How much does reality matter in your games?

[mhacdebhandia]

I like to use reality as an inspiration, but I don't like to be slave to my sources.

For example, I have an Honours degree in religious studies. For a homebrew setting I was working on a while back, I thought about the fact that standard D&D religions don't produce the same kind of societies that real-world religious beliefs do; apart from the issue of faith versus verifiable fact that everyone always raises, I also thought about how in human history religions splinter and multiply like crazy - so one of the things I set out to do is create a world in which two people could appear to share a religious faith and yet violently disagree with each other on specifics.

These days it seems more likely that I'm going to run at least a short Eberron campaign before getting around to my own setting (if I ever do the latter at all). Part of the reason that Eberron appeals to me is that it basically does the same thing - all certainty about the existence of the gods is removed, and there are hints that various groups believe very different things about the gods - the obscure belief among some sorcerers that the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six are ascended dragons, for example. That's the sort of feel I like - it's authentic.

That said, there's no way I'd use my sociological references to sketch out these groups! It's enough to get the feel right - details mean so very little.

 

[diaglo]

for the most part in my campaign:

reality is what you make it. if you can imagine something different. be prepared to experience it too.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

I like reality and fact painted with a broad brush, with an eye for general, rather than specific detail.

So, using piracy for an example, I love to see things that spell out the titles of crewmen and their duties, the general size of a ship and its potential crew, its general speed, and so on.

I don't need to know, as someone said, that barnacles are "species X". It's good enough for me to know that barnacles are there, and that they can cause problems for ships.

In other words, I glean info primarily for flavour, rather than for exacting realism.

Tell me what spices were popular trade items, tell me there's a mine carved entirely from salt and show me what it looked like - but don't tell me exactly how they carved it, because that won't come up in my games.

Tell me that there was a man whose job it was to light lanterns at night, but don't tell me the exact dimensions of the lantern, or the composition of the oil, unless one or both is extraordinary - doesn't much matter for my game.

The book Brunnelleschi's Dome is near perfect for me in this respect - I learned immense amounts about the culture of the time, the lives of artists and of construction workers. But I wasn't really bogged down with unneccessary info.

Patrick Y.

 

[Fergus]

Thought #1: Nothing should get in the way of having fun.

Thought #2: Reality is useful insofar that it helps people have more fun.

And these lead us to the inevitable...

Question: How can using reality make a game more fun?

Answer: Depends on the gamer.

I'll be the first person to vote this as one of the most unsatisfying answers, but at the same time it is the most specific answer that I can give. I can be more specific, however, with respect to how I use reality to make the game more fun for myself.

In a previous post to ENWorld I discussed the economics of brewing mead. I think that "make a craft roll and you make that many gp a week" is completely unsatisfying for a number of reasons: not all crafts make the same amount of money, some crafts are seasonal and make lots of money for certain periods of time and little money during others, there are many factors other than someone's skill that goes into making a product (quality of goods, local demand, etc.), and many more reasons. This mechanic is wholly unsatisfying to me and I find the idea of using this mechanic to make the game less fun for me. So I did some online research into medieval prices and with the help of ENWorlders (and most helpfully from my DM) we worked out the broad strokes of how mead makers both make mead and some ball park figures of what it would cost to do so. All it took were a few minds spending a few hours each and I feel like we came up with a much more plausible mead brewing economic model that just "roll one die". For myself, this is much more fun and at (relatively, I believe) low cost in terms of time spent outside of the game (i.e.: background research) and inside the game (i.e.: how much effort do players/DM have to expend to carry out this during game sessions). Low cost + an order of magnitude more realism = more fun.

My next step is to do a bit of research and find out how prevalent beekeepers/mead makers were (as the two seem to have occured hand-in-hand in medieval times) so I know what kind of towns it would be plausible to set up a meadery in different towns based on town location and town population. Again, this seems like a lost cost expedinture. I'd also probably do some basic "economics 101" reading to understand some basic economic principles that would affect running a business. Another low cost investment for some added realism. I also bought a used brewing book for $1.85 to understand the brewing process, brewing vocabulary, etc. More low cost for added realism.

I think that it would be natural to ask "okay, I get that this is how you use realism to make a game more fun, but why do you think that this is fun?" A fair question.

Two important aspects of enjoyment of a game are (1) depth of the world and (2) plausibility of the world.

