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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 4742078" data-attributes="member: 77019">The issue is ultimately internal consistency, and the confusion I think it comes back to whether or not you are in a Genre. We can recognize certain clear Genres that are well defined in pop culture: "Toon", Star Wars, Film Noire, Superhero, Western, etc. These are generally understood by most people, so non-gamers can fairly easily guess the basic rules of these worlds; falling doesn't kill you in a Toon world, spaceships make noise in outer space and "The Force" works like Magic in Star Wars etc. To me any game which is fairly accessible to regular folks is a healthier game. When it comes to Fantasy RPG's, some people have always assumed a relatively consistent realistic / historically based world, with well defined magic and mythological elements laid over that. Many other people have always played in a variety of default Fantasy Genres of some kind.... which has brought great enjoyment to people playing with their friends in their own groups. The problem with these 'default' Genres is that they are not explicitly defined as such. The default FRPG Genre is actually a lot of baggage from a myriad of games, tv shows, films, books, which find their way into individual games and also rules systems. It's basically something wich comes out of gamer culture, and is always interpreted differently by each group of players. The latter approach causes a serious problem for many people when certain rules systems enforce an (always slightly different) very specific type of pseudo-High Fantasy Genre, making the other realistic, historical, or specific literary subgenres (Tolkein, Vance, Moorcock, Leiber) based games all but impossible to play within the system (without heavy house-rules). There are many clearly defined subGenres within Fantasy or Sci Fi which have been quite successful: Call of Cthulhu, Steampunk, Vampires, Paranoia, Space Opera, Post-Apocalypse, Conan, Dying Earth, Warhammer etc. etc. Games based on these genres are usually successful because people clearly know what they are getting into. I think the problem with DnD is that a frankly rather cartoonish (but serious!) FRPG Genre enforcing a very specific type of game play has been imposed upon it. Some people really like this default Genre (in it's various wildly different incarnations 2nd, 3rd or 4th Ed, Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Grayhawk etc. etc.), but not everybody does, and more importantly, I personally think people who haven't already been playing RPGs for decades often find them rather alienating. For me personally, these are Genre I got into as a kid, but I can't get really enjoy any more as an adult.  I also think people don't realize how off-putting some of the assumptions which make up this Genre are to regular folks who aren't gamers, and how much this "default genre" isolates gamers and keeps games like DnD deep inside a niche. Anybody who saw Star Wars gets the Star Wars Genre. Maybe it's a little nerdy, but if you like Star Wars, you'll have no problem fitting into a Star Wars game. The only way you can really know this default FRPG genre is really to have memorized a lot of RPG manuals and / or played hundreds of hours of RPGs. This makes it much harder for 'normal' people to buy into, IMO. When I have tried to introduce people to DnD, and they ask me "Wait, that guy is an ordinary human fighter, but he fell off the fifth story of the building and he can still run away?" or "Why does being stabbed with a dagger hurt less than being hit with a stick? Isn't a Dagger a big knife like this big?" I don't really know what to tell them, other than "well that is just the rules of the game...<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" />". I think there are a variety of ways to play RPGs, there is no reason why people can't play any way they want including games where you can surf on lava if you want to. But people new to RPGs, and even people who have played for years but have some knowledge of history, weapons, martial arts, biology etc. etc., may feel more comfortable with a game that isn't based on this particular, frankly rather strange FRPG Genre that has come to seem normal to us by default, in much the same way as a Renaissance Faire comes to be the 'normal' version of Medieval History for a lot of people.  By contrast, a realistic basis for your game means you have a world you can understand without already being immersed in gamer culture, and has the additional advantage that it is automatically internally consistent, without tons of wierd gymnastic tinkering with the rules to make them balance. G.</blockquote>

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