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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7639917" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Yeah, this echoes exactly my experience. There are a ton of ideas that I've had that I thought were cool and came from my understanding of "how the real world works" that turn out to be just annoying when you implement them in a game and don't add anything to the game, but instead detract from it.</p><p></p><p>Realistic languages are near the top of that list, but I'll add of the top of my head...</p><p></p><p>Realistic currency.</p><p>Realistic taxation.</p><p>Truly medieval cultures.</p><p>Numinous magic items.</p><p></p><p>You have no idea how much time I spent (and wasted) as a teenager trying to define original cuisines and cooking styles for the different cultures in my game.</p><p></p><p>It's not that any of those things are bad, it's just that they make (for somewhat different reasons) terrible focuses of play. Once they start intruding into your game, they start taking up time that could be spent on other more interesting issues. There is only so long that most people, including interested students of the subject like myself, are going to be interested in playing out realistic currency, realistic taxation, money changers, or even fiddly magic items with unexpected emergent properties if those unexpected emergent properties only have fiddly impact on the game.</p><p></p><p>What I've instead learned from all of this is that you can keep all this in a tool bag, and use it when it can add something to the game. So for example, you can keep the numinous magic, just apply it only to a few important items across the whole group, not to every single item that the players come across. You can do the whole "culture shock" thing when the players move between region, combining exposition with a bit of funny gameplay and a rare spot light on skills that might otherwise go unused (like knowledge of accounting or law). But if you make the pervasive problems of mundane life the focus of the campaign, it's going to get as dull and frustrating as mundane life often is.</p><p></p><p>And yes, ironically this means Gygax was more advanced in his DMing than is I think generally credited, and my objections to how "unrealistic" everything was were less intelligent than I thought they were when I was younger. I didn't really fully appreciate the 1e AD&D DMG until I was much older.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7639917, member: 4937"] Yeah, this echoes exactly my experience. There are a ton of ideas that I've had that I thought were cool and came from my understanding of "how the real world works" that turn out to be just annoying when you implement them in a game and don't add anything to the game, but instead detract from it. Realistic languages are near the top of that list, but I'll add of the top of my head... Realistic currency. Realistic taxation. Truly medieval cultures. Numinous magic items. You have no idea how much time I spent (and wasted) as a teenager trying to define original cuisines and cooking styles for the different cultures in my game. It's not that any of those things are bad, it's just that they make (for somewhat different reasons) terrible focuses of play. Once they start intruding into your game, they start taking up time that could be spent on other more interesting issues. There is only so long that most people, including interested students of the subject like myself, are going to be interested in playing out realistic currency, realistic taxation, money changers, or even fiddly magic items with unexpected emergent properties if those unexpected emergent properties only have fiddly impact on the game. What I've instead learned from all of this is that you can keep all this in a tool bag, and use it when it can add something to the game. So for example, you can keep the numinous magic, just apply it only to a few important items across the whole group, not to every single item that the players come across. You can do the whole "culture shock" thing when the players move between region, combining exposition with a bit of funny gameplay and a rare spot light on skills that might otherwise go unused (like knowledge of accounting or law). But if you make the pervasive problems of mundane life the focus of the campaign, it's going to get as dull and frustrating as mundane life often is. And yes, ironically this means Gygax was more advanced in his DMing than is I think generally credited, and my objections to how "unrealistic" everything was were less intelligent than I thought they were when I was younger. I didn't really fully appreciate the 1e AD&D DMG until I was much older. [/QUOTE]
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