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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8674143" data-attributes="member: 42582">I thought the OP was also talking about rules; whereas here you seem to be describing some premises about the shared fiction.For my part, my models for FRPGing tend to be JRRT and Arthurian romance, REH and similar S&S tropes, Wuxia films, and (to a lesser extent) Ursula Le Guin. None of these really presents a world that works like the real one: they present worlds in which some expected tropes are present, but there's no attempt to actually create a working conception of a viable human society.I think superhero comics (not the Watchmen, but the ones that the Watchmen is critiquing) are another good example of this approach: if we as readers ask why Storm spends her time fighting Magneto and Doctor Doom rather than remedying droughts and floods that threaten thousands or even millions of lives, we're missing the point of the story. Similarly, if in a typical FRPG context we expect the clerics to use their abilities to stop plagues, and the druids to use their abilities to ensure harvests, and the wizards to use their abilities to power machines, the world is going to quickly stop looking like any of the ones I mentioned above!See my post upthread about Burning Wheel. And also some of my posts about Rolemaster. And RuneQuest. There can be FRPGs that try and convey an idea of "realism" and what it might be like to be a knight fighting a dragon. But D&D is not one of them. It just piles on numbers and feeds them through a resolution process.4e is the most visceral version of D&D I know, because of how much it emphasises positioning, recovery, and effects other than hit point attrition. So moreso than other versions of D&D we get to see what is happening in the fiction. But the result is not gritty in any fashion. It's gonzo!But as per my post upthread, if you ignore the simulationist impulse here, but apply it in another domain where exactly the same bit of the fiction is on display (ie the physical prowess of a Hero or even more powerful fighter), then verisimilitude breaks down. If, once we pay attention to what is happening in the fiction, we see how physically unstoppable the Hero is, then everything else in our fiction should reflect that too.I don't see D&D as very simulationist in this respect either, because its default world is full of ancient ruins filled with monsters and treasure.My favourite two D&D settings are Greyhawk (which I also use for Rolemaster and Burning Wheel) and the 4e default setting (I don't call it "Nentir Vale", because when I ran 4e I used a bit of the old B/X map of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos but was still able to completely implement 4e's setting). Both settings support some key tropes for FRPGing, though the 4e one is more "cosmological" whereas GH is a bit more "grounded" (while also having a central area which very conveniently has coasts and pirates, rogues and cities, slavers, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, desert and knights - it's like REH's Hyborian age compressed into a modestly-sized hex map).But if, in play, I need an evil cultist or a mad dark elf or whomever it might be to turn up, then they turn up! I will write-in whatever backstory is necessary and appropriate, but I won't worry too much about (for instance) where their income and subsistence are coming from in the context of a pre-modern largely agrarian economy, or who exactly taught them how to read and write.</blockquote>

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