How important is "realism"?

[Garthanos]

I find the signifiers for 'realism' vary widely depending on media type, genre, subgenre, day of the week, current barometric pressure, and individual whim.

(I'll try to be more helpful once my second cup of coffee kicks in)

Most of us have rather poor knowledge of what really is realistic which compounds the issue.

 

[Garthanos]

3. Us geeks can be oddly obsessive on minutiae.

They say the devil is in the details.

 

[Fenris-77]

Most of us have rather poor knowledge of what really is realistic which compounds the issue.

Well, to be fair I've never actually parkoured up a wall and stabbed a hobgoblin in the face while dodging tentacled death spells. I keep meaning to, but it's tough to organize around my work schedule.

 

[Sir Brennen]

They say the devil is in the details.

The nerds are in the nigglings.

 

[Garthanos]

Most of us have rather poor knowledge of what really is realistic which compounds the issue.

Well, to be fair I've never actually parkoured up a wall and stabbed a hobgoblin in the face while dodging tentacled death spells. I keep meaning to, but it's tough to organize around my work schedule.

I have climbed up the student union buildings on the local university campus in a way that might be less beautiful parkour but I haven't met the hobgoblin unless it related to "little minds" LOL, and tentacles of bureaucracy I am sure do not count.

 

[uzirath]

I agree that it is group- and genre-dependent.

With that said, for my fantasy games, I have mixed preferences. I tend to like the fundamentals of the world to feel realistic. Economies make some sort of sense. Political conflicts are believable. People behave generally as I would expect people to. There can be fantastic elements, of course, but there's at least a surface-level effort to integrate them into the fictional reality. I don't care about digging too deeply into the details. The GM should not require multiple PhDs.

For action scenes, I'm good with a pretty cinematic take on things. Fast and furious.

Somehow all of this fits together pretty well in my head.

 

[overgeeked]

How important is it that your games reflect reality? Examples include making coins in a D&D game more closely reflect the size and weight of real medieval money, limiting the number of predators in an area to a realistic number, or not having sound in space. Are there some specific "realistic" elements that make the game more fun, but other things that always disrupt the story? Or maybe you don't care at all?

My friends and I have been debating this, and I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks.

Verisimilitude is important. Proper realism is not. But, as others have said, adherence to expected genre conventions is more important, to me. I know space combat shouldn’t have sound...but any space combat that doesn’t have pew pew noises really throws me off. I blame Hollywood, but I’m more interested in fun that realism. But without some nods to it in the form of verisimilitude, I can’t enjoy it.

 

[dragoner]

Realism is the spice, I like some, except not too much; properly done it fades into the background. Totally unrealistic I find jarring.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

How important is it that your games reflect reality? Examples include making coins in a D&D game more closely reflect the size and weight of real medieval money, limiting the number of predators in an area to a realistic number, or not having sound in space. Are there some specific "realistic" elements that make the game more fun, but other things that always disrupt the story? Or maybe you don't care at all?

My friends and I have been debating this, and I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks.

I only need very basic realism in terms of physical reality. What matter to me is realism in terms of sociology and interpersonal interactions.

In the realm of physical realism, beyond basic stuff like gravity, I don't like to see insistence on realism to stop players from doing things they would normally expect to do in a game in the genre we're playing in. I do use reality as inspiration for what the players can do, however. Meaning, if the game doesn't allow a thing that is possible IRL, or limits something beyond the limits of reality, I'm gonna work out a way to get closer to the heights of human capability.

In 5e DnD, for instance, I treat jump distance, climbing and swimming at half speed, even combat movement speed, as the baseline or norm. If pcs want to go beyond those values, they can roll for it, and I have done some math to get a rough idea of how to manage that. I just can't stand when the system tells me that a very fit PC can "dash" at a slower pace than I walk my dog.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Or maybe you don't care at all?

This. I care about tropes, not science.