By depth of world I mean that I should be able to poke the world a bit and the world should hold up and not be punctured. It is not fun to say "I want to start a meadery" and have my DM say "Okay, pay this amount of money in overhead and start making Craft(Brewing) rolls to see how much money you make. Now let's move on to..." That seems to me to lack depth of world necessary to have an enjoyable experience. At the same time, I think it would be poking too far if I asked my DM for the names of all the beekeepers in town, all of the inns in town, and roleplayed negotiating each individual deal with them, went through interviews for workers, etc. Where's the line between poking the right amount and poking too far? I have no hard and fast answer for you; it's an (often implicit and unstated) agreement in a gaming group.

By plausibility of world I mean... Well, let me start out by saying what I do not mean. I do not mean that there should be no surprises or that everything should be fully predictable. I do not mean that everything should have a logical derivation for why it happened. I do not mean that everything should have an air tight connection to historical fact. Now, on to what I do mean. Things that happen in the world should pass a "common sense" check for the world to be plausible. The idea of every village having a meadery does not pass my common sense check because I don't think that every village has beekeepers to make the honey byproducts to make mead with. However, without a bit of research, I can't be sure if my common sense is valid, so I think that having reality checks as a very of having an "educated" common sense. I'm happy with surprises and with things not always being how I expect them, and at the same time I'm quite unhappy if my "suspension of disbelief" is always being pushed to its limits. (I'd like to say that I would be satisfied if the DM explicictly said, for this example, that beekeepers in this world were more prevalent than in real life. That updates my common sense check with respect to the world we're gaming in.)

Taking this in a slightly different direction, I'd like to ask the question "why do many games not tie themselves at all or very much to reality?" I think that there are three reasons for this:

Reason #1: Outside of game cost. It takes time to read a book on brewing, to look up medieval pricing, to look up medieval brewing practices that differ from modern ones... DM'ing is a hard enough job without adding on extra research to it. My solution: have players do some prep work, too. I think that it's grossly unfair for DM's to have to do all of the prep work for a session while players expect to do nothing between session (aside from maybe leveling up). There is definitely some work that is DM-only and I accept that. At the same time, I think that players can help out by doing the outside of game work it would take to have games me a bit more realistic. My character wants to start a meadery? Great - I'm responsible for coming up with some background material on mead brewing. Want to start a mercenary company? Great - find some medieval warfare text and page through it. I think that players should be expected to invest time before sessions to help flesh out the world.

Reason #2: Inside of game cost. I think that many gamers expect that making their games more realistic will take up too much time during gaming sessions. I don't think that this has to be the case. For example, I don't think that adding realism to running a meadery is going to take up more than a few minutes a gaming session at the most. There will be some sessions (most sessions?) where the meadery isn't even mentioned and there's no time spent worrying about it. I think that this ties in with the "how much poking at a world is too much?" question I spoke of earlier. If my individual character would need an hour each game session to handle meadery concerns then I'm poking too much. If my character news a few minutes each game session to handle his meadery then I think that's the right amount; after all, my character would have to spend some time managing it so I should have to spend some time managing it.

Reason #3: Gamer goals and expectiations. I think that this is the biggest reason for a lack of realism in games (and I hope that I can write this without getting too preachy). I think that a vast majority of gamers who play D&D have the goal of "We want to kill bad guys" and pretty much only have that goal. If that's your goal, then the only thing you'd really need to have be detailed would be your combat system, and D&D provides that for you. Realism doesn't matter in other areas of the world because they are just vehicles to get to more killing. The original post spoke about sailing not being at all realistic, which I think should be expected if the gaming group is mainly focused on the combats that arise when you get to where you're going. Personally, one of my goals for any gaming experience is "I want to have a 'day in the life of' feeling." Because of that some realism is important to me. If that isn't one's goal, or if one doesn't have some kind of similar goal, then I wouldn't expect any amount of realism because, quite frankly, it isn't desired.

I would like to reiterate the disclaimer I made at the beginning of this post that I can only speak to what I find to be enjoyable.

