technoextreme
Explorer
Why? 3E is an aberant game compared to previous editions. 4E in general was a heck of a lot more closer to the original game.
Gygax on Realism in Game Design
- Thread starter GreyICE
- Start date
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I think Gary missed the point with this particular essay in the same way that a lot of people miss the point here every day on ENWorld:
Often, a cry for "realism!" isn't a cry for a better grounding in "reality." It usually falls into one of two camps.
The first camp is those who want "realism" because some element of the game breaks their suspension of disbelief. Like I pointed out elsewhere,
In this case, it's not a cry for a realistic modeling, it is a cry for greater detail and more logical underpinning. This is key, because once you obliterate a willing suspension of disbelief, the game becomes a LOT less fun. The more you're reminded that you're a bunch of folks playing make-believe, the less fun the game is, the less you're able to imagine you're playing an awesome hero in a fantastic world.
The second camp are those who want "realism" due to a certain genre expectations. Things like "grim-n-gritty combat rules" and the like go with this. Some folks from day 1 have wanted D&D to be less mythically heroic than it tends to be, and substitute "that's not realistic!" for "that doesn't meet my genre expectations!"
While it wasn't nearly as tired a stereotype in the Original's day as it is now, the argument still doesn't hold much water. "It's FANTASY, you can't expect REALISM!" doesn't address the ACTUAL design problems with your game: a weakness of support, or a failure of communication.
Often, a cry for "realism!" isn't a cry for a better grounding in "reality." It usually falls into one of two camps.
The first camp is those who want "realism" because some element of the game breaks their suspension of disbelief. Like I pointed out elsewhere,
In this case, it's not a cry for a realistic modeling, it is a cry for greater detail and more logical underpinning. This is key, because once you obliterate a willing suspension of disbelief, the game becomes a LOT less fun. The more you're reminded that you're a bunch of folks playing make-believe, the less fun the game is, the less you're able to imagine you're playing an awesome hero in a fantastic world.
The second camp are those who want "realism" due to a certain genre expectations. Things like "grim-n-gritty combat rules" and the like go with this. Some folks from day 1 have wanted D&D to be less mythically heroic than it tends to be, and substitute "that's not realistic!" for "that doesn't meet my genre expectations!"
While it wasn't nearly as tired a stereotype in the Original's day as it is now, the argument still doesn't hold much water. "It's FANTASY, you can't expect REALISM!" doesn't address the ACTUAL design problems with your game: a weakness of support, or a failure of communication.
Ah, you underestimate Gygax. He did have many words to say about logic.
As its rules were specifically designed
to make it fun and enjoyable, and the consensus of opinion is that D&D
is so, does it need to have logical justification of any or all of its rules?
Because logic does not necessarily create an enjoyable game form, the
reply must be generally negative. Logic, even game logic, must be
transcended in the interest of the overall game. If an illogical or inconsistent
part fits with the others to form a superior whole, then its very
illogicalness and inconsistence are logical and consistent within the
framework of the game, for the rules exist for the play of the game, although
all too often it seems that the game is designed for the use of the
rules in many of today’s products. When questioned about the whys
and wherefores of D&D I sometimes rationalize the matter and give
“realistic” and “logical” reasons. The truth of the matter is that D&D
was written principally as a game — perhaps I used game realism and
game logic consciously or unconsciously when I did so, but that is begging
the question. Enjoyment is the real reason for D&D being created,
written, and published.
-------------------------
I think there's a lot to say for this approach, and there's been several exemplar systems of it recently. From AD&D's save versus everything, we got it narrowed down to Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. Not particularly realistic categories, but it beat having "Save versus poison, save versus death, save versus red ants, save versus stinky socks." Then those got overused and had corner cases (for instance, how do you model a swarm of rats having individual members of the swarm clinging to you and still chewing? Is that a Fortitude, Reflex, or Will save) and it got simplified to Saving Throws. What does a Saving Throw do? It represents your chance to shake off an effect. Is it logical that every character has the same chance to shake off most every effect? Meh, maybe. But being blinded just isn't any fun, and a 50% chance to shake it off every round makes it much less likely to ruin your experience (over being essentially taken out of combat).
