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Fairy tale logic vs naturalism in fantasy RPGing
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<blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 6987145" data-attributes="member: 12377"><p>A game is a series of interesting decisions. In general, for a decision to be interesting, you need SOME idea of the consequences, but not a perfect idea. Puzzling over this information gap is what makes the decision interesting.</p><p></p><p>So for both types of logic, the issue isn't how much DM fiat there is; it's how predictable the world is to the players. I'm not sure I agree that fairy-tale logic is more predictable. I do agree that with fairy-tale logic the DM has less incentive to change things off-screen -- the trolls won't move to a different room, for example. That increases predictability, and improves the player's knowledge of the consequences of their decisions. But I feel this is compensated by the fact that players have more trouble predicting ahead of time things that they have not seen -- the room with trolls guarding a magic sword comes as a complete surprise, a non-sequitur. The "burning the elven fields" is a good example of this. Although rules for burning fields may rely on DM-fiat, when you're taking a naturalistic approach, the players might deduce that fields exist and are burnable even if they haven't seen them, and might discuss this option with the DM. With fairy-tale logic, if you haven't seen any fields, you can't assume they exist at all; <em>their very existence</em> is DM fiat, and no less fiat than the rules for burning fields would be when using naturalistic logic.</p><p></p><p>In an RPG, there's a second type of interesting decision: the emotional decision, where you role-play as your character would. This kind of decision can be interesting whether you have perfect information about the consequences, or zero information; the fun comes from getting inside your character's head rather than puzzling out the actual consequences of the decision. I would argue that fairy-tale logic makes it easier to present players with this sort of decision, because a) options are not constrained by the needs of verisimilitude, and b) the very <em>lack</em> of predictable outcomes means players are less likely to puzzle over the outcome and more likely to decide based on role-playing. I think this is why the fairy tales themselves spend zero time on practical issues; we are there to learn about the characters, their emotions, and their flaws, and worrying about where the food comes from would distract from that. Note that since this type of decision-making is totally orthogonal to any particular outcome, the idea of player or DM "control" is meaningless.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="77IM, post: 6987145, member: 12377"] A game is a series of interesting decisions. In general, for a decision to be interesting, you need SOME idea of the consequences, but not a perfect idea. Puzzling over this information gap is what makes the decision interesting. So for both types of logic, the issue isn't how much DM fiat there is; it's how predictable the world is to the players. I'm not sure I agree that fairy-tale logic is more predictable. I do agree that with fairy-tale logic the DM has less incentive to change things off-screen -- the trolls won't move to a different room, for example. That increases predictability, and improves the player's knowledge of the consequences of their decisions. But I feel this is compensated by the fact that players have more trouble predicting ahead of time things that they have not seen -- the room with trolls guarding a magic sword comes as a complete surprise, a non-sequitur. The "burning the elven fields" is a good example of this. Although rules for burning fields may rely on DM-fiat, when you're taking a naturalistic approach, the players might deduce that fields exist and are burnable even if they haven't seen them, and might discuss this option with the DM. With fairy-tale logic, if you haven't seen any fields, you can't assume they exist at all; [I]their very existence[/I] is DM fiat, and no less fiat than the rules for burning fields would be when using naturalistic logic. In an RPG, there's a second type of interesting decision: the emotional decision, where you role-play as your character would. This kind of decision can be interesting whether you have perfect information about the consequences, or zero information; the fun comes from getting inside your character's head rather than puzzling out the actual consequences of the decision. I would argue that fairy-tale logic makes it easier to present players with this sort of decision, because a) options are not constrained by the needs of verisimilitude, and b) the very [I]lack[/I] of predictable outcomes means players are less likely to puzzle over the outcome and more likely to decide based on role-playing. I think this is why the fairy tales themselves spend zero time on practical issues; we are there to learn about the characters, their emotions, and their flaws, and worrying about where the food comes from would distract from that. Note that since this type of decision-making is totally orthogonal to any particular outcome, the idea of player or DM "control" is meaningless. [/QUOTE]
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