Why is realism "lame"?

[CroBob]

That really depends can it be hand waved away as having to do something with the way gravity works or because of minerals in the islands that push against minerals in the land and pushes the islands into the air. There is a lot I can suspend my disbelief on. I play Toon and in the game I have no issue with falling of mountains tied to an anvil or getting shot by a cannon. As I said my issue with falling is that if it is because gravity works differently then it should for all classes and levels. The same for divine intervention. If it is because the gods have given high level fighters a boon for service and they now bounce instead of break then I may groan but I can still buy it. It bugs me the way it is so I fixed it.

Nobody inside that fantasy world knows why it happens. They've been living with it so long, they simply understand it as how the world works. They don't have the sensitive instruments to determine exactly why it happens. The DM may have come up with a reason, he may not have, but it's obvious that the world works that way, because the people living there watch it happen that way every day of their lives. Hell, maybe your character is a scientist at heart and tries to figure it out.

And gravity does work the same for all classes and levels (assuming that explanation), that's why tougher people (those with higher levels and more HPs) can fall faster and survive more easily than the less tough ones. Same way a boulder hurled by a giant phases them less.

This whole thread is, is realism lame. I don't it is nor do I think it ruins the fun of a fantasy game. I addressed areas in DnD that bother me and I have said why I have also said how I house ruled it. The only thing I have not been able to houserule because I can't figure out a way to make it work is dealing with mobs and threats of just huge numbers of trained combat soldiers facing four high level PCs.

Yes, I agree you've spoken on the issue. I still can't seem to understand the sentiment, why that is the line for you and not, for example, getting struck with a boulder and not breaking any bones, or any other example of where the world doesn't parallel reality. It seemed to be the non-magical stuff being different from how the real world works, but there are plenty of examples of the non-magical stuff not working the way it does in reality. The fall damage, getting breathed fire on by a dragon and getting reduced to 1 HP by it, but your skin doesn't get horribly scarred and your clothes don't seem effected at all, the giant throwing a boulder at you and you're merely sore from it, or anything involving HPs. Diplomacy making friends from enemies, changing people's alignments, Rangers hiding in plain sight, etc. I could go all day listing things that aren't realistic and which aren't magical. It's not that I disagree that you should have your lines about what makes a game fun and not, I simply don't understand why your lines are where you've pointed and not in all the other absurd parts. It just seems so arbitrary to me. Which it doesn't have to follow a guideline, but it makes sense to me that it would.

I don't think this is really any different from people who hate how powerful magic gets and want to put in ways to make it less powerful. I think a lot of people may have things in the game that breaks the immersion or the fun for them.

Of course. I could rattle off a list of things I don't like. Half-Dragon, Half Elemental, Vampire Trolls (and various other such ridiculous combinations) as my PCs for example. If people like them, cool, but it just seems too monstrous for me to be able to empathize with as my character, and it would naturally cause problems when going into humanoid towns due to people panicking and everything. There are certainly things that break my immersion, but if I accept one aspect of the game, then that same aspect of the game doesn't irritate me in a different situation. For example, when my fighter takes a giant's club to the face and it doesn't slow him down, it's also not unbelievable to me that this same dude can fall off a 200 foot cliff regularly, and survive every time. Yes, HPs are abstract and also count non-physical damage, but a giant totally hit the dude for 50 damage and he was fine. Why would he fall for 50 damage and then suddenly not be fine (unless he didn't heal in between)?

Due to HPs, injuries simply don't work the way they work in reality. At all. Falling, combat, lava, however you're taking the damage, it's not realistic, and I can accept that. So I don't understand why it makes sense when you get hit with a sword, but not when you get hit with the ground.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Just because some partsof the game are not realistic, that doesn't men the whole game ought to be unrealistic. D&D is not a highly realistic game, but there are places where the lack of believability are more striking and there have been changesto the rules in different editions that took this even further for some people. It is pretty obvious what crobob is doing here. He doesnt like or share elfwitch's opinion about realism so he is just building a semantic argument to show realism isn't real in the first place, and baiting her by being deliberately obtuse. This tactic gets used all the time in these arguments. It is the same argument people make saying if you can accept HP you have to accept instant non magical heals because heither are realistic.

 

[Bluenose]

Not necessarily. People have used this game in a variety of different ways over the last 40 years or so, and there's never been a Fun Police to tell them they've been doing it badly. In the same vein, what people are using your tool for when it's not suited gives you an indication of where they want to use your tool, and there's probably no reason you shouldn't accommodate them, if you can.