Also,
"If an illogical or inconsistent
part fits with the others to form a superior whole, then its very
illogicalness and inconsistence are logical and consistent within the
framework of the game"
I think that Gygax just told everyone to "Not sweat the corner cases" a memo game designers still haven't gotten in 2012!
As its rules were specifically designed
to make it fun and enjoyable, and the consensus of opinion is that D&D
is so, does it need to have logical justification of any or all of its rules?
Because logic does not necessarily create an enjoyable game form, the
reply must be generally negative. Logic, even game logic, must be
transcended in the interest of the overall game. If an illogical or inconsistent
part fits with the others to form a superior whole, then its very
illogicalness and inconsistence are logical and consistent within the
framework of the game, for the rules exist for the play of the game, although
all too often it seems that the game is designed for the use of the
rules in many of today’s products. When questioned about the whys
and wherefores of D&D I sometimes rationalize the matter and give
“realistic” and “logical” reasons. The truth of the matter is that D&D
was written principally as a game — perhaps I used game realism and
game logic consciously or unconsciously when I did so, but that is begging
the question. Enjoyment is the real reason for D&D being created,
written, and published.
-------------------------
I think there's a lot to say for this approach, and there's been several exemplar systems of it recently. From AD&D's save versus everything, we got it narrowed down to Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. Not particularly realistic categories, but it beat having "Save versus poison, save versus death, save versus red ants, save versus stinky socks." Then those got overused and had corner cases (for instance, how do you model a swarm of rats having individual members of the swarm clinging to you and still chewing? Is that a Fortitude, Reflex, or Will save) and it got simplified to Saving Throws. What does a Saving Throw do? It represents your chance to shake off an effect. Is it logical that every character has the same chance to shake off most every effect? Meh, maybe. But being blinded just isn't any fun, and a 50% chance to shake it off every round makes it much less likely to ruin your experience (over being essentially taken out of combat).
Also,
"If an illogical or inconsistent
part fits with the others to form a superior whole, then its very
illogicalness and inconsistence are logical and consistent within the
framework of the game"
I think that Gygax just told everyone to "Not sweat the corner cases" a memo game designers still haven't gotten in 2012!
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I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
There, he doesn't seem to be allowing for the fact that, for some people at some points, illogical and arbitrary rules DEEPLY hurt the enjoyment of the game, due to what I pointed out above. What points those are may vary for people ("Halflings make no sense when they are 2.5 feet tall! They must be at least 3.5 feet tall to make sense!"; "Wait, why does one night's rest heal all my grievous injuries?"; "Man, what's the deal with six-foot long greatswords?!"), but it happens to most people at some point, and telling people to suck it up isn't going to make them enjoy the game any more.
Steely_Dan
First Post
Mind blowing, this thread should have been closed/locked instantly.
Scribble
First Post
I've found that's pretty much the ONLY way to actually play the game.
Sooner or later someone sees something that they disagree with (and surprise surprise it's almost always something related to why their character is about to be eaten by something). Also factor in that a lot of people base these arguments off of their own world view assumptions which might differ from that of the designer (the katana was of near mythical stuff! I saw Bodyguard it should do WAY more damage then that! This is unrealistic and breaks my suspension of disbelief!)
Eventually you just have to say "Because that's just the way the damn game is- suck it up bitch nozzle, or I'ma deduct 1d6 off of your next characters stats!"
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
Oh Gary, I do miss you.
Even though you called me a scoundrel.
Even though you called me a scoundrel.
I think he is, if you read the feature (Dragon Magazine #16 , so, pretty ancient), saying "the rules cannot possibly cover every single corner case, so if you accept that then the game works best as an integrated whole, even if certain parts seem illogical."
