D&D General The Importance of Verisimilitude (or "Why you don't need realism to keep it real")

[AnotherGuy]

I think the natural answer would be balanced play.

How does falling down damage factor into balanced play?

EDIT: Hence my mention of the word areas.

 

[GMMichael]

Alternatively, a popular option is to present the PC as breaking some rule of the game world (or, less severely, having something that's outside of the baseline expectations for the setting), and making that be a focal point of play. Middle Earth was very much a low-magic world, but The Lord of the Rings still had no problem starting out giving a major artifact to a 1st-level halfling thief (who inherited it from his rich uncle).

Um, I'd just like to point out that Frodo was easily level 2, and his GM kind of screwed him over by giving him a cursed item at that level, not an artifact.

But what happens when this doesn't work? If a GM doesn't want to a play in a game where the expectation is that the PCs are special, or if a player insists on having their PC be distinctive in some way that contravenes the setting, and no reconciliation of these ideas is possible?

That tends to be, as Grandma Alzrius liked to say, "when it's time to throw down." Of course, she said that through the telephone from across the glass panel, so that might not be the best advice.

Remind me not to cross grandma Alzrius! Good questions in the post - I'll endure an unreconcilable dragonborn (the species) if it's an infrequent or short-term game. But as GM, it's much easier for me to have fun if I enjoy my character, which is the setting. Gears that grind against that probably belong in a different GM's game.

 

[DEFCON 1]

This is really why I always come at the game from a narrative perspective, and not a mechanical one.

If one treats mechanics merely as the randomization of story, rather than what is "really happening", you can just ignore all the so-called discrepancies. Are halflings REALLY as strong or have the physics behind their actions like goliaths do? Doesn't matter. What matters is the narrative results of the halfling's actions in the story. And there's no reason why a halfling warrior can't take out an enemy just like a goliath can take an enemy out. Sure, how it "looks" when the halfling does it would be different that the goliath (even if the game mechanics say they have the same "strength" score and their weaponsdo the same "damage" amounts), but I do not need the mechanics to match the fiction on a 1-for-1 basis.

The mechanics make the board game feel equal amongst all the players, but the narrative that illustrates it can be more world appropriate.

 

[Tony Vargas]

there's no reason why a halfling warrior can't take out an enemy just like a goliath can take an enemy out. Sure, how it "looks" when the halfling does it would be different that the goliath (even if the game mechanics say they have the same "strength" score and their weaponsdo the same "damage" amounts),

Looked at that way, the halfing and the goliath having the same 'Strength' is a system artifact, the result of how stats are defined and used. STR is used for innate melee combat ability, the word strength more obviously applies to the goliath, but the game meaning may be broader, because it didn't want to break out strength/weight ratio, leverage, agility, precision, reflexes, etc into multiple stats and use a formula to determine from a combination of them how likely you are to hit/kill an enemy. Let's just use STR for melee, it's simpler. OK, it's simpler, it's not going to seem as realistic, at least, at natural-language face value.

 

[Stormonu]

My tolerable level of verisimilitude has changed over the editions. Back in the 80’s and early 90’s I wanted a fantasy simulator, akin to the various flight simulators I’d play on the computer. I wanted it as immersive as I could get to feel like I was part of that world so far away. Those were also the days where more complex mechanics meant “realer”.

That peaked during the days of 3E. Mechanics to “simulate” everything, a rule for everything.

When I started getting involved in other game systems after the fall of 3E, I started to realize that those mechanics were getting in the way of my imagination. And not just the complex ones. Several D&Disms were just limiting my imagination and creativity. Trying to tie down a fighter’s strength to what a real person could max bench press was getting in the way with that same fighter wrestling a dragon to the ground, and other such things. Art depicting grand landscapes of floating castles, alien vistas and the like were replacing the mundane landscapes of Elmore and Parkinson’s - and I wanted to play in those more fantastical realms where the laws of nature and physics were bent or turned on their ear. In many ways, I realized I was limiting my imagination for a boring reproduction of reality.

So, I kinda stopped. And while I do enjoy things that make internal sense, I’ve stopped trying to compare it to reality, and instead rely on the internal laws of the campaign itself.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is really why I always come at the game from a narrative perspective, and not a mechanical one.

