Suspension of Disbelief

[billd91]

I guess what most makes me lose my suspension of disbelief is too much of the same old thing. If ever orc fights to the death over pocket change or every plot is of earth-shaking significance, it starts to feel more like a cheesy game to me. I can accept certain plots being a big deal, major quests and all. And I can understand all orcs in a particular location fighting to the death because if they don't, they know they're going to be horribly punished in this life AND the next by a head bad guy they fear more than the PCs. But every time and every place and every plot?

I also have a problem with puzzles out of nowhere but a Games magazine. Riddles I can accept, as well as curiosities like the Gordian knot. They have legendary pedigrees and fit the milieu. I will say that, whatever the puzzle, the language doesn't bother me. I consider it irrelevant as long as the campaign has some form of lingua franca that makes sense. I can easily make the assumption that the English we are using around the table stands in for that common language.

Relatively mundane names don't bother me either. Even Sniffles's examples are excellent names with good and ancient pedigrees that I have no trouble seeing in a pre-modern environment. I might stay away from Jason as it's pretty common now, or find a more old-sounding variant on a current modern like Mathias for Matthew, or insist on using the formal version of Frederick rather than Freddy. I actually have more trouble with the torturously coined names you often see in gaming with excesses of Ns, Ys, and Es at the end that all sound like they're trying to sound either Celtic or elven or totally absurd. Gygaxian names drive me the battiest. Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter, yeah, right.

If the name doesn't feel natural to me, I'll going to have a harder time suspending my disbelief. In an online game I'm playing now, we've been hired by a gnome named Bamfiddle Ankleclicker. My character, by comparison, is a mundanely named Geoffrey of Verbobonc. I know which one I can say out loud with a straight face.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I hate that too. I also wish there were some way to refer to spells by something other than their names from the PHB. Why would a wizard from one country necessarily use the same spell name as a wizard from a completely different culture? Why would a wizard and a cleric use the same name? But I overlook that one because it's too complicated to come up with alternate spell names or descriptions and then expect the GM and possibly the other players to recognize them all.

The thing is, in my games (and I'm pretty sure you could make a case that it's true in the RAW, too), they don't.

You tell the player "He's casting magic missile" because it's metagame shorthand for, "You've never heard this particular sequence of magical words and gestures before, but your training in the way spells are put together tells you that it is a minor evocation. The use of what you know as Heclebrand's Equivocalization tells you that the spell will create some form of force effect, which will relentlessly track down its targets."

When the the opposing caster (from a desert land, far away) finishes his spell, small whirlwinds rush forth and slam into their targets.

When the the opposing caster (from an ice-bound island, far away) finishes his spell, he pulls large, gleaming snowflakes from the air and throws them towards their targets.

When the the opposing caster (from the elvenwood, far away) finishes his spell, a shimmering golden bow appears beside him, and fires unerring elven-fletched arrows at his targets.

It's just that the second set of descriptions tend to be more fun and entertaining than the first set, so we abbreviate the first set to "magic missile." The first set can still be useful, however, especially if the players encounter a spell whose name would mean nothing to them, anyway.

 

[VirgilCaine]

When the the opposing caster (from a desert land, far away) finishes his spell, small whirlwinds rush forth and slam into their targets.

When the the opposing caster (from an ice-bound island, far away) finishes his spell, he pulls large, gleaming snowflakes from the air and throws them towards their targets.

When the the opposing caster (from the elvenwood, far away) finishes his spell, a shimmering golden bow appears beside him, and fires unerring elven-fletched arrows at his targets.

It's just that the second set of descriptions tend to be more fun and entertaining than the first set, so we abbreviate the first set to "magic missile." The first set can still be useful, however, especially if the players encounter a spell whose name would mean nothing to them, anyway.

In other words, change the flavor if it's "not the same spell"!

 

[sniffles]

The thing is, in my games (and I'm pretty sure you could make a case that it's true in the RAW, too), they don't.

You tell the player "He's casting magic missile" because it's metagame shorthand for, "You've never heard this particular sequence of magical words and gestures before, but your training in the way spells are put together tells you that it is a minor evocation. The use of what you know as Heclebrand's Equivocalization tells you that the spell will create some form of force effect, which will relentlessly track down its targets."