In other words, some people may be offended by 2.5 ft halflings. Some people may be offended that status conditions are not specifically given for each monster and varied enough to encompass all of them. Some people may be offended that fireballs don't act volumetricly in enclosed areas. Some people may be offended by the fact that gangrene is not properly modeled in their fantasy game.
But if the game is presented as a unified whole that is fun to play, people should accept these quirks and have fun with the game. Or at least game designers are not about to try and make sure that each condition has exceptions for all relevant monsters.
Anyway, it's just interesting to dig up the origins of some of this stuff, especially when they talk about going back to the beginning. Minus the polearms (what? Gygax REALLY liked Polearms)
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Scribble said:
I've found that's not really true.
The thing is, when folks play D&D, what is important to them is different. You need detail for the things which are important, and you need to be able to ignore the things that are not important. What is important to a given person is always fairly arbitrary, from a game-design perspective. Whether you have a game where encumbrance matters or not is largely arbitrary: some folks wouldn't love the game without it, others haven't bothered to track equipment weight ever. The folks that love it would have a big problem if the game all of a sudden said "NO ENCUMBRANCE!" The folks that don't like it would have a big problem if the game all of a sudden said "ENCUMBRANCE RULES ARE VERY IMPORTANT AND WILL BE USED AS THE CORE DESIGN METRIC."
The big thing is that, at various points in history, D&D has largely decided to tell people what SHOULD be important, and what SHOULDN'T be important. It has tried to dictate that to them. It's been more effective in current e's (3e and 4e have highly networked rulesets, which is part of why disentangling them is so difficult), but it's been tried since Gygax's day.
But you can't dictate that to people. It's not just inadvisable, it's often impossible. For me, for instance, no matter how much any D&D edition tries to tell me that MINIS ARE VERY IMPORTANT FOR A PLAY EXPERIENCE, I never want to use them. If you tightly weave their use into your ruleset, you don't make me use minis, you just cripple your ruleset. Similarly, if D&D turned around and forbade minis and didn't enable them and allowed their use only for simple visualizations, folks who really like them wouldn't adapt, they'd rebel. These are not logical positions, these are arbitrary likes and dislikes. You have to let people decide what they want out of the experience themselves, and try to provide them that. You have to let people take ownership of their own D&D games.
If D&D falls down on what is important to you, you won't have fun playing it. Because what's important to a given person is mostly arbitrary, trying to dictate any one ruleset as THE CORRECT ONE is going to go horribly awry. Gygax's rules were great for Gygax, but the moment Dave Arneson got his paws on them, they were changed for Arneson's purposes. They're different people, and considered different things to be important for their games. And so it has been unto the Nth generation.
Scribble said:
See, there's two reasonable responses to such a thing.
The first is to admit the thing isn't important and go with the flow.
The second is to say, "Wait, no, if the game works that way, that's not fun for me. If the point of the game is my enjoyment, and the game works that way, it fails. Lets go play flashlight tag in the park instead."
Life's full of awesome distractions. No one needs to play D&D. Playing D&D is actually kind of a commitment. If D&D doesn't deliver the enjoyment you want, there's plenty of other things to fill your free time with. Because what can ruin a D&D game can be so specific and arbitrary, if you're going to make a D&D that reaches the largest possible audience, you're going to want a D&D that isn't dogmatic about what you need to accept as a precondition of playing it.
GreyICE said:
This presumes that you have more fun playing a game that annoys you than you would have doing anything else.
For most people, that's not true. For me, that's kind of true, but I've got a design bug in me so even bad games are interesting to me.
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DM Howard
Explorer
I think what needs to be said is that it is up to the individual DMs to make their games as plausible (not realistic) as they want them to be. If someone wants a realistic game they are looking for a simulation which is far beyond the true scope of RPGs such as D&D, C&C and the like.
