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<blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 3783324" data-attributes="member: 3887">The first element of a 'realistic' campaign is a set of rules other than D&amp;D...Seriously though, I think a certain level of realism is important for a successful game (that choking sound you hear is coming from my players and the readers of our Story Hour). Now I'm not talking about making the game a realistic simulation of medieval society and warfare, I mean realism as it applies to people (and characters in fiction). The best example of this I can think of right now is Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On the surface level, the Buffyverse is totally absurd, the very definition of unrealistic; demon-fighting kung-fu teenagers, undead in every Starbucks, high school nerds building fembots, etc. But for all of that, the characters are believable. They ring true, behave more or less like real people, even though they might be demons, angsty vampires or slumming gods.&nbsp; &nbsp; This is the kind of realism I strive for. I don't care if every village has a reasonable number of chickens, I don't lose sleep over the ecology of the umber hulk. But I do try to get my NPC's motivations in order, and that my characterizations, for those I bother to characterize, have a little of the spark of life about them. A believable spark...It's been my experience that successful D&amp;D worlds are made up of people (both PC &amp; NPC's), it's what players remember fondly, not geography or weather.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mallus, post: 3783324, member: 3887"] The first element of a 'realistic' campaign is a set of rules other than D&D... Seriously though, I think a certain level of realism is important for a successful game (that choking sound you hear is coming from my players and the readers of our Story Hour). Now I'm not talking about making the game a realistic simulation of medieval society and warfare, I mean realism as it applies to people (and characters in fiction). The best example of this I can think of right now is Joss Whedon's [I]Buffy the Vampire Slayer[/I]. On the surface level, the Buffyverse is totally absurd, the very definition of unrealistic; demon-fighting kung-fu teenagers, undead in every Starbucks, high school nerds building fembots, etc. But for all of that, the characters are believable. They ring true, behave more or less like real people, even though they might be demons, angsty vampires or slumming gods. This is the kind of realism I strive for. I don't care if every village has a reasonable number of chickens, I don't lose sleep over the ecology of the umber hulk. But I [i]do[/i] try to get my NPC's motivations in order, and that my characterizations, for those I bother to characterize, have a little of the spark of life about them. A believable spark... It's been my experience that successful D&D worlds are made up of people (both PC & NPC's), it's what players remember fondly, not geography or weather. [/QUOTE]

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