NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9149009" data-attributes="member: 7023840">I agree with this. The issue of verisimilitude is, to me, very much tied into two separate concepts from other areas that people are familiar with; suspension of disbelief and common sense.To very briefly discuss this...As I recently described in another thread, a role-playing game is what is created in the interaction between players or between player(s) and gamemaster(s) within a specified diegetic framework. This definition places an emphasis on the shared framework of the participants under the guise of diegesis (what is true within the game). The key here is the shared framework of the participants.Most arguments about verisimilitude boil down to arguments about the suspension about disbelief, and common sense. To briefly describe this, I would point out the following:1. People have various breaking points when it comes to the suspension of disbelief. Even in the most rudimentary games involving a shared space, there will be ideas that violate this necessary suspension for the participants. If a bunch of people are running around with sticks pretending to be knights, and then someone says, "But I shoot you dead with my laser gun," this would run afoul of the suspension of disbelief that created the shared space. We see this in all sorts of games; from campaigns that enforce restrictions based on a a priori themes of the campaign, to Story Now games that say you "Can't Jump Over the Moon" because that wouldn't be "good faith play."2. On the other hand, there is the common sense issue. When there is a requirement for a ruling (for example) a participant will often have to rely on their judgment or common sense. Trouble is that one person's common sense may not be that ... common to other participants. Participants come into games with different life experiences and knowledge, and what is "real" to either reality or genre to one participant may not be the same for all. With that said, there is an additional issue beyond these two; specifically that the perfect is the enemy of the good (which ties into the suspension of disbelief). People that value verisimilitude understand that it can't be perfect, after all, it's just a game. Much in the same way that people that enjoy Star Trek (or even Star Wars) understand that it is not perfectly realistic ... things, for example, don't go pew pew pew in space. Nevertheless, as [USER=8461]@Alzrius[/USER] pointed out, there is still a desire for internal consistency. What brings a person out of the game isn't a violation of already-established "magical thinking" (say, dragons can fly) but instead things that they feel violate the internal consistency of the rules of the shared space that they feel need to be established (humans wielding swords that are four times longer than the person is tall).</blockquote>

Verification