Campaign preferences - Realism

[Starglim]

I'm unable to answer. I don't think your scale actually measures from most to least realistic, and in any case it's a choice that defines each campaign more than an a-priori decision.

 

[ThirdWizard]

In my Planescape game fantastical things are known to happen. Heck, they just went through Excelsior where there are floating castles circling the city where the paladin lords live. They've been staying at an Inn that was a former temple to Demogorgon kept looking nice with some renovations and illusionary magic. And, they recently saw some towers wandering around the plains on spider-like-legs. In two sessions I plan to send them to a demi-plane (if they ain't too chicken) where thoughts and reality bend around each other until you can't tell which is which, making an interesting forum for some prophesies and forshadowing that they might or might not notice.

Of course, not all my games are this out there. We ran one game for a few months where the PCs were guardsmen of a city, getting paid enough to eat gruel and working on trying to get promoted to better positions within the city. That was a fun character driven mini-campaign.

I prefer the first type to the latter, though.

 

[Turjan]

I have also some difficulty with that poll. I'm all for verisimilitude and internal consistency, but I'm not striving for realism. It's fantasy, after all. There's magic, and I like the air of the fantastic in my world(s). It depends a bit on the area of expertise how far this goes. I'm not too bothered about economic questions (I don't calculate whether someone brewing mead can live on that profession given the prices of honey and mead in the PHB). I am pretty much concerned with environmental/biological inconsistencies (how a barren or desert planet without a body of water can support life is beyond me).

This is a case by case decision. I suppose, everyone has a different pet peeve in this regard.

 

[arscott]

I want a world full of magic, but I want that magic to be hidden. I want a world where the beautiful and otherworldly queen of the farie realm visits the mysterious floating city run by the fabled Golden Order, Yet the average villiage, busy with their crops and diseases, isn't entirely sure if either one exists.

 

[Orius]

I went for 5. I don't like super high fantasy, and I don't like things sanitized. OTOH, I'm of the school of thought that the PCs should generally be doing heroic things and too much grim grit sort of dampens that as well.

 

[Jeremy757]

I read in a magazine a few months ago that it has been shown that if you give people a choice of a scale of 1-10 they are most likely to choose 7.

 

[Wombat]

Foir me it isn't that simple. I perfer the side of realisnm, but that doesn't mean I don't like the rare truely fantastic encounter. If all the cities are floating cioties, they are boring and mundane, but if there is only one legendary floating city it is a sight to behold and a challenge to find.

Let me honour this sentiment by quoting it.

I prefer my fantasy to have a strong grounding in believability, even given the fact that there is magic and some monstrous races. By making magic a bit rarer, it becomes special again. By having more character class opponents, monsters become more monstrous. By having villages with no monetary system, but cooperation and/or barter economies, great treasures become more special.

And, as they say in Jorune, Skyrealms are then always worth the bother!

 

[howandwhy99]

Foir me it isn't that simple. I perfer the side of realisnm, but that doesn't mean I don't like the rare truely fantastic encounter. If all the cities are floating cioties, they are boring and mundane, but if there is only one legendary floating city it is a sight to behold and a challenge to find.

This sounds about right for me. (2) I prefer a strong sense of realism with reasonable consequences and predictors. For a "generic" D&D game, I feel part of playing is being able to emulate the decision making process in real life. If a game had very arbitrary consequences, I doubt I would enjoy it at all. It would feel like most of the character's decisions really had little to do with the end result.

As for the magic level (which seems to be the other side of this thread), I think I could take almost any level of strangeness. But to a point. The weirder creature PC I begin play with, the more difficult it is for me to intuitively behave In-Character. I need at least the basis for a interior self-concept. More importantly even, an exceptionally strange world/environment makes it more and challenging to use real-world knowledge to overcome difficulties. How can you think outside of the box, if you don't even know where it is? (much less use it to your advantage)

[i.e. attempting to portray Far Realms creatures interacting in one of the octo-pseudo-plane-spliced Far Realms. OTOH, I guess it's still *killing* *things* and taking their *stuff*]

 

[tetsujin28]

I can't answer this poll, because it makes one assumption that simply doesn't hold true with me.

It assumes that I always want to play the same sort of campaign.

Pretty much the same problem I'm having, though I never really go in for super-high-levels of magic.

 

[Mark]

Let's put it this way...

I want the majority of the residents of Sunnydale to not have heard of the Hellmouth or even believe in vampires...