Fun vs. Reality: a false dichotomy?

[Balesir]

I wholeheartedly agree with Soren Johnson. One of my biggest complaints about 4E is the way many rules became unmoored from any concrete concept within the game world. The rules do not have to simulate the game world, but they need to make sense in an intuitive way, so that DMs and players can easily switch back and forth between manipulating the rules and imagining the events taking place in the game world.

That was exactly what I thought when 4E first came out. Then we tried it and found it wasn't a problem for us in the slightest. If the focus of play is in the right place for this sort of rules it all works fine. 4E has finally hit a spot where the basic rules structures encourage and support a play focus that fits with the whole rule ethos. It's not the "ultimate" RPG and it's not the only way to play RPGs - at best it's one possible focus of three - but it all fits together and it's fine at what it does.

"Realism", or "simulationism", if you prefer, is ideal for a different focus of play - that of simply exploring an alien world. My favourite system/setting for this is Hârn. It's a focus where system and setting really do go hand-in-hand, whereas with D&D the setting can be almost abstract.

In other words, to address the OP, "it depends". For certain purposes "gamism" (rules focussed to make a gameable system, not to model a world) really is best. For other purposes, rules that model the world are almost the entire point. And "fun" is in the eye of the beholder - a word so undefined as to mean very little, I'm afraid.

 

[Dungeoneer]

Multi-classing (I was either a half-elf thief/wizard or an elf thief/wizard. I can't remember. But I had no clue how it worked. My DM did the grunt work.) Spell selection tripped me up, I remember picking a spell called "Deep Pockets." Later my DM was talking with another player and he was mocking my choice of spell. To this day, I don't know what was wrong with it.

Combat tripped me up. I had no clue how it worked. Reading the rules never seemed to help. It wasn't until 4e that I under stood the combat rules as written. With 2e and 3e, I had to actually play the game to understand it. 3.5 was better writing, I think, but it's hard to tell since I already knew what was going on by them.

These are very interesting examples to me, especially multiclassing. I think that D&D's multiclassing rules have always been heavily gamist, whatever the edition. They certainly don't square with any real world examples of changing careers or branching out into different fields. The 3.x rules made the most sense to me, because at least they worked in a way that was consistent mechanically with other parts of the game. You simply took a level in the class of your choice. Boom, done. Of course this system opened up the game to ridiculous exploitation. Now in 4e we have two different multiclassing systems (and maybe another one to come?!), and both are balanced, but neither makes any intuitive sense to me. I've just avoided them so far.

Combat makes sense to me in 4e, but I've had players who struggled with it. Which dice to roll for which action never seemed to make any sense to them, nor were they any good at successfully adding the correct modifiers to attack and damage rolls. This may be a fundamental limitation of a math-based system.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The "simulationism" thing is strange because I never saw it in the 2e days. It was somewhat expected that the world is not a straight simulation. No small number of things in D&D make no sense at all, nor should they, because sometimes it's best to shrug and go "Know what, dragons and castles are cool, regardless of how unrealistic. Wizards throwing fireballs ain't a simulation, but it's wicked awesome, so deal with it."

I think when 3e brought more of the "game" elements to the front, people backlashed against it by artificially creating the whole "simulation" aspect. The problem is, D&D wasn't, is not, never will be, and at no point in time tried to be, a simulation of any sort of "real world." The economy has never made sense, the way magic interacts with settings never made any sense, etc, etc. What D&D simulates is genre and style. It's not trying to examine "What would Earth be like if dragons really roamed the planet? What would be the socio-economic changes in a magic existing society?"

It's asking "What would you do if you were a hero fighting a dragon?! Roll initiative and find out!"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hmmm, I don't think the MCing or Hybrid system are particularly 'unrealistic' (for some value of realistic). You MC by picking up some feats over several levels and gain some minor ability with a different class. Hybrids really are a whole different animal, they're just custom classes that mix elements of other classes together. You're a guy that casts spells and swings a sword, yay! If you MC you're a guy that casts spells and lately he's been doing a bit of practice with a sword.

 

[Ourph]

There is no Realism vs. Fun dichotomy. There IS a Work vs. Fun dichotomy. To the extent that Realism requires me to do significantly more work than Abstraction, Realism isn't fun. If a game designer can give me Realism without requiring a lot of in-game bookkeeping or time-wasting I'm all for it. Unfortuantely, that doesn't happen very often in RPG design.

 

[Dungeoneer]

There is no Realism vs. Fun dichotomy. There IS a Work vs. Fun dichotomy. To the extent that Realism requires me to do significantly more work than Abstraction, Realism isn't fun. If a game designer can give me Realism without requiring a lot of in-game bookkeeping or time-wasting I'm all for it. Unfortuantely, that doesn't happen very often in RPG design.

You might not be giving Realism enough credit as a work-saving device. You're focusing on the cases where it doesn't work, but I'd argue that there are lots of cases where it does and you don't even notice it. Realism says "I roll a dice to see if my attack hits." Realism says "Fireball can damage allies as well as enemies." Realism says "Heavy armor should slow you down." These are all intuitive concepts for new players. You don't have to tell a new player there's a penalty for wearing heavy armor. They'll probably ask you if there is, because it just makes sense.

That's realism working in your favor.