I mean, think of a hammer. That little claw on the back of it, used for extracting nails. If someone had control over all the hammers produced, and only produced ones without that little claw, and said it was because "Hammers are for nailing things in, and if you want to pull nails out, it's just not for that. You can perhaps buy a Nail Puller instead," we'd all be using two tools for something that could be done in one. There's little good reason to presuppose that this highly flexible game engine is only usable for a narrow band of entertainment, and almost no good reason to say that it shouldn't be used for that, too, if it can be.

And it clearly can be.

If the hammer hasn't got that little claw on the back of it, using it to extract nails is probably not going to work very well. The argument here is pretty much about whether D&D has the little widgets that enable you to use it for "gritty realism", or at least whether it should have. Which of course is not the same thing as "realistic realistic".

 

[Cleon]

Nobody inside that fantasy world knows why it happens. They've been living with it so long, they simply understand it as how the world works. They don't have the sensitive instruments to determine exactly why it happens. The DM may have come up with a reason, he may not have, but it's obvious that the world works that way, because the people living there watch it happen that way every day of their lives. Hell, maybe your character is a scientist at heart and tries to figure it out.

*SNIP*

There are certainly things that break my immersion, but if I accept one aspect of the game, then that same aspect of the game doesn't irritate me in a different situation. For example, when my fighter takes a giant's club to the face and it doesn't slow him down, it's also not unbelievable to me that this same dude can fall off a 200 foot cliff regularly, and survive every time. Yes, HPs are abstract and also count non-physical damage, but a giant totally hit the dude for 50 damage and he was fine. Why would he fall for 50 damage and then suddenly not be fine (unless he didn't heal in between)?

Due to HPs, injuries simply don't work the way they work in reality. At all. Falling, combat, lava, however you're taking the damage, it's not realistic, and I can accept that. So I don't understand why it makes sense when you get hit with a sword, but not when you get hit with the ground.

Yup, that's pretty much how I take it. Provided it's consistent any I can come up with a reasonable model as to what's going on in the "game reality" it doesn't matter to me if the same events would be unlikely or impossible in "real-life reality".

My favoured explanation for the "fighter surviving a tank shell to the face" problem is that D&D characters are like those martial adepts in a Shaw brothers film who can focus their "chih breath" enough to make a sword blow bounce off their naked neck. Hit points are some kind of life energy, and D&D adventurers literally have a life energy force field that protects them from harm. Once they run out of HPs, they're like a Star Trek ship whose shields have run out - the next attack could kill them.

That's the explanation that I think best fits the observed behaviour. The argument that HPs are in part (or mostly) a character's ability to dodge or evade attacks doesn't match how the rules work very well. If that was the case, shouldn't the HP damage depend on how hard to avoid the blow is, so an easy-to-dodge blow from a clumsy ogre's club would do less HP damage than an expert goblin archer's arrow? Also, if HP = dodging, why doesn't it cost HP to make a Reflex save?

It's quite possible to come up with variant rules for D&D that have more "realistic" injuries - some kinds of Vitality/Wound system with armour as DR can work pretty well. I've also run variant D&D games where the HP/wound damage varied with the attack roll.

If that's what some people prefer, go for it. Different strokes for different folks and all that.

 

[Hussar]

If the hammer hasn't got that little claw on the back of it, using it to extract nails is probably not going to work very well. The argument here is pretty much about whether D&D has the little widgets that enable you to use it for "gritty realism", or at least whether it should have. Which of course is not the same thing as "realistic realistic".

Which, I think, is the point I was trying to make. It's not that you absolutely can't do things with D&D, but, rather, that when you see people trying to pound screws with a hammer, it shouldn't be considered antagonistic to offer them a screwdriver. People are complaining that D&D isn't doing something they want it to do. Note, the issue starts with the complaint. It's not a case of someone stepping up and saying, "hey, D&D does this other thing really well, look at this!" It's, "I want D&D to do this thing and it is resisting me, what should I do?"

Telling that person that another system will do everything they want with a minimum of fuss should be a good thing.

Look, if I wanted to do Game of Thrones as a campaign, D&D could do that. I'm pretty sure it could anyway. But, it's going to be a very bad fit. The magic system (regardless of edition) is going to get in the way, the class/level system doesn't fit and the system is nowhere near gritty enough and, D&D generally lacks a good mass combat system as well.

So, telling someone that maybe GURPS or Savage Worlds might fit that campaign better should not be seen as some sort of passive aggressive attack on playstyle. Different games suit different playstyles and I do not believe that D&D is the panacea of gaming that fits all playstyles. IMO, it does not. Different editions might suit slightly different playstyles better, but, by and large, D&D suits a pretty narrow set of play which other games suit better.

