Legends and Lore - Nod To Realism

[Lum The Mad]

Once again, I am not impressed by Monte Cook's column. As someone else said, he seemed to have missed years of game development thinking.

Years of game development thinking! Oh, wow!

Let's not pretend that game development is science, alright?

If you are a quantum physicist and you miss years of quantum physics research, you might lack some FACTS that your fellow scientists have access to.

How does this transfer to the realm of gaming development where almost everything is based on matters of preference? Or did the 4th Edition reveal some FACTS about roleplaying that were hitherto unknown to man?

 

[Kraydak]

The biggest "realism" issues for me tend to come in large scale issues. I want NPCs (and also PCs, but that is less important) to act sanely. I want the game-world-as-is to be plausible based on the mechanics-that-are.

For examples, prior to 3e, NPCs behaved illogically with respect to magic items (no trade in magic items existed), and the game-world-as-was (magic items everywhere) was inconsistent with the mechanics-that-were (magic item creation difficult to impossible). This is a place where "it's magic" doesn't fix anything, because you want humanish characters to be, well, humanish, and the game world to be internally consistent.

I don't have problems with high level fighter bodies having more hp/volume or hp/weight than stone, and them able to casually walk away from huge falls. Enh. They are beyond normal human limits, so it is ok with me if they are actually, physically, tougher than stone (and this fits better with rules than a "luck" or "skill" argument). But, dammit, I want that human merchant to be, somewhat, interested in turning a profit. Or if not, there to be a convincing explanation of why not. I want the +1 weapons that are pouring out of my character's ears to have a plausible origin story. I don't care, pretty much at all, what that story is. Please don't tell me. But I care that it is there.

 

[Rogue Agent]

But, there is one thing that D&D 4th Edition failed to do : translate its mechanisms into concepts that are clear for the players, and the game masters. For someone used to D&D, fourth edition doesn't make not much sense at first. Those hit points don't represent what they used to, this funny push effect, those strange healings by using combat powers... It's all weird.

But weird doesn't mean that that it cannot make sense in a "realistc" way. It is all a question of defining the effect in a believable way.

What you're struggling to put your thumb on here is that 4E features dissociated mechanics to a degree previously unprecedented in D&D. While such mechanics can often be explained post hoc, this process of explanation is distinctly different from that found in roleplaying game mechanics.

This is the central problem I see with Cook's essays. He's artificially conflating two radically different concerns:

(1) The balancing act between the accuracy of a simulation and the ease of using that simulation. (In general, the more accurate you make a simulation the more difficult and complex it becomes to use. So there's a trade-off. Like most trade-offs, there'll be a sweet spot. And that sweet spot will vary from one player to the next.)

(2) The distinction between associated and dissociated mechanics.

To be fair, this is a confusion often found among fans, too. But a lot of the dissatisfaction with 4E comes from #2. And if you try to solve that problem by tweaking #1, you won't solve it.

To make matters even more complicated, you can probably also toss the sense of "lost utility" from guidelines which were removed entirely from 4E. AD&D and D&D3 reached their state of complexity not because people just randomly added crap to them. That extra stuff was mostly added because somebody, at some point, needed that information. This, of course, also needs to be balanced against the emergent complexity of the ruleset. And there's no easy answer for that, either.

But it, too, isn't a problem you'll solve by just tweaking #1.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

This is also true under the action economies of 3e/Pathfinder. I think you have to go back to the long, abstract rounds found in 1e/2e before you return to actions being declared in natural language which doesn't chafe against the mechanical framework.

That's true. It is also true that one's approach to the action economy is going to determine how immersive it may be (or at least the iimits of that immersion). At our table, it would never occur to a player to try to squeeze something out of a move, much less a minor. The standard is all that matters to them, unless they want to do something else in the fiction. In which case, they say what they want to do. If that uses moves and/or minors, great. If not, they still want to do that. (Part of this is because we aren't playing the tactical game to the max. If you play any roleplaying like a tactical skirmish game, your play will edge towards a tactical skirmish boardgame. If you don't, it won't.)

Not infrequently, the less mechanic savvy players at our table are surprised to find that their stated actions only take moves and/or minors, and they still have a standard left. When this happens, they will often react with an at will attack. "Oh, I did all that and still get to smack someone? Longsword to the gut for this nearby orc, then."

