Legends and Lore - Nod To Realism

[Pour]

Or when my wife's psion used Mind Thrust on a skeleton and *bloodied* it. That completely ruined her immersion in the game thereafter.

I'm not presuming to tell your wife how to have fun, but just because of specific terminology like bloodied the immersion was ruined for her?

My groups and I never considered bloodied literal, rather the skeleton lost an arm and all of its ribs, gained a huge fracture across its jaw, and now hobbled instead of scrambled toward the wizard (where upon I'd then notify the party the skeleton was bloodied, or at half hp).

Rainbow Blades can be performed in so many different ways, maybe as an upward thrust across an orc's chest, or a quick swipe to cut a chandelier cord, or a dazzling arc to momentarily distract the swooping peryton. In my interpretation of 4e, nothing is entirely literal. It's what you make of it. Healing surges, encounter and daily powers, warlord healing are all the mechanics to represent in-game occurrences. The mechanics are not always happening in-character, what they represent is happening, largely flavored and filtered through the players and DM.

I suppose I can see a division between the idea of in-game and the out of game that uses rules terminology, but I've always played D&D like that, ever since I was a cleric using up my turn healing hp and whenever the party discussed tactics, or even when one of us made a joke or asked about a check or ruling. The divorce between in game and out doesn't jar me, nor restrict me, I guess is all.

 

[Argyle King]

I think more of a nod toward realism would help D&D. Obviously I am speaking from personal preference. I am aware 'realism' is not a concern for many groups.

However; while I understand and am capable of enjoying games which do not aim to be simulations of realism, I do prefer at least a nod. There have been a lot of times during my experience with 4E in which I felt as though D&D was not giving any nod toward realism, and was instead flipping realism the bird as D&D drove by. It was jarring enough for me when I was new to 4E that I sought out (for the first time) a non-D&D gaming experience. I've gotten to a point where I can now enjoy 4E, but it requires me to turn certain parts of my brain off and/or view my character as a game piece first and a rpg character second - which I am capable of doing, but that's not my preferred style of play.

I am completely aware that magic, orcs, and dragons are not real. Though -generally speaking- I do not believe being fictional means something should be free to just fly in the face of expectation. I expect a magic fireball to catch things on fire. I expect D&D orcs -who are described as being very very similar to humans- to be similar to humans on the inside if I cut one open. Dragons (and wyverns, griffons, and etc) generally are described as using wings to fly.

While not completely outside the realm of possibility, I generally do not expect a character to fall several hundred feet and walk away unharmed... or at the very least I generally do not expect that to be so common that it is normal in a world. I expect grappling to be more effective than to simply apply the immobilized condition. To some extent, I expect Pelor to be annoyed when my paladin multiclasses into warlock and sells his soul to Vecna. (Yes, there may be good storyline reasons for how that works, but... as a general rule.)

I do temper my expectations. I openly admit that I enjoy far more than a simple passing nod to realism, but I do have a tolerance for unrealistic stuff, and I fully understand choosing playability over realism. Still, even with me tempering my expectations and being tolerant of unrealistic elements, there are still times when 4E steps beyond the ballpark I want my rpg experience to exist in.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If being realistic was really that important to you, you all would be playing GURPS instead of D&D! At the very least, I assume everyone who wanted more realism has both the Codex Maretialis and A Magical Medieval Society?

 

[howandwhy99]

Another understanding of why realism is important for not only some players, but all players can be learned through words. Here you are reading "realistic" words you've probably seen before. But if I start going fantastical like "momberbastic" "Temhelaterpamd" or even "(sd3Ed(#9e,|d~" well. then you might start wondering "what the heck is he referring too?"

It's not that those terms cannot be given meanings or that I don't necessarily have some for them, but rather that I created these pretty much divorced from anyone else's understanding. I'd need to further define them using words you and I have a greater degree of common ground for and shared understanding of, if we are to use them together.

I think realism is an attempt to allow enough common connections with other players in the game so we can all be sharing in it together more than apart. Part of this "commune"-ication is with language, but shared understandings of non-verbal expressions matter too. Designers of game rules can deliberately attempt to more or less mimic these referents and expressions from the game pieces or seek to separate them. In a game where the pieces are held to be in one and another's imagination, it gets even more tricky.

Some games treat rules exclusively as referents to the players, some more simulation games design rules use them as referents to the characters as well as the game world and everything else in it. Those who want immersion typically go the second route. Those who prefer using them to contract with other players usually go the first. Is one design or the other the right way or best way to create games? Well, I think it's personal preference, but I'd hate to see either completely written off (so to speak).

There are also players who prefer the rules be the game in abstract form and treat both rule and referent as the same without dividing the two. For example, chess pieces and their names and how they are to be moved during play. The difference here is the rules don't need to refer to anything known to the players before playing the game. Knights aren't plate-armored lance carriers on horseback, but what the rules tell the players a "Chess Knight" is prior to play.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

You're free to play however you like at your own table. But you made an assertion about what other people do and don't find disruptive at their tables which was false. And you got called on it. Sorry if that upsets you.

