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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9798086" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think it's a highly relevant response to the statement: "I think attempting to hew too close to realism is going to be counterproductive to achieve the goal of finding ways to make hardship on expedition dramatic and fun gameplay."UPDATE: To see why, consider the history of RPGs.  RPGs originally came out of wargaming.  And wargaming has some degree of fantasy to it but it doesn't have an aesthetic solely dependent on fantasy.  Yes, the question of "Could I do as well as Napoleon or Wellington or Rommel or Montgomery?" has a certain edge of fantasy to it, but to answer that question in a satisfying way to a wargamer typically involves as much as possibly making the scenario that they face equivalent to the scenario some great commander faced.  "Could I manage the war in north Africa better?", or at least, "What would it be like to manage the war in North Africa?" are primarily questions of Discovery.  And that's precisely why the early instincts of most RPG players and creators was to really dig deep into realism despite the fantasy settings, because the really interesting things weren't just, "Wouldn't it be cool to be Conan!" but also, "If I had the muscles, could I successfully be the sort of hero Conan was?" or "What would it be like to experience the sort of things Conan experienced."So when you just like dismiss realism as counter-productive to fun gameplay, frankly I don't think you are looking at how different people approach what is "fun".  Because isn't one single thing.The player with the sole aesthetic of Fantasy looks at your desert expedition and says, "I conjure a giant sand worm and I ride on its back across the desert, traversing it in safety and ease." and that's his maximized fun and attempting to make him do Discovery is just never going to work because hardship isn't what is fun for him and isn't what makes for fun gameplay.  Hardships are either stumbling blocks preventing fun, or else opportunities to triumph with surprising power over the seeming difficulty.There is just no way to have a repetitive hardship loop however abstract be fun for that player.  If you want to make an expedition fun for them, then you do it be breaking up the loop with moments to leap thirty feet into the air and cleave the head off the sand giant marauders.</blockquote>

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