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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6284831" data-attributes="member: 27160">No parody, just how I have experienced the typical "simulationist" (i.e. attempting to simulate the real world) RPG working. The players describe a plan, which the GM sees as more or less "plausible"/"possible"/"practical" depending on how well aligned the players views of reality were with the GM's when they conceived the plan. Based on this view - which the GM generally sees as simply a "common sense" or "rational" assessment of how likely the plan is to work - the GM decides what rolls are needed (and/or what spells, abilities or items and other resources must be used) in order for the plan to succeed.From the players' point of view (in fact, from the rest of the world who are not the GM's point of view) this combination of rolls and resources is arbitrary. Its "rationality" depends entirely upon a model of the way reality works that they do not entirely share. It might happen, by chance, that the specific parts of the model match up for this specific task - in which case they have lucked out and the task will likely prove easy - but this is happenstance, not something that has happened by design.The Skill Challenge at least puts some structure and pre-design into this. The GM chooses a level and size/complexity of challenge just as they would pick monsters of a certain level and to a certain number for a combat encounter. This dictates the experience points that the challenge is worth, thus making it clear that there are game-mechanical implications of the choice and, hence, of changing it. It also informs the players of what manner of plan or what sort of action the GM expects them to take in order to overcome the obstacle. Previous editions did not include any such mechanism.I understand the sentiment, but I think this is partly an illusion. You are "reaching your hands in" as a GM every time you make a judgement concerning what is "realistic". Your model of reality is, assuming that you are like every other human on the planet, both in some respects wrong and in some respects different from those of everyone else. The reason you feel more comfortable making rulings based upon it is that you are naturally disposed to consider it to be "only common sense". Your model represents deeply held beliefs about reality and, <a href="http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney" target="_blank">as recent research has clearly shown</a>, this makes you extremely reluctant to change it. The truth is, though, that it's no more reliable than anyone else's - and those are not very reliable at all...At risk of repeating myself, this is a trap - and one that is very easy to fall into. Human beings are fundamentally incapable of simulating all aspects of reality because the models that they believe are true about reality are all wrong. They are a fair approximation for many situations that come up in everyday life, for sure, but outside of that they can be hopeless. In the real world this does not matter, because we have one simulation that is flawless - reality itself! Any misconceptions we have will be swiftly pointed out as soon as we encounter them in person. In a game, though - and one that seldom restricts itself to "everyday life" - such a model is not available. Which is why we so often see blazing arguments between gamers adamantly arguing that such-and-such a system should work in such-and-such a way because that is "realistic"...The answer is simple. Forget "realism" when playing the game - just use the rules for how the game world works. Consider the real world when designing the rules, fine - there is a lot about the real world that is elegant and neat, so it makes a good source of inspiration. But if you build a system in an attempt to model reality perfectly you are on a fool's errand and doomed to disfunction. And if you try to wrangle the system on the fly to be "realistic" you have the same problems, but now you add those of time pressure, adversarial considerations and lack of player foreknowledge.</blockquote>

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