I made an assertion about what I and the people I game with find disruptive. If you have a bone to pick I suggest you take it elsewhere.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm not presuming to tell your wife how to have fun, but just because of specific terminology like bloodied the immersion was ruined for her?

I had a player quit 3E because a foe using a polearm was able to do an Opportunity Attack against him, even though he was behind the foe.

It bothered his sense of immersion that someone who was attacking in front of himself could suddenly swing around, not hit anyone next to him, but get a free attack against the guy sneaking up behind him. And the enemy in front of that foe does not get an Opportunity Attack for him dropping his guard by spinning around and attacking someone behind him. 3E dropping the facing rules ruined immersion for this player.


Immersion is individual.


I too dislike the word "realism". I like the word plausible. Does the rules make sense to the players if they were in the game world as PCs?


I find many of the 4E rules do not make sense from a plausibility POV.

Hot fire in a square does not melt ice in that square.

Conjurations can fly because they are not affected by the environment, including gravity, not because it necessarily makes sense for them to fly.

Diagonal movement is just as short as non-diagonal movement, and bursts/blasts are big cubes.

The original Come and Get It could move almost any creature (unless it had a special power to negate some forced movement) as a Martial non-magical power.

Martial powers allow those characters to do magical things.

Warlords can shout and an unconscious ally is suddenly conscious and healed.

A prone conscious guy can drop his guard and provoke an Opportunity Attack, but an unconscious guy cannot drop his guard and provoke an Opportunity Attack.

Hit points are not considered actual damage (by the rationalizers) until the PC dies.


To me, there will always be lines drawn in the sand. I don't like where WotC drew many of the lines because the 4E game became cartoonish in many ways. I prefer a more mature logical consistent plausible game and not one where I have to pull some stupid rationale out of my butt, just to explain away the stupidity (e.g. Daily powers). In fact, I find it vastly amusing how so many people here on these boards will take the most nonsensical illogical rationale, and explain it as if it makes all of the sense in the world, and it isn't just a cumbersome rationale to explain away a non-plausible rule that exists in the game system, merely because the rule is simpler than any plausible rule that the designers could think of to take its place.

 

[pemerton]

"I use Rainbow Blades."
"Okay, but what are you actually doing?"
"Using Rainbow Blades."
"But what are you actually doing?"
"Somehow using my Charisma to swing my sword better."

The only time that the conversation would go like that, though, is if there was some deeper incomatibility between players' preferred styles and the players didn't care about this. If the first speaker actually cares about the fiction - whether for their own sake, or because they know the second speaker cares - then they can reply "I'm cutting the Orc with my sword".

And if the second speaker then asks, "OK, but how does you CHA factor into that" that's the second speaker's problem. They've decided to shift the focus of discussion from the fiction, to the mechanics whereby the content of the fiction is settled.

 

[LurkAway]

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?

As far as I understand from previous threads, we're very different in the sense that you find immersion in games like Rolemaster and very little or zero immersion in gonzo heroic systems like D&D. OTOH, I understand that you're not actively seeking "realism" in D&D anyway. So that's OK if you don't accept that anything "realistic" is happening when your PC takes 4 hp of damage, right?

Loss of what? Blood? Flesh? Mojo?

According to the description of hit points in the 4E PHB, any of the above, as narrated by the group based on fictional positioning.

For me, in 3E, I could mentally split hit points into 2 pools or layers. One layer is morale, stamina, luck, karma, armor integrity, superficial wounds. A 2nd layer is serious physical wounds. So if my PC takes 4 hp, maybe it's 4 hp deducted from the serious wounds hit points, but most likely it's a kind of damage reduction absorbed by loss of the other pool of hit points.

Do I idealize a separate wounds/vitality track for more "realism"? Sure, but I have yet to see that officially in the game (and I don't know how if it would be fun and compelling). Until then, I've made do with hit points as is.

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.)

A few people have suggested that familiar mechanics, after being learned and internalized, may better enable for immersion. Although 20-30 yrs later, you still didn't "learn" (I use quotation marks because I don't mean that pejoratively) to find the hit point mechanic immersive. But that's totally OK. The question is whether hit points as an abstraction allows a significant number of other people to have a minimum amount of immersion. I think yes. Because hit points aren't realistic, but they are a "nod" to realism, and that opens at least a small door (clearly not for everyone, but for enough people it seems) to immersion.

How about some younger 4E mechanics -- well, this is something that I'm (and clearly other people) are still struggling with very much, and I suspect it will never work out for me.

 

[pemerton]

That's the kind of thing that even improvising-in-the-vague-vicinity-of-the-mechanics will struggle with (assuming they don't just ignore the power they're using entirely, of course).

In addition to the reply upthread about "bloodied" being a term of art for half-hp, rather than literal, I'll suggest a further possibility - one of the skeleton's bones has been cracked, and the necrotic marrow is now leaking out.

I expect Pelor to be annoyed when my paladin multiclasses into warlock and sells his soul to Vecna. (Yes, there may be good storyline reasons for how that works, but... as a general rule.)