That said, it is certainly true that compartmentalizing actions this way is going to encourage some people to think about the mechanics instead of the related fiction. (Yet another reason that I like my "dual action" proposal to an earlier Legends and Lore. It doesn't have this issue.) OTOH, this is back to a preference on pizza toppings issue. To wit, compartmentalizing hit locations: some find D&D style hit points preferable to immersion because it is so easy to handle, while others prefer something like the Runequest hit locations diagram, because you don't need to go through mental gyrations to visualize what "called shot to the face" means. It is going to depend heavily on whether being able to "waste him in the knee with my crossbow" is high on your list.

 

[pemerton]

For new players (IME), the biggest thought-demanding mechanical decision is choosing your attack with an AEDU character. Their internal motivation is to attack a guy, but they have to step out of the game, look at their sheet/cards and pick the specific attack they want to make. Even with more experienced players, their decision is based more on the out-of-game list of powers (with the consideration of whether they want to blow a daily/AP) than it is on the in-game situation.

I don't find this very different, in the way it plays, from a D&D magic-user deciding what spell to cast, or a spell user in a power point based game deciding what spell to use.

In the fiction, the PC is wondering what manoeuvre to peform, or (in the case of daily/AP) whether to risk an extra burst of effort.

I think of this issue as one of immersiveness -- not in Monte's slightly strange use of the term, but in the sense of asking how much of the player's time is spent thinking about what is happening inside the fiction as opposed to thinking about the rules mechanics. The more the players have to step "outside the game", either to justify the mechanics or simply to select their next action, the less the players are thinking about the fiction itself.

I don't find hit points immersive at all. What is happening to my PC when s/he takes 4 hp damage from a dagger, or a magic missile?

I can intuitively record that x hp have been deducted from the character sheet while almost effortlessly imagining a corresponding loss of something to the character in the fiction.

Loss of what? Blood? Flesh? Mojo?

There was a whole RPG industry (from the late 70s to mid 80s) based on the fact that a large number of RPGers found hit points incompatible with immersion and verisimilitude. (I was one such.)

hit points and the d20 vs. DC system can sometimes produce results that are sufficiently counter-intuitive that they pull players outside the system (e.g. massive falling damage).

But these rules have the considerable merit of being very simple.

Runequest's d100, roll under is simpler than the d20 system. It's basic combat mechanics are a bit more complex.

Rolemaster's combat mechanics are pretty complex, but in my experience are also pretty immersive - because no one has to step out of the fiction and think about things from a meta-level in order to know what is going on. You just roll the dice.

The example I was thinking of is the tracking of health and injury. Almost anything designed to create a "more realistic" description of the topic than hit points involves making the game much more detailed and complex, which explains why D&D is still stuck on a videogame health bar.

If you go to Classic Traveller or Basic Roleplaying - where the health pool is based on the PC's physical stat(s) - you straight away increase verisimilitude without increasing complexity.

Jorune (I think - it's been a while) also had a simple health level system which increases verisimilitude without increasing complexity.

Classic hit points are ludicrously unrealistic, but in the heat of play you can easily overlook that fact, as the DM narrates grisly wounds and splattering gore.

Many aspects of 4e - hit point depletion, healing, forced movement, etc - can be handled the same way. These are all examples of what I mentioned upthread, namely, rules that distribute the authority to say what is happening in the fiction, plus an implicit constraint that those descriptions of the gameworld must abide by genre/verisimilitude constraints.

 

[pemerton]

I don't know what sort of effective circulation the Legends and Lore articles have on the WotC site, but I believe they are targeted at a much broader audience than EnWorld or any of the dank corners of the internet in which more in depth debates on game design occur. As such, I think a back to basics approach, looking at all sorts of fundamental elements of the game in general terms, is a fine approach.

I've got nothing against back-to-basics. But Monte's column doesn't get back to the basics. It seems to assume a whole lot of non-basic stuff.

Monte works as part of the team developing 5E and I am sure his topics are run by the group working on that project along with the nomenclature they are using to get the general idea across. As said up thread by LurkAway, most of us understand what he means when he uses the word "realism"

I think we all know what Monte is trying to get at it

<snip>

I think this article is measuring the desire to achieve "realism", not measuring "realism" itself.