If one treats mechanics merely as the randomization of story, rather than what is "really happening", you can just ignore all the so-called discrepancies. Are halflings REALLY as strong or have the physics behind their actions like goliaths do? Doesn't matter. What matters is the narrative results of the halfling's actions in the story. And there's no reason why a halfling warrior can't take out an enemy just like a goliath can take an enemy out. Sure, how it "looks" when the halfling does it would be different that the goliath (even if the game mechanics say they have the same "strength" score and their weaponsdo the same "damage" amounts), but I do not need the mechanics to match the fiction on a 1-for-1 basis.

The mechanics make the board game feel equal amongst all the players, but the narrative that illustrates it can be more world appropriate.

I'm glad it works for you, but my brain can't handle this. It bugs me quite a bit when representativeness of mechanics gets disconnected this way, and make the rules just seem arbitrary. To me one important function of the rules is to tell us something about the concepts they're representing, even if they wouldn't be an accurate simulation.

But I think this exact difference in thinking is one that is behind a lot of arguments on these boards; people simply have different opinion on what the role and purpose of the rules is.

 

[Oofta]

I always try to think of my campaign world as "the real world + magic". In other words, if magic (or the supernatural, I view them as the same) doesn't come into play things work just like they do in real life. Now, magic permeates just about everything and affects it in little ways something I alluded to in another thread recently. If magic is real then healing salves really do work, albeit not necessarily as well as or as quickly as magic spells cast by PCs. People use little bits of magic without even realizing it.

However, the important thing is that if you took an earth-normal person and plunked them down in this world, they likely wouldn't notice the influence of magic right away. They'd probably notice the continual flames everywhere, maybe catch on after a bit that people seem to heal faster than normal people. If they're lucky they might see a flying ship. If they're unlucky they might see a dragon and realize that it only exists because it's supernatural.

So what does all this have to do with verisimilitude? Well if the world is too strange, too outside of what we experience in the real world I have a problem envisioning it. Long ago at a con far, far away I had fun playing a Toons game where you, of course, play a cartoon character along the lines of Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck. While it was fun in a one-shot sort of way, I could never really identify with the character in the way I can identify with a D&D character. It was just obviously too silly. Fun, but silly.

So as a DM I want that sense of verisimilitude for my game so that I can make it come to life. That includes the numbers of species running around, you can't have dozens of "hidden populations" of a few hundred members of a species scattered all over the place that also survived for tens of thousands of years. In addition, I want each species to have their own story, their own identity that fits into the world. I have a hard enough time coming up with that just for the core species. Same holds true for "monstrous" races. For example goblins are like rats and have pretty much spread everywhere but in areas where there are orcs, there's not going to be any gnolls because they compete for the "empty spaces" and one inevitably drives the other out. A lot of monsters are either truly supernatural (e.g. ghosts) or cross over from another realm like giants.

That also means I don't want fighters running around with twelve foot long swords, doing blatantly supernatural things without magic (auras that automatically damage every adjacent creature pops to mind) or wrasslin' a tornado like Pecos Bill. Much like a good action movies push the boundaries of what humans are capable of (and then some) there's a line most people recognize. It's okay if Indiana Jones rides an inflatable raft down a mountain because it's kind of sort of plausible (although in any real analysis they're dead) and it's fun. But thrown several hundred feet in a refrigerator and step out of it completely okay? That crosses a line.

Obviously the line between "over the top but close enough to plausible" and "over the top so much that I can't relate to it" is going to vary from one person to the next.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But speaking of realism and fantasy, I like weirdness that nevertheless has it's own logic. Like a world with weird fantasy creatures with their own functioning ecology. I also really like the juxtaposition of fantastic and mundane, like some poor sod shovelling gryphon crap off the flying island.

 

[MichaelSomething]

My own sense of verisimilitude is broken if you impose mundane limitations on high level characters. A high level Fighter can fight multiple T-Rexes in a day. How he not simply bypass mundane limits? What's the point of levels and scaling power if you don't become more powerful? I assume most of you have a soft cap of level ten or so? Or is the E6 club still alive and kicking?

 

[Scribe]

Looked at that way, the halfing and the goliath having the same 'Strength' is a system artifact, the result of how stats are defined and used. STR is used for innate melee combat ability, the word strength more obviously applies to the goliath, but the game meaning may be broader, because it didn't want to break out strength/weight ratio, leverage, agility, precision, reflexes, etc into multiple stats and use a formula to determine from a combination of them how likely you are to hit/kill an enemy. Let's just use STR for melee, it's simpler. OK, it's simpler, it's not going to seem as realistic, at least, at natural-language face value.

Well, see there is an answer to that.

Add a Str cap, and 'issue' solved.