But why, then, would you take the Warlock multi-class feat. Or, if you did (because you wanted to play out your paladin's fall from Pelor's grace) wouldn't you expect your GM to set up situations which reflect Pelor's annoyance (eg your rations rot away, it is always cloudy and raining wherever you go, good folk shun you and won't offer you food or shelter, etc). Nothing in 4e that I'm familiar with gets in the way here.

The original Come and Get It could move almost any creature (unless it had a special power to negate some forced movement) as a Martial non-magical power.

I know this has been discussed to death in the past, but clearly - in at least some cases - a player's use of Come and Get It does not correspond to (or correspond only to) things that his/her PC is doing in the fiction.

Sometimes, at least, the forced movement reflects something else going on in the fiction (eg the villain zigged when it should have zagged).

Similarly, some forced movement - like the fear effects of the Enigma of Vecna and the Deathlock Wight - don't correspond to any pushing done by the monster, but rather to the victim fleeing in fright.

Hit points are not considered actual damage (by the rationalizers) until the PC dies.

When you say "are not", I think you mean "may not". There's a significant difference there, which is important to the way these sorts of mechanics work.

Warlords can shout and an unconscious ally is suddenly conscious and healed.

My favourite version of this treats the Inspiring Word, on such occasions, as a metagame power. It is analogous to Aragorn's dream sequence in the Two Towers movie, in which (to put it in RPG terms) the player of Arwen uses one of Arwen's powers to heal Aragorn, even though the two are not in the same country. The ally regains consciousness because memory's of the warlord's inspiring presence, or previous urgings to victory, etc, revive him/her.

Another version, equally tenable, is this: the PC is unconcious, but as her eyes flicker open she sees the warlord gazing intently at her. His lips are moving, but at first she can't make out what he's saying. Then gradually (as it seems to her - because time has slowed down for her, although in reality this is all happening in mere moments) it dawns on her that she has been wounded, but he is urging her to get to her feet - the battle isn't over, and her friends need her.

Not only is this second version tenable - I'm pretty sure that I've seen that scene more than once in war/action films, and I think 4e is the only version of D&D capable of reproducing it.

Anyway, there is nothing about any version of Inspring Word on an unconscious PC that is an obstacle to a verisimilitudinous fiction.

More generally, there are things to be said for and against these sorts of mechanic, but they don't give rise to verisimilitude issues. The verisimilitude issues arise only if the mechanics areapplied as if they were simulationist ones, even though they manifestly are not. It's like playing The Riddle of Steel and complaining "Why do I hit harder when my destiny is at stake?", or playing HeroQuest revised and complaining "Why do tasks get more difficult for someone who's had a string of successes?" What unreaslistic games these must be! - but only if played under an assumption of simulationism.

 

[Argyle King]

If being realistic was really that important to you, you all would be playing GURPS instead of D&D! At the very least, I assume everyone who wanted more realism has both the Codex Maretialis and A Magical Medieval Society?

Honestly, (for the past few years) I often do play GURPS instead of D&D if given the choice. In my previous post, when I mentioned I had sought out a non-D&D experience after my initial experience with D&D 4E was somewhat jarring, GURPS is the game I ended up learning (and now very highly enjoy.)

Aside from that, one of the other reasons I decided to quote you is because the GURPS comment is something which strikes me as being somewhat accurate. There have been a lot of times during L&L articles lately in which I've felt as though Monte Cook had good ideas; however, those ideas are already being used by the folks over at SJG. Then I see comments from readers along the lines of "yeah, cool, modular D&D" and "woo, more realism." I think a similar to thing which you just commented; if I want a modular game which provides a variable amount of complexity and allows for different styles while striving to give more of a nod toward realism, why not play GURPS?

Strangely, one of the reasons I had such an easy time learning GURPS is because a lot of the rules looked passingly familiar to D&D 3rd Edition. 3rd's grappling, splash rules for thrown weapons, and a few other things seem to have been inspired by GURPS. When I played 3rd, I thought some of those rules were good; when I more fully understood GURPS, I got the impression that perhaps 3rd was trying to mimic GURPS in some areas, but fell a little short. I say fell short only because there were times in which I felt that D&D 3rd Edition's problem was trying to be two (very) different games at the same time; serving two masters: realism/simulation & the more typical D&D style and tropes.

Monte Cook was involved with 3rd Edition; now that he's involved again with D&D, some of the conversations about the game rules once again remind me of what the folks over at Steve Jackson Games are already doing. Coincidence? I think it's a good thing for a R&D department to seek out ideas wherever they may be; think outside of the Red Box. I simply find myself curious about how familiar MC is with the work of Steve Jackson and whether or not he's a fan.

Here's a link to GURPS Lite for GURPS 4th Edition. e23: GURPS Lite (Fourth Edition)
It's a free 'Lite' version of the rules. I provided the link for the benefit of anyone who may be curious to skim the rules themselves and decide if my perception of similarities between them and current L&L articles as well as the old 3rd Edition rules is has some merit or not.