Martial arts affecting your GMing style

[Galloglaich]

Galloglaich: I think the point they are making is that life, itself, is complex and made up of a multitude of factors.; (snip)

I'm not sure if this really is a false dichotomy. What do you think?

I tried pretty hard to explain my perspective on this, but I think I failed to get my point across. Not surprisingly... there is a reason why most games are designed the way they are, most people like them that way. A lot of us just see the world very differently and want different things.

For the record, no I don't agree that abstract (in terms of scale or detail) and realistic are mutually exclusive. Yes I think it is a false dichotomy, I know it is swimming upstream to make this point in some circles, I had a similar argument on the Forge a few years ago, which led to me writing the codex to illustrate this position more concretely.

Per the OP, I have explained how Martial Arts affected my Gming (and game designing) style, beyond that, I can't convince everyone of how things look to me. YMMV.

G.

 

[outsider]

Yes but I am arguing that having a realistic understanding of how things actually works helps you make a game system which is functional.

I disagree. Making rules accomplish what you want them to is primarily an exercise in mathematical analysis. Knowing how things work in reality is only useful when the goal is to make a realistic system. Not many games have this as their primary goal.

On the other hand, if the designer had crunched the numbers and analyzed how his rules interacted with eachother, particularly examining the extremes of what can be done under each rule, he could have detected the problem before it came up in play. Unfortunately, most house rules and many published game systems aren't given this sort of attention before being released into the wild.

 

[Galloglaich]

I disagree. Making rules accomplish what you want them to is primarily an exercise in mathematical analysis. Knowing how things work in reality is only useful when the goal is to make a realistic system. Not many games have this as their primary goal.

On the other hand, if the designer had crunched the numbers and analyzed how his rules interacted with eachother, particularly examining the extremes of what can be done under each rule, he could have detected the problem before it came up in play. Unfortunately, most house rules and many published game systems aren't given this sort of attention before being released into the wild.

Frankly I think you need both (as I pointed out upthread) but I think if you are making a game which is not specifically intended to be nonesensical (ala Paranoia) then blowing off the Historical research (which most game designers do) almost inevitably leads you to a broken system. Mathematical analysis can answer questions for you, but unless you have a really simple game (checkers) it's going to be quite rare that you will think of all the right questions.

It's the rare genius indeed who will correctly guesseverything players will do in their mathematically designed Universe, most designers won't really find out until a lot of people have actually played their game, and by then it's often too late -your system is broken.

History is the test-bed of real combat systems, societies, etc. , which is why if you use that as your guideline for your model, you will find many of the things you didn't even consider actually work anyway.

All these factors are important in successful game design, research, knowledge of the real world, math skills, and beta testing, but I personally believe in a Fantaasy genre research and knowledge are the two most important factors for the reasons I have cited ad nauseum.

G.

 

[Andor]

What makes you think that realistic has to be hypercomplex? I don't get why this is such a persistent cliche.

G.

... You just quoted me saying that simple rules can be more realistic than hypercomplex ones. I think the reason you find this to be such a common meme is that you are reading it into statements that say no such thing.

 

[Galloglaich]

Fair enough mate, sorry for misreading you, I retract my comment

G.