 

[ourchair]

I am sick and my ears are clogged to high hell, so it is difficult for me to articulate my response, so allow me to make a partial response until I can get back to it:

The fun vs. realism dichotomy is a false dichotomy IMHO.

It assumes that insofar as design is concerned, realism is a rigid concept rather than a fluid one. That X amount of TOTAL reality must be abstracted to ensure that it does not get in the way of fun.

The truth is that what is necessary is to determine which aspects of reality is the FOCUS of the game, before one can determine what needs to be realistic or not.

Games are not designed around 'reality emulation' vs. 'mechanically sound design', rather they are about emulating a very particular subset of reality in a mechanically sound fashion to ensure fun.

For example, Civilization II does not take into consideration notions of forced labor, subjugation of native peoples or civil liberties under Communism, and The Sims abstracts a lot of real-life economic considerations by translating them into the costs of objects.

Both design choices are deliberate not because 'reality' got in the way of 'fun' but because they strip variables that add no value to what 'subset of reality' the game is trying to represent.

 

[Rel]

I view a lot of this from the standpoint of how people (players or potential players) "chunk" information. "Chunking" is a word that I picked up from a book a while ago (don't remember the title) that describes how we wrap a set of information into a specific "chunk" so that it is easier to mentally hold onto rather than a lot of loose details.

So when I say the word "castle" then a person immediately gets a mental image that embodies a chunk of information such that I don't have to describe every detail of the castle for them to interact with it as an object in the game (at least not until they need further detail like where entrances are if they are trying to sneak into the castle or something like that).

So let's say I decide that, because there are dragons and flying wizards in my games, that the traditional concept of a castle makes no sense. I have replaced them with some other type of fortress that seems defensible from such threats as dragons and flying wizards. But that also means that I've now got to describe such fortresses in detail to the players so that they get the concept and layout of such a place. And I'll probably have to do so several times before my new fortress concept becomes a useful chunk to them. I can no longer fall back on the simple chunk of visualization that comes from saying "castle".

If fantasy games have too many exceptions to the chunks of information that people are used to then they have to spend all their time describing stuff rather than letting people take it for granted. At a typical RPG session this kind of description might be very worthwhile. For example if the PC's are going to spend the next three sessions exploring one of these Not-A-Castle fortresses then it's probably worth describing the concept in detail to them. But, if they are just passing by on the way to someplace else and see it in the distance, then is it really worth taking the time to describe it when you could use that time instead to move on to the next thing they are actually going to interact with? Maybe it is. Such details are part of the oft vaunted "verisimilitude". But the question remains as to how much is too much.

Personally I sometimes think that the best way to tackle such ideas is to take advantage of chunking but also throw a twist or exception in there that puts your own stamp on the world and gets you the verisimilitude in the bargain (hopefully). So back to my castle example, what if I said, "It's a castle. But you can see that it has one particularly tall tower in the middle. Rumor has it that this tower contains a magical device that can launch a big web-like spell that can bring down a flying monster so that nothing can simply fly over the walls of the castle and attack those within." Suddenly my players can chunk that again by thinking, "Ok a regular castle but with a giant web gun in the center. Got it."

 

[Diamond Cross]

Except that at least D&D comes from initially being a strategy war game.

But I guess I don't fit the mold because I've never really been into fantasy novels.

I've usually found them really dry reading. Especially when they start getting into the super ultra fine details of the world.

However, I much prefer them visually though. Such as I did enjoy the series Legend Of The Seeker, for example.

And besides, talking about making games more real does take a lot of the fun out of the game anyway. Because if you wanted realism in games, there wouldn't be anything like Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds, Unicorns, Dragons, and Magic Missile, so on and so forth. It's always fun to see a Fighter in Full Plate jump into the arms of a Wizard at the sight of a Rust Monster. You can't have that when you have realism.

Because if you had realism the Wizard would just be a stage magician and the Fighter would be the laughing stock of the entire unit for the Rust Monster would just be paper mache' and a steel skeleton. For years the fighter would be getting "Do you remember the time you got scared at the sight of a fake monster? Good times." if there was realism in the game.

 

[Rel]

And besides, talking about making games more real does take a lot of the fun out of the game anyway. Because if you wanted realism in games, there wouldn't be anything like Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds, Unicorns, Dragons, and Magic Missile, so on and so forth. It's always fun to see a Fighter in Full Plate jump into the arms of a Wizard at the sight of a Rust Monster. You can't have that when you have realism.

Because if you had realism the Wizard would just be a stage magician and the Fighter would be the laughing stock of the entire unit for the Rust Monster would just be paper mache' and a steel skeleton. For years the fighter would be getting "Do you remember the time you got scared at the sight of a fake monster? Good times." if there was realism in the game.

Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think this is what is being discussed. The "reality" being talked about is the game reality posited by whatever set of rules we set for the game universe, not the same rules that apply in our own world.

I don't think anybody is suggesting that people are sitting around playing D&D and the Wizard Player says, "I cast fireball." and another person says, "Summoning a blast of fire is completely unrealistic." However they might take issue if the fireball did damage only to the enemies in the area of effect and did nothing to their allies. Because, assuming that one is capable of throwing a blast of fire (based on the reality of the D&D world) it seems weird that the fire wouldn't effect all flammable materials (and people) in the area of the blast.