Do YOU nod to "realism"?

[pemerton]

in fantasy settings, we have these nation states with thousands of years of civilization, and constant trade and contact with neighbours, that stay stagnant for millenia.

Just bugs the heck out of me.

The sociology, economics, politics etc of fantasy settings - even Tolkien's - don't really bear close scrutiny.

 

[Dice4Hire]

The sociology, economics, politics etc of fantasy settings - even Tolkien's - don't really bear close scrutiny.

It is very hard to model the effects of magic on those kinds of things. This is a heavily unexplored area of fantasy, in my opinion.

 

[Rechan]

It is very hard to model the effects of magic on those kinds of things. This is a heavily unexplored area of fantasy, in my opinion.

Not just magic, but monsters too. The simple fact that humans are not at the top of the foodchain would have serious effect on evolutionary biology and behavior.

How would a society respond when there are things that can literally take your appearance? Human cultures are xenophobic - when a stranger (let alone your neighbor) can potentially do anything, paranoia would go into the atmosphere. The existence of undead would also have some serious changes for society. How about races? Look how human beings have treated one another throughout history - if there was a race that was certifiably not human, created by a non-Human deity... how could any peace be possible? Humans would have wiped them out.

It would also reverse many of the tropes we associate. A castle or keep with a fortified wall and courtyard would not work because so many monsters (and spellcasters) can just fly right over the defenses and plop down in the courtyard.

But no one takes into consideration the sheer amount of food that monsters would need in order to exist, let alone in large numbers.

It's just easier to handwave all this stuff because most people 1) want their tropes, and 2) aren't economists/sociologists/biologists, 3) aren't really interested in it, and 4) the end result of a world that takes those considerations in may very well not be fun, even if it's realistic.

 

[pemerton]

It is very hard to model the effects of magic on those kinds of things.

I think there are issues even without magic. For example, Tolkien's Shire has a material standard of living comparable to early industrial England - which was a centre of world trade and production - although the Shire is a pre-industrial autarky.

The moral outlook of most RPG fantasy worlds is also very modern in comparison to their historical analogues. In one episode of Chretien de Troyes (sp?) Arthur stories, Lancelot kills a number of his friends (from memory, he is helping Guinevere escape). No one suggests that this is a murderous act - the relevant evaluative categories (for the author, and presumably his audience) seem to be honour and loyalty, not killing those with a right to life.

 

[Argyle King]

Not just magic, but monsters too. The simple fact that humans are not at the top of the foodchain would have serious effect on evolutionary biology and behavior.

How would a society respond when there are things that can literally take your appearance? Human cultures are xenophobic - when a stranger (let alone your neighbor) can potentially do anything, paranoia would go into the atmosphere. The existence of undead would also have some serious changes for society. How about races? Look how human beings have treated one another throughout history - if there was a race that was certifiably not human, created by a non-Human deity... how could any peace be possible? Humans would have wiped them out.

It would also reverse many of the tropes we associate. A castle or keep with a fortified wall and courtyard would not work because so many monsters (and spellcasters) can just fly right over the defenses and plop down in the courtyard.

But no one takes into consideration the sheer amount of food that monsters would need in order to exist, let alone in large numbers.

It's just easier to handwave all this stuff because most people 1) want their tropes, and 2) aren't economists/sociologists/biologists, 3) aren't really interested in it, and 4) the end result of a world that takes those considerations in may very well not be fun, even if it's realistic.

Some of the ideas here are exactly why I've started running my current 4E game more like a sci-fi game than a fantasy game. Because of how many ways the game turns away from realism, too many things (tropes) didn't make sense to me to have in the game.

In my current campaign, instead of castles, and knights, and horses, I have bunkers, special forces style elite squads doing battle, and Battle Toads style hovering speeder bikes powered by magic. Trying to reconcile the idea I have in my head about what fantasy should be like and what (I feel) 4E's mechanics actually support bummed me out. So, instead, I decided to completely embrace the 4E direction while running/playing it.

