D&D General How "Real" is your world?

[gamerprinter]

I love to world build, and have created many worlds over the years. I hate to always run back to my Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG), but it's the only setting that was fully developed and published in some kind of complete form. Because much of the design mindset in the project was trying fix the many issues I've found in the original Oriental Adventures, and while focusing on key cultural elements of the setting, I sought for nuance of detail, rather than comprehensiveness of every possible element. I focused on a dozen key aspects and delved deeply for each, rather than trying cover every possible aspect. Putting aside the magic, folklore and cosmic horror aspects, Kaidan was as close to an analog historical Japan that I could achieve. I think I nailed the realism and verismilitude. Now I use Kaidan is the bar I set for all my other setting designs.

 

[jmartkdr2]

"Good enough for an anime" is my actual standard. I worldbuild for fun so a lot of elements are deeper than that, but in practice I don't need a lot of 'realism'.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If it's a world I'm running, things need to make basic sense to me, someone with some historical/archaeological training, and who doesn't like it when it's not obvious where food/water is coming from, where waste is going to and so on.

Populations should not be larger than makes sense for the land being farmed/hunter-gathered/etc. Cities should be built in places that make sense for cities, and if they're not, there should be some kind of logical reason how they're still populated/operating.

I don't particularly believe in "realism" in the sense of "everyone in the past was a horrible person"-type settings, because I feel like archaeology deeply undermines that. "Everyone in the past was weird!", sure, but horrible? No. And stuff comes and goes. This was shown to me strikingly when someone tried to suggest "communist" societies never existed in the past, and whilst that's literally true on one level, societies which shared many characteristics with them, which were utopian and communitarian, often did exist (and usually an existing power structure would work extremely hard to stamp them out - but it's easy to envision that failing for various reasons). Equally, values-wise, I'm fine if most societies in a setting have somewhat stereotypically "modern" values. Honestly the Romans and Greeks had a lot of ideas that could easily have resulted in those values, and even back in the time of Hammurabi you see a mixture of very modern-seeming and enlightened thinking next to extremely brutal/barbaric stuff and more than anything, a lot of very practical ideas.

So my priority tends to be that things make sense in a "could this society/place function?" sense, an archaeological/anthropological sense.

 

[Reynard]

It's interesting how much people still cling to the idea of "realism" as a metric for success. I feel like that is rooted in D&D's simulation roots, where (despite Gygax's protestations to the contrary) the rules tried to model all manner of "real world" issues. Sure, it abstracted hit points and coin weight, but it also emphasized resource management and travel rules and had some very crunchy, simulationist combat and equipment rules. But I don't think any of those things make a world feel "real."

"Real" to me in the context of a fantasy world is not only that it feels lived in, as I mentioned above, but also that it is immersive. After all, we are immersed in our real world every moment of every day -- except when we are immersed in another world by way of a book or show or game. And by this immersion, I don't necessarily mean losing track of time and visualizing the world (although it can include those things) but primarily that responding to the world is automatic and instinctual. If the game world feels real, you don't have to stop and consider how your character (or the NPCs if you are the GM) would react in that situation. You just do, because you are immersed and the freedoms and constraints of the world are natural.

It is surprisingly difficult to articulate, actually.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's interesting how much people still cling to the idea of "realism" as a metric for success. I feel like that is rooted in D&D's simulation roots, where (despite Gygax's protestations to the contrary) the rules tried to model all manner of "real world" issues. Sure, it abstracted hit points and coin weight, but it also emphasized resource management and travel rules and had some very crunchy, simulationist combat and equipment rules. But I don't think any of those things make a world feel "real."

"Real" to me in the context of a fantasy world is not only that it feels lived in, as I mentioned above, but also that it is immersive. After all, we are immersed in our real world every moment of every day -- except when we are immersed in another world by way of a book or show or game. And by this immersion, I don't necessarily mean losing track of time and visualizing the world (although it can include those things) but primarily that responding to the world is automatic and instinctual. If the game world feels real, you don't have to stop and consider how your character (or the NPCs if you are the GM) would react in that situation. You just do, because you are immersed and the freedoms and constraints of the world are natural.

It is surprisingly difficult to articulate, actually.

I think I get what you mean. And this sort of evocation of the setting is what I really aim for. I try to design things mostly in broad strokes, with some details sprinkled on top. I try to make things thematically clear and coherent, and this also helps filling in the appropriate details when needed, as well as communicate the indented tone easily. Not that I don't think how things function at all, I do quite a bit, but I also try to keep in mind that exact specifics of things that are not pertinent to the characters' immediate experience are rarely actually needed. Like more "how would this world be described in an adventure novel" rather than "what sort of information an encyclopaedia would contain regarding this world."

Still, I like the world to have enough structure that it can some sort of independent existence outside of the characters. I.E. there is stuff happening in the background which the characters may or may not stumble upon, and which makes the world seem real, living place and can work as catalyst to interesting situations.

I wouldn't say that my approach isn't simulationist, it just is not solely that and the detail level of the simulation certainly varies depending on its relevance.

 

[billd91]

I value a certain degree of plausibility and verisimilitude in my campaigns for a couple of reasons. 1) It's easier to make the setting familiar to the players if the way people, weather, animals behave is similar to how the world around us works. 2) Like having stable rules, it helps set expectations for the players so they can better predict the outcomes of their actions and decisions.

 

[Shiroiken]

I generally try to go for a "realistic" world, and prefer to play in ones of similar style. My personal favorite aspect is that the world moves without the PCs. If the party hears rumors about a cultist plot, the events happen even if the party takes no action on it. Something else I do (and enjoy) is when parts of previous campaigns within the setting impact the current campaign, even if only a little. Things like this show that while the PCs might be the focus of the game, they're not the focus of the world.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I run mostly kanon Eberron, so the world is pretty solidly internally consistent and most things make sense within the setting. (Although this may change if the PCs encounter the daelkyr.)

As to how successful I am in making the world seem "real"? - You would probably have to ask my players.

 

[Lanefan]

"Real" to me in the context of a fantasy world is not only that it feels lived in, as I mentioned above, but also that it is immersive.

Agreed, and I'd add 'consistent' to that list; as in having seen something happen once, the characters (and thus the players) can be fairly confident it would happen again should the same circumstances arise.

I've found that for me that consistency can in part be achieved by having or inventing a science to underlay beneath the whole thing, that explains magic etc. in a physics sense and at the same time ties it to and-or integrates it with the physics we see around us every day.

My go-to line is often "it's real until it isn't", meaning that for mundane things (gravity, missile ranges, day and night, etc.) they're gonna work pretty much like the real world as best the game system will allow. From there, it's the underlying physics of magic that allows for the fantastic.

It is surprisingly difficult to articulate, actually.

Indeed.

 

[Blue]

I do exclusively homebrew settings, and then run them each for one campaign (or very rarely two) of four to seven years in length.

Each setting is internally consistent, making as much sense as it can while still following rules of the system I am using. There are lots of shades of grey, people (an expansive term here) have varied and believable motivations, etc.

It should seem real, given the limitations of the DM as the window into the world. To put it another way, if there was a Turing test about reality of the setting, there shouldn't be any red flags that it's not.

All of that said, since I do use Schrodinger's plotting and setting, nothing is true until it hits the table. So things can be revised as long as they don't impact anything already true (e.g. require a retcon), and those often are to help tell the story the table as a whole is interested in, as expanded in play from my thoughts on the needs for the next parts of the tale.