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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MostlyDm" data-source="post: 7002467" data-attributes="member: 6788973">Absolutely!  I've run specific games where I cared about as many of those types of things as I was aware of, but that's certainly not the norm.  I think you're totally right to find it silly that people are selectively bothered by this stuff.I will say that there is a difference between anachronism and unreality, though.  So, potatoes are anachronistic in a medieval Europe-style fantasy world... but it's not Earth, it's Faerun or whatever, so it's really fantastical in any sense.  Potatoes existing in the Americas is just a chance of geography.Anachronisms like rapiers can also be explained away by differences in technological advancement due to magic.But something that's pure fantasy, and actually impractical (like studded leather?), might twig people's disbelief much more substantially.Even so, I agree with you that it's still a form of selective attention.  Saelorn mentioned "As reality unless noted," which I think is an important thing to consider... I definitely think that's the best way to approach any fantasy fiction.  But "reality" is still pretty flexible... lots of fantastical things happen in your average modern day "real world" action movie, for example.Ultimately, our suspension of disbelief is often going to be hurt most by what we know.  If we know weapons and armor, studded leather sticks out like a sore thumb, the same way that computer programmers might be taken out of an episode of a crime show where two smart "hackers" try to hack faster by both typing simultaneously on a single keyboard (okay, even someone with rudimentary knowledge of computers might roll their eyes at that one).This happens a lot, really. Doctors often have to grit their teeth when watching medical dramas, cops have to hold back the eye rolls on crime procedurals, former military will have their suspension of disbelief ruined by many war films.  In all cases, there is a gradient of how badly the fiction misrepresents reality.  Usually, if a reasonable attempt is made, and the main "unrealistic" stuff is clearly for drama and excitement, we can forgive this stuff.  Sometimes, it's too glaring and pointlessly wrong.The main reason I disagree with you is just that I don't think any of this is really illegitimate.  Maintaining verisimilitude is a big, known issue in fiction writing and storytelling.  Just because something is a fantasy story doesn't actually mean that all need for various kinds of verisimilitude gets tossed out the window.Yeah, you're totally right.  I think the issue is that it's usually easy for many people to tweak their mental image of the fiction to allow for the weapon strike to be non-vital.  If not, they probably won't play a game like D&D, they'll play something fundamentally much more mortal and gritty.But falling in particular gets changed fairly often because there are lots of situations where the fiction is much harder to tweak in the same way you can with a weapon attack.  You get knocked off the back of a dragon flying 200 feet above a field, there aren't many ledges or anything to grab on to.  It's just a more difficult suspension.Though, getting stabbed with a knife while unconscious is another hard one, I'd say.  In battle is one thing, but if you're asleep, why aren't they just cutting your throat?   This could spark a whole new conversation though.The double standard being that magic-users are allowed to do fantastical things, but when non-magic users try, they get smacked down because of verisimilitude?I'm sure that's a real problem in some games.  That sucks.  I definitely think that's an area a GM should be a lot more careful... changing falling damage is a lot harsher to the guys who lack feather fall after all.  But changing studded leather to some sort of authentic name for a lightweight reasonably protective leather armor doesn't seem to hurt anybody.</blockquote>

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