(at least until I finish some of the rewrites to rules I'm working on)

 

[Gort]

Some of the ideas here are exactly why I've started running my current 4E game more like a sci-fi game than a fantasy game. Because of how many ways the game turns away from realism, too many things (tropes) didn't make sense to me to have in the game.

In my current campaign, instead of castles, and knights, and horses, I have bunkers, special forces style elite squads doing battle, and Battle Toads style hovering speeder bikes powered by magic. Trying to reconcile the idea I have in my head about what fantasy should be like and what (I feel) 4E's mechanics actually support bummed me out. So, instead, I decided to completely embrace the 4E direction while running/playing it.

(at least until I finish some of the rewrites to rules I'm working on)

Eberron is a 3rd ed setting and has pretty much all of what you said and more. I think 4th ed actually moves away from magic affecting the world outside of combat. You can't just cast fly or teleport in six seconds, or replace an entire countries economy with creation magic any more. Heck, I actually think flight magic was more commonly used in second ed than in fourth, simply because you could pull it out at will, while in fourth ed you actually need to plan ahead a bit.

 

[Dragonblade]

I nodded to realism. Then I killed it and took its stuff.

 

[Rechan]

I'm a writer. And the thing about realism you have to understand is that it is mutable.

Take the TV show CSI. Real life crime scene techs collect evidence, and that's it; they don't interact with suspects, don't follow through, they just inform the police and the police do everything. DNA takes at least a week to get back, and you have to send it off to a lab in some other state to get it done.

But that is not interesting TV. AT least, not interesting for a police procedural about crime techs. So the writers of the show changed the way it works for the sake of entertainment and enjoyability of the audience.

Writers do this all the time.

 

[Argyle King]

Eberron is a 3rd ed setting and has pretty much all of what you said and more. I think 4th ed actually moves away from magic affecting the world outside of combat. You can't just cast fly or teleport in six seconds, or replace an entire countries economy with creation magic any more. Heck, I actually think flight magic was more commonly used in second ed than in fourth, simply because you could pull it out at will, while in fourth ed you actually need to plan ahead a bit.

I'm aware of Eberron. The way I'm running the current campaign goes beyond that though.

To give an example: the most recent session, I had the PCs fighting enemies who were using magic laser blasters. 'Shadow Bolt' (the actual power the enemies were using by RAW) became a black tube with two pistol grips (one at the back and one at the front) so as to be used like a storm trooper's assault rifle.

It's been a lot more satisfying running the game like this than trying to run my idea of fantasy. For me, the problem isn't often the big things (some of the 3rd Edition spells you alluded to,) it's some of the little details. I'm not suggesting 3rd Edition is my ideal though; for fantasy, I've come to embrace a system which isn't D&D at all. (Not Pathfinder either... just to clarify.)

Some of the bigger reasons why have already been discussed in a different thread.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I'm a writer. And the thing about realism you have to understand is that it is mutable.

Take the TV show CSI. Real life crime scene techs collect evidence, and that's it; they don't interact with suspects, don't follow through, they just inform the police and the police do everything. DNA takes at least a week to get back, and you have to send it off to a lab in some other state to get it done.

But that is not interesting TV. AT least, not interesting for a police procedural about crime techs. So the writers of the show changed the way it works for the sake of entertainment and enjoyability of the audience.

Writers do this all the time.

Why are you trying to compare TV to D&D? The reason time speeds up in shows such as CSI is because of show time. D&D is not an hour long TV episode but while CSI isn't real it is still believable. There is nothing that causes you to sit back and scratch your head at the craziness of it.

Depends on the topic that writers are writing about. Some writers such as Jim Butcher can take something that is pure fantasy and implement it in a realistic fashion that allows you to imagine it.

Writing is where realistic fantasy is the most important. When a reader can read a sentence and not picture it in their mind then the writer has failed in a sense. Describing something so that the imagination can give that image is something that a great writer can do. Same goes with D&D. It is a narrative game that player's use their imaginations to imagine what is going on.

If D&D wants to continue the board game route then they need to drop the role playing title and stop hiding behind it.