then describe in narrative terms what happened, we're going to get different results than if I made it mandatory that you don't do this narration in order to speed up play.

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

Again, they will be doing slightly different things to get slightly different results.

 

[Plane Sailing]

[MENTION=83293]nnms[/MENTION] & [MENTION=48520]Sylrae[/MENTION] - you may have been typing while I was giving Herschel a suspension - but he won't be able to respond for 3 days, I suggest you let his arguments lie and get on with discussing things you find interesting in this thread. Verisimilitude, plausibility and excitement.

Thanks

 

[Ahnehnois]

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

Few if any objected to the idea of giving high-level nonmagic characters more options. The (3.5e) PHBII was a huge success for largely that reason. Many objected to the fact that the rage problem I expounded upon earlier was expanded to form the foundation of an entire game, or that the mechanics were the same as the casters instead of merely being as powerful as them, or to some of the specific abilities, or to the complexity and illogic of selecting powers as opposed to having better stunts/combat maneuvers built into the system.

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.

I am unfamiliar with the magic system you alluded to but curious, perhaps you could explain its appeal?

 

[nnms]

Sure thing, Plain Sailing.

One thing I agree with Herschel on is that there are elements that cause people to get tripped up when it comes to verisimilitude and plausibility.

I also agree that making a game be a perfect reflection of reality is impossible.

However, that is not the goal of a simulation. People often have the idea that a simulation must be a realistic representation of all aspects of a given subject. And some game designers have believed this and tried to simulate everything. This also leads to the impression that simulation focused design must be large and complex.

It's actually the opposite. A good simulation is one where only a few aspects are targeted for modelling.

Let's take 4E as an example. It takes high power heroic fantasy and simulates some aspects of it. These include:

a) heroic characters that are competent and hard to kill.
b) escalating campaign story pacing
c) tactical combat where the participants have high situational awareness

It does a) well through high hit points, healing surges, encounter refresh systems, access to healing outside of clerical magic and more.

It does b) well through the use of tiers, the tying of leveling up to the xp budget of encounters and more.

It does c) well through it's grid based combat system and expectations of character knowledge in terms of bloodied values and assumed understanding of game effects.

4E is actually a good simulation of particular features the designers decided were important to their game play.

But what if the particular features or elements are not what other people want simulated? What if someone is more interested in traditional play where the procedure of play is about plausibility of cause and effect and continual referencing of the constantly evolving narrative? Or what if someone else is interested in procedures of play that create the structure of a story during play itself? Rising action, climax and resolution?

So back at 4E's release when I rejoiced that 4E was chucking out all that simulation stuff I didn't want, I was wrong. I didn't understand that it was still simulating, just different things. And now that I've gotten tired of those things, I'm hoping D&D Next's stated goals of having a broad appeal will materialize with strong support for games focused on a continual referencing of the narrative and a calling of the game mechanics by the narrative.

If I start with a 4E style base, I have to cut things out to get to that point. If I start with a OD&D/Basic D&D style base, I don't have to cut things out. But I can still add in the 4E style elements when I want to.

In short, a traditional RPG approach where you describe fictional elements, describe interaction with those elements, use the resolution system to resolve those interactions and then return to the beginning and describe the resolution as fictional elements would make a better generic core as you can transform it into a more game focused experience by adding elements. If you start with the game focused experience and make those who want a narrative referencing experience chop things out, it'll be more of a barrier.

Am I trying to argue for my preferred way of playing being the core of D&D next? I don't intend to be. I simply believe that it is easier to build upon it to create other forms of play than to chop things away to create it. And, actually, it's not a way of playing that I universally prefer. I like other modes of play and have enjoyed 4E immensely in the past.

 

[Elf Witch]

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.

I have to agree that when doing fantasy and SF you have to be careful to anchor as much as you can in reality. One of the great things about urban fantasy is that since you are using the real world as background that helps anchor it so when you add the fantastic elements the person doesn't feel as if he has fallen down the rabbit hole.

Different people have different tolerances on how much they can take. For example I don't tend to like fantasy novels that just go way overboard in making the world different. The author uses weird hard to pronounce names , develops societies with unrecognizable social mores , the magic is different than anything ever done before. Now I don't mind and even enjoy the last two but putting it all in one story makes me feel as if I am on a acid trip.

In 4E one of the thing that really blows it for me is healing surges and the I shout at you and I heal you and here is my reason why. No matter what you say that hit points represent the only way you lose them is by taking some kind of damage.

The way I have always looked at them is that up until you are actually dying you have been being cut and bruised finally your body can't take any more and if you don't get help you bleed out. So stop from dying you either A stabilize on your own B someone uses the heal skill to stabilize you C magical healing happens.

In 4E healing surges and the shouty thing work by giving you a second wind. Now if that gave back temporary hit points I would have no issue it with it. It would make a lot more sense to me. It is action movie trope the good guy beaten to an inch of his life finds the strength to get up and take out the bad guy then collapses and goes to the hospital.

That's me and when we did play 4E it was a house rule that it was temp hit points.

 

[nnms]

When it comes to Hit Points representing more than actual injuries and also representing, luck, exhaustion, will power, etc., all the various editions of D&D took time to talk about how it wasn't just injuries.

But then mechanically just made it about injuries and damage. And then healing surges and non-injury related "healing" restoring damage taken from injuries made the problem worse.

In one 4E mod I ran, I removed all healing surges and had everyone be a minion with 1 HP. They then got 1 or 2 near miss tokens, 1 or 2 scratch/winded tokens and 1 or 2 major injury tokens. The amount was based on their class/combat role and con score so that it ended up representing the same number of HP and average damage monsters did using the damage by level system math.

When someone got hit, they could spend any one of those tokens they wanted. Warlord "inspiring word" could restore near miss and scratch/winded tokens, but not injury tokens. Cleric healing could restore scratch/winded and healing, but not near miss. If you spent a token, you had to narrate how you either avoided the blow or got hurt by it, but not killed. Narrating was mandatory in that if you didn't do it, you took the hit and went down, with someone at the table narrating the result.

If you got critted, you had to spend two tokens to make it go away. If you ran out of tokens or decided to take a hit, then you went into negative HP equal to the damage roll of the monster and were dying. There were no death saves, you just took a variable fading away damage while dying (so no one could count saves and wait till they failed two before helping). Only actual healing could restore that and the heal skill could only stabilize. A second wind restored near miss or scratch/winded, but not injuries.

So by excising one sub system and replacing it with another, I was able to correct the whole issue to at least some degree.

But it was a big change to have to first remove an entire subsystem of the game to plug in a new one. I had to deal with the bonus healing from Healer's Lore and a variety of other issues.

That's why I think the classic/traditional RPG approach based off of describing and interacting is a better starting point than a well developed system with lots of subsystems. It's far, far easy to modify through addition than subtraction.

 

[Sylrae]

@nnms & @Sylrae - you may have been typing while I was giving Herschel a suspension - but he won't be able to respond for 3 days, I suggest you let his arguments lie and get on with discussing things you find interesting in this thread. Verisimilitude, plausibility and excitement.

Thanks

No worries. I figured as much when I saw your post.

Thanks for the heads up though.