D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes, Agatha Christie is extremely stylised detective fiction. It's not about verisimilitudinous social interaction.

What do you mean by "verisimilitude" and why do you think D&D needs it?

This is a heightened fantasy world, not a kitchen sink drama!

 

[pemerton]

What do you mean by "verisimilitude" and why do you think D&D needs it?

Verisimilitude is the property of seeming real or truthful.

This is a heightened fantasy world, not a kitchen sink drama!

Nor a drawing room mystery of the Agatha Christie variety. My inspiration is REH, Le Guin, JRRT and Chris Claremont.

Not solving puzzles by stylised questioning.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Verisimilitude is the property of seeming real or truthful.

Nor a drawing room mystery of the Agatha Christie variety.

Given the popularity of Agatha Christie, I would say you "verisimilitude" is highly overrated.

My inspiration is REH, Le Guin, JRRT and Chris Claremont.

Who sell a tiny fraction of the number of books as Agatha Christie. I wouldn't accuse Tolkien of being big on verisimilitude, anyway! Much of his dialogue is highly stylised. Come to think of it, I don't think Howard was aiming for "real" or "truthful" either.

Not solving puzzles by stylised questioning.

Nothing "stylised" about it. It emerges naturally by role-playing the characters. Puzzles do not have to be planned in advance of play.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

By observing and talking to them. Not, generally, by asking them the right questions. I'm not a police investigator or interrogator.

Of course, this leaves both the "extra chunky spaghetti sauce" and "rich, dark, hearty roast" issues untouched. These may quite easily go unnoticed without problem for one individual person interacting with a small number of people (where "small" can be even in the hundreds, aka relative to total population size), but a company reaching hundreds of thousands or even millions of people must grapple with them in most cases.

That is, the "extra chunky" problem is folks not necessarily knowing what things would make them most happy (by whatever means), while the "rich, dark, hearty roast" problem is that someone's actual tastes may be socially disfavored, e.g. most people actually do prefer mild roasts and "weak" coffee (meaning, low bean extraction rates).

You have to start asking carefully made questions to deal with these things. They're real and serious issues in anything built around taste...and I'm pretty sure games are a matter of taste.

 

[Gradine]

I guess you could say that verisimilitude represents a form of "in keeping with the genre trappings this particular campaign is inspired by"... but that's not exactly going to be a universal take

 

[Micah Sweet]

I guess you could say that verisimilitude represents a form of "in keeping with the genre trappings this particular campaign is inspired by"... but that's not exactly going to be a universal take

I prefer to think of it as, "in keeping with a consistent picture of a setting, where aspects of the world operate in a way that logically follows from the rules of that world.

 

[Gradine]

I prefer to think of it as, "in keeping with a consistent picture of a setting, where aspects of the world operate in a way that logically follows from the rules of that world.

Sure, it's a definition of "verisimilitude" that lends itself towards maintaining a suspension of disbelief.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, it's a definition of "verisimilitude" that lends itself towards maintaining a suspension of disbelief.

More the enjoyment one receives from experiencing something that is consistent and "makes sense" to you.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't remember if Druid's Tongue ever came up, back in our AD&D days, but Thieves' Cant did. Mostly in thief-oriented campaigns set in cities.

I saw both come up early in my 1e days, but very rarely. By the end of our playing 1e we had just dropped it from use.

 

[Staffan]

I don't think this advice is very applicable to 5e D&D combat: most 5e characters don't have combat as one of their weaker areas, but the game nevertheless sets out to make combat a challenge, and has fairly elaborate rules to this end (complex rules for turn-taking, and hit-and-damage, and resource depletion and recovery, etc).

If fighters were just allowed to be awesome at fighting, such that if you can get a fighter to a foe then that's that, 5e D&D would play very differently I think.

It might not be applicable to combat in D&D, because combat is such a big focus of the game. Everyone is supposed to be good at fighting, except in different ways. In Leverage it works to have one character as "the Hitter" because fighting is not a thing you expect to happen; if it does, things have gone wrong. But Eliot, the Hitter, is by no means only about hitting – he's also pretty good at grifting and fair at planning/masterminding (if specialized at backup/extraction plans).

But in D&D, it makes perfect sense to just let the Rogue be good at opening locks and sneaking around, or to let the Wizard understand arcane inscriptions and recognize magical creatures, and things like that.