When the the opposing caster (from a desert land, far away) finishes his spell, small whirlwinds rush forth and slam into their targets.

When the the opposing caster (from an ice-bound island, far away) finishes his spell, he pulls large, gleaming snowflakes from the air and throws them towards their targets.

When the the opposing caster (from the elvenwood, far away) finishes his spell, a shimmering golden bow appears beside him, and fires unerring elven-fletched arrows at his targets.

It's just that the second set of descriptions tend to be more fun and entertaining than the first set, so we abbreviate the first set to "magic missile." The first set can still be useful, however, especially if the players encounter a spell whose name would mean nothing to them, anyway.

I love this concept. But no one else in my group wants to do it this way.

 

[Psion]

Plus, I don't know that I go into an RPG with a suspension of disbelief anyway. I mean, the 6-foot 250-pound guy over there is playing a 3' halfling; the skinny teenager over there is playing a stout and gruff dwarf warrior; the bearded guy between them is playing a female elf rogue. If your "immersion" in the game is hindered by the standard tropes and genre elements of D&D, why play the game?

Now this is me wondering why you even play the game.

Or, we might just not quite jibe on what "suspension of disbeleif" is. It's not beleiving all that, it's just being able to ignore it to the point that the halfling, dwarf warrior, and elf rogue are what's important.

 

[fuindordm]

I know one thing I've thought a lot about that would make the game a more enjoyable experience for me (I think) and would support my suspension of disbelief. It's what I call "taking the 'game' out of the game". That is, trying not to refer to game rules and game terminology all the time. Instead of saying, "I rolled a 20", saying "My sword slices right through his armor like it was made of paper". Instead of "I'm casting Magic Missile", describing it as "Four tiny balls of bright blue energy shoot out of my fingers and fly unerringly toward the orc".

I find that this sort of thing is much easier to pull off in PBEM and PBP games than tabletop. In tabletop, people are there to socialize and the DM needs to keep the game moving, and this kind of narrative slows things down. Online, DM and players can think more about how they want to describe the action, and its easier to weave all the narratives into something resembling a coherent story.

Especially if the DM is keeping track of everyone's HP.

Ben

 

[fusangite]

I provide my players with plenty of not exactly puzzles but in-game texts and so on that are always in English -- the assumption being that they are translations (an assumption that lets me get away with saying "This is the greatest poem in the WORLD!!! In Naridic." without having to actually write the greatest poem in the world, and blaming the lame-ass translation.

This I have no trouble with and do myself. All my handouts to my players are assumed to be translations of in-game documents. Typically, though, at the beginning of the campaign, I produce very documents or, even better, coins or seals, in the alphabet of the world so that when the players see my translated documents, they can get an idea of what they would actually look like.

In my current campaign, I made replicas of some coins they found at the beginning of the story. In the one previous to that, I did coins and a page of some annals which were done in Latin transliterated into the world alphabet. Once the otherness of the world's documents is established, then English translations actually reference things in the campaign world.

Of course, I don't demand that standard of linguistic fidelity from other GMs but what I do ask is that the documents I receive from my GMs come off as translations not as original primary documents.

 

[wedgeski]

Well.... not knowing a huge amount about you, your DM, or your game, I find your DM's reaction to your comment quite amusing actually. Maybe it boils down to just giving the guy/gal a break? You want puzzles that are hideous in their subtlety and exactly in keeping with the world and its culture; your DM wants to drop a puzzle in that can be solved in a few minutes and breaks up the action a bit. Perhaps he has set standards elsewhere in the campaign that he doesn't always have the preparation time to live up to?

 

[wedgeski]

Instead of "I'm casting Magic Missile", describing it as "Four tiny balls of bright blue energy shoot out of my fingers and fly unerringly toward the orc".

The problem with this, if there is one, is that you're replacing a common language with a subjective one. Wouldn't your DM just say: "Uh, so you're casting Magic Missile?"

 

[S'mon]

Re magic missile - there are times the player needs to speak OOC, like whenever they're describing their PCs' actions to the GM. So yup, I definitely think the player ought to be saying "I cast magic missile", not obfuscating the issue. If the player or GM wishes to then insert some descriptive flavour text, then great - I often do this as GM, describing th glowing darts striking the enemy or whatever.