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<blockquote data-quote="Alex319" data-source="post: 5453337" data-attributes="member: 45678">Most of what Soren says is accurate, and I would expand on it by saying that one good test of whether or not a feature added for &quot;realism&quot; is worth it is:(1) Does the feature help teach players to play the game in the way Soren describes?(2) Does the feature add to the strategy of gameplay in its own right?If the answer to those questions are both &quot;no&quot;, then it's probably not worth adding extra complexity for. Magic: The Gathering designer Mark Rosewater frequently describes this in terms of &quot;complexity points&quot;: You only have a certain amount of &quot;complexity points&quot; to &quot;spend&quot; before the game becomes too complex and you lose your audience, so you have to spend them wisely.Here's some examples:1. I played a game called &quot;Road to the White House&quot; at a con last weekend. The game simulated a presidential primary. You had these pieces representing candidates and campaign staff that you moved around the board, and then these event cards came up. When you draw an event card you have to cross-reference the issues on the event card with your candidate's positions and then do some math to figure out which states you gain or lose votes in (for instance, a card labeled &quot;health care costs rise&quot; would make candidates who supported the &quot;current health care system&quot; lose votes.) This was a complicated process that took several minutes to resolve each card, and dozens of cards came up over the course of the game. However, it didn't really add much strategy, because your candidates' positions were fixed and the event cards were random so there was no way to affect or plan for the event cards. It certainly added realism, but the realism wasn't really essential to activate the &quot;schema&quot; (the &quot;election&quot; schema was already very clear). So I thought that mechanic added a lot of complexity and slowdown for little benefit.2. Agricola, an example used by Soren in his article. There are lots of things in the game that don't fit the &quot;farming schema&quot;, such as the length of time between harvests shortening as the game goes on, and each action space only being usable by one player per turn. But that doesn't really interfere with your learning of the game, because once you understand the farming part of it you can learn the rest.3. I remember a long discussion on these boards about whether 4e swarms can be grabbed, with some players saying it isn't realistic and other saying you can as long as you can describe how you're doing it in a way that makes sense. From this perspective, calling the action &quot;grabbing&quot; is good because it activates the &quot;grabbing schema&quot; (when you grab the target you're holding on to it) but once that is done, it doesn't hurt your understanding to say that you can (or can't) grab a swarm, so that decision should be made based on what is better for the gameplay.4. It's also interesting to thing about how Soren's argument would apply to things like magic. Since magic doesn't exist in real life, the only pre-existing &quot;magic schema&quot; people will have is what comes from other games.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Alex319, post: 5453337, member: 45678"] Most of what Soren says is accurate, and I would expand on it by saying that one good test of whether or not a feature added for "realism" is worth it is: (1) Does the feature help teach players to play the game in the way Soren describes? (2) Does the feature add to the strategy of gameplay in its own right? If the answer to those questions are both "no", then it's probably not worth adding extra complexity for. Magic: The Gathering designer Mark Rosewater frequently describes this in terms of "complexity points": You only have a certain amount of "complexity points" to "spend" before the game becomes too complex and you lose your audience, so you have to spend them wisely. Here's some examples: 1. I played a game called "Road to the White House" at a con last weekend. The game simulated a presidential primary. You had these pieces representing candidates and campaign staff that you moved around the board, and then these event cards came up. When you draw an event card you have to cross-reference the issues on the event card with your candidate's positions and then do some math to figure out which states you gain or lose votes in (for instance, a card labeled "health care costs rise" would make candidates who supported the "current health care system" lose votes.) This was a complicated process that took several minutes to resolve each card, and dozens of cards came up over the course of the game. However, it didn't really add much strategy, because your candidates' positions were fixed and the event cards were random so there was no way to affect or plan for the event cards. It certainly added realism, but the realism wasn't really essential to activate the "schema" (the "election" schema was already very clear). So I thought that mechanic added a lot of complexity and slowdown for little benefit. 2. Agricola, an example used by Soren in his article. There are lots of things in the game that don't fit the "farming schema", such as the length of time between harvests shortening as the game goes on, and each action space only being usable by one player per turn. But that doesn't really interfere with your learning of the game, because once you understand the farming part of it you can learn the rest. 3. I remember a long discussion on these boards about whether 4e swarms can be grabbed, with some players saying it isn't realistic and other saying you can as long as you can describe how you're doing it in a way that makes sense. From this perspective, calling the action "grabbing" is good because it activates the "grabbing schema" (when you grab the target you're holding on to it) but once that is done, it doesn't hurt your understanding to say that you can (or can't) grab a swarm, so that decision should be made based on what is better for the gameplay. 4. It's also interesting to thing about how Soren's argument would apply to things like magic. Since magic doesn't exist in real life, the only pre-existing "magic schema" people will have is what comes from other games. [/QUOTE]

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