I don't know what Monte's trying to get at. I can guess - purist-for-system simulationist priorities in rule design - but I'm not sure. This is because he doesn't distinguish between different ways a ruleset can secure realism - such as a rule stating limits on the way any participant can characterise any outcome of the action resolution mechanics.

folks on EN World have had discussions on the minutiae of definitions in there. But while we are within his target audience, we are probably not the majority of his audience

<snip>

Keeping the likely purpose of his piece, and the full audience, in mind, and that word use makes some sense to me.

I don't care what word he uses. But if he is going to assume that the only way to ensure "realism" is to have simulationinst mechanics, than he's already suggesting that he doesn't understand important elements of 4e's design. Or is rejecting them without explanation.

But maybe WotC doesn't care to retain the custom of those who like 4e for the ways it differs from classic D&D.

 

[Lum The Mad]

For me even the crunchiest crunch needs realism.

Let's make a ridiculous example. Let's say we design a new rule for grapple.
And we come up with the following:
To start a grapple, you need to grab and hold your target. Starting a grapple requires a successful Charisma Check. If you have Item Creation feats you can attempt to start a grapple multiple times (depending on the number of Item Creation feats you have).

What is wrong with this rule? You could play D&D 3rd Edition with this rule with no problems at all. Yet nobody will use it. Why is that? Because everytime grapple would come up, every fiber of your being would screem 'WTF is this? Charisma has nothing to do with Grapple! And Item Creation feats don't either!'

Admittedly no real rule is that ridiculous. But some people seem to have a higher threshold of what they can tolerate while other people have a lower threshold.

I am one with a lower threshold.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

If familiarity enables immersion, then so does intuitive mechanics.

If I'm using an iPhone or iPad, it's easy to pick up that sliding open 2 fingers is to zoom in. Very little learning needs to happen. That finger action isn't purely simulationist of anything (it's probably a vague abstraction of a lens opening?) but it's a very transparent and immersive-enabling interface.

While rpg mechanics aren't directly comparable to smartphone interfaces, I think some learned mechanics are more immersive-enabling than other learned mechanics. I can intuitively record that x hp have been deducted from the character sheet while almost effortlessly imagining a corresponding loss of something to the character in the fiction. Whereas other learned mechanics, like bloodied and action economy tactics, are not a transparent interface for me to the fiction. Is that my failure to learn and internalize the mechanic, or does it have at least something to do with the opaqueness of the mechanic?

The real answer here is that we don't know. And until someone does a controlled study on it, we still won't know.

Since I remember learning all those mechanics fresh (even if divided by many years), I can say that for me it was all about internalizing the mechanic. I find them about equally easy to visualize. But then, maybe those all happen to be things that hit me well. And you can't entirely discount outside experience, either. RPG fighting mechanics I find easy to internalize, post fencing experience, is a somewhat different list than what I found equally easy, prior. I believe a similar distinction has been raised among gamers who have a heavy dose of certain disciplines represented in the players (e.g. physics majors getting frustated with the internal logic of fireball spells, et. al.)

And that doesn't even get into simple operations that one would expect to be about equally easy--and so easy in any case that you would expect any distinctions to be trivial. Yet I believe there has been research to show that some people are more distracted by comparing two small numbers and picking the higher one, while others are more distracted by adding two numbers and comparing to a target number. Distraction leads to some decrease in immersion (however difficult to measure in practice).

 

[aurance]

You know, the main thing that bothers me about these posts - his ambiguously self-affirming poll questions.

Let me explain it by a metaphor. They're phrased much like this:

"We should help the starving." Rate 1 to 5.

Most people would answer "5," and I'm concerned that when they do, he would take that they agree with his interpretation of "5", when in fact there's probably more variability in that "5" than answering "1".

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Admittedly no real rule is that ridiculous. But some people seem to have a higher threshold of what they can tolerate while other people have a lower threshold.

I am one with a lower threshold.

Yes. And most people seem to have varying thresholds depending upon a given aspect of the game, sometimes widely so. If you had that rule, there would eventually be someone that came to terms with the Charisma check, but the Item Creation feats part was simply a bridge too far.