There are just too many games out there to settle for one system over all.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Which, I think, is the point I was trying to make. It's not that you absolutely can't do things with D&D, but, rather, that when you see people trying to pound screws with a hammer, it shouldn't be considered antagonistic to offer them a screwdriver. People are complaining that D&D isn't doing something they want it to do. Note, the issue starts with the complaint. It's not a case of someone stepping up and saying, "hey, D&D does this other thing really well, look at this!" It's, "I want D&D to do this thing and it is resisting me, what should I do?"


There are just too many games out there to settle for one system over all.

absolutely. There is deinitely nothing wrong with suggesting alternatives or saying d&dmay not be the best option for a realistic campaign. You have been offering sound advice. But it is a tone issue. While you have ben polite, there has been an undercurrent of hostility in some other peoples' posts when rather than suggest she try another game, they demand she play omething else and then question the very idea of wanting realism. Two very different approaches here. One respects her tastes and offers alternatives to D&D, the other basically says her tastes are incomprehensible, is a bit "shouty" and doesnt make good faith arguments.

 

[Hussar]

Meh, I always try to take the Wikipedia approach - always presume good faith until you can show otherwise.

Like I said, lots of people make claims about what D&D is about without being able to point to any real concrete evidence supporting that. D&D as grim and gritty fantasy, is a prime example. There is very, very little grim or gritty in D&D. Healing is a cure light wounds away. You almost never suffer debilitation or long term consequences. Even death becomes a speed bump. There's a list as long as my arm showing how D&D isn't grim and gritty.

Yet people will swear up and down that D&D is all about grim and gritty play.

It does get very frustrating to see these claims, time and time again, with hardly a shred of evidence to back it up. And, any counter claim gets buried under "well in my game we do this and that" as if that somehow countered anything.

I think I just get annoyed when people confuse their personal idiosyncratic take on the game with how the game is actually presented.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Meh, I always try to take the Wikipedia approach - always presume good faith until you can show otherwise. .

I prefer to call a spade a spade than let people like that win by walking the line.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Like I said, lots of people make claims about what D&D is about without being able to point to any real concrete evidence supporting that. D&D as grim and gritty fantasy, is a prime example. There is very, very little grim or gritty in D&D. Healing is a cure light wounds away. You almost never suffer debilitation or long term consequences. Even death becomes a speed bump. There's a list as long as my arm showing how D&D isn't grim and gritty.

Yet people will swear up and down that D&D is all about grim and gritty play.

It does get very frustrating to see these claims, time and time again, with hardly a shred of evidence to back it up. And, any counter claim gets buried under "well in my game we do this and that" as if that somehow countered anything.

I think I just get annoyed when people confuse their personal idiosyncratic take on the game with how the game is actually presented.

Except what is being challenged here is the very notion that someone likes realism. I can debate all day long about how believable D&D ought to be and how believable it is (and you and I have done so many times so no value doing it here). That doesn't bother me that a poster might disagree with me about whether D&D is meant to be more realistic or cartoony. What bothers are efforts like crobobs to deconstruct a perfectly valid opinion about games through word games and being deliberately obtuse. It is obvious to everyone, i suspect even those who agree with him, what he is doing. And it is frankly becoming a stale tactic on this forum (one of the major reasons I rarely post here these days).

 

[Umbran]

Which, I think, is the point I was trying to make. It's not that you absolutely can't do things with D&D, but, rather, that when you see people trying to pound screws with a hammer, it shouldn't be considered antagonistic to offer them a screwdriver.

Except that the, "there is NO gritty reality in D&D" assertion isn't offering them a screwdriver - it is a rather blatant challenge to their beliefs. Leave that bit out, and you'd likely be okay.

Meh, I always try to take the Wikipedia approach - always presume good faith until you can show otherwise.

And that's great. I wish more people would. But, honest and for true, is that what you *expect* from normal folks on the internet? Write to your intended audience, and their traits, not your traits.

Yet people will swear up and down that D&D is all about grim and gritty play.

Have you yet entertained the notion that your idea of "concrete support" may not apply well to RPGs? Or, perhaps more usefully, that maybe just because you don't see it or feel it, doesn't mean the quality isn't there for others?

My wife thinks cilantro tastes like soap. Many people do not. Just because those others don't experience the same sensation, does not mean my wife is lying, or wrong. She just has a different experience.