 

[velm]

I realize it is a fantasy setting, and that is one of the reasons why I love RPGs. But, a little bit of reality helps to keep it grounded. Without that little bit of reality the players are just stuck there with a question mark over their heads.
Take, for example, a case that I had not long ago. It involved a small trading town, population of 300-350. Whe had to go the sewers to talk to someone (um, sure, sewers for 300-350 ok. a person lives down there, ok, I will bite.) So, we get down there, and once we get down there, the DM hands us some graph paper and it got into left field from there. The sewers had 'canals' that were 25ft across and 10ft deep. These were NOT underground streams of water, but, well, you know. It was when we saw this maze of sewers and catwalks that we were thinking to ourselves 'this is STUPID, it makes NO sense.'
That was one of the main reasons why that game folded, the DM consistly lost that grounding to basic reality. It was just hard for us as players to accept. I can accept the fact that my character can be sitting on a log in a forest and a squirrel will walk up to him and start conversing. Yes, he will probably jump off the log and be scared, but I, as a player, can accept that.

 

[Fergus]

It was when we saw this maze of sewers and catwalks that we were thinking to ourselves 'this is STUPID, it makes NO sense.'

I'd like to say that this is a great example of what I describe as my "common sense" test above. This example is an illustration of what happens when there is very little plausibility in a world and what it can do to the general enjoyment level. I can sympathize with your reaction. (Personally, I think that the sewer system for a town of 350 people would have been my breaking point in and of itself, but you probably have more patience than I do... *grin*)

 

[Y.O.Morales]

The only place where 'realism' had participation in my game was to create a more living world; to maintain close-enough weather patterns, seasons, terrain, etc. And of course, to help maintain that consistency.

But I really, really hate when people try to explain rules with 'realism' or real-world concepts. Rules, in a way, make easier to imagine or understand gaming concepts by referring to real-life notions that we have, but in another way, they were made to explain out-of-the-ordinary concepts that are part of, well, fantasy.

So anytime a player stops the game to discuss the 'realism' of a rule, I just tell him that we are acting in the context of a imaginary game, and remind him of people who go to fantasy/sci-fi movies and bi*** about 'impossible things' or 'lies' within them. Heck, the whole movie is a lie to start with.

 

[Kanegrundar]

Realism is more of a common sense issue in my games. If you try to do soemthing that totally goes against the laws of physics or something that a spell really wasn't designed to do, expect to have it denied.

It also comes down to what type of game I'm running. If it's Planescape, expect that anything can and likely will happen. However, if it's a modern-day crime noir game, reality is at the top of the things I strive for after having fun and creating an interesting series of events for the players.

Kane

 

[FickleGM]

I highly recommend that all DMs track down "The Writer's Complete Fantasy Reference." An excellent book for those looking to add just a touch of reality to their games.

I just wanted to second Phil's recommendation. I find that this is a good reference for homebrewers (of worlds, not the other brew). It doesn't read too technically, provides good facts and (since it is a Fantasy reference) gives sound advice for dealing with the fantastic.

 

[Trickstergod]

I'm of a few opinions:

First off, if I'm buying a book, I want the author's to be quite familiar with the subject. If they're writing about sailing, they should have a good grasp of the terminology, the ships and the technology they had in one time period or another, a bit about wind, the stars, and so on.

However, I don't necessarily think that they should put all of that into a book. What's important is that they know the material thoroughly and then deliberately decide to take certain things out because they're not particularly necessary, fun, or just too complicated.

Because if I'm going to buy a book on something, it is, in part, because I don't want to have to do all the research and what not. If I didn't mind everything being made up, though, then guess what? I'd do it myself, probably.

So book-wise, I want the author to have known the material and then deliberately taken things out as opposed to just not knowing about them to begin with.

In my games?

Generally, anything that I know wouldn't work or would be ineffective with pretty much a glance and no practical knowledge is something I hate, hate, hate. Double-weapons leap immediately to mind. I knew they were ineffective even without knowing a thing about them.

Conversely, however, things like genetics, the existence of 30', human shaped giants and what not, well, while I know that they are apparently quite impossible. But it's not something I would know without some practical knowledge on the matter. It can also be attributed to magic (something that a dire mace can't be).

By that same token, the more complex an explanation needed for why something would happen in a certain way, but without being obvious, well, the less likely I am to use it.

Now, if the people I'm gaming with or myself have a good understanding of some topic, I would welcome their input or probably tweak things just a bit to go with what I understand that the game system neglects. But, for the most part, the only things I have a problem with are those things that I don't need to do more than glance at, not know anything about it, yet still be able to point out and say "No, that just won't work." And even then, that's only with something fairly mundane.

Again, though, that's just my games; anyone writing a book abouts swords and armor, or tactics, or ships, should be competently knowledgeable on the subject.