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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ydars" data-source="post: 4292400" data-attributes="member: 62992">I think when most people talk about "realism" in roleplaying, they are not talking about the real world, they are talking about what FEELS real, in a visceral sense. Something doesn't have to model reality to feel real; it has to trigger an emotional and visceral response that creates a "sense of realism"; rather like the way that certain smells or certain music can transport you back to a certain time in your life. The reason 4E probably fails for many people is that it completely fails to tap into our unconcious sense of the past, and this is where our sense of "realism" in gaming actually comes from.We all have vast store of historical information in our unconcious minds that films and books draw on. Most of us are not aware of this information content at all. Tiny details often help to bring these things out and create a sense of "realism" by which I mean a state where we have sub-conciously "bought in" to something on an emotional level. I have always believed that a DMs primary job is to make the players believe in the story on a visceral level, yet I suspect the majority of D&D gamers don't care about this; they just want to kill things and feel powerful.D&D (all versions) has always done a pretty bad job of tapping into our unconcious, although 4E is a step worse than 3.5E, because the rules and the gameplay are so obviously the reason for many things that affect the story. Yet this has always been the case; vancian magic anyone? I mean I completely get Vancian magic, but how many novels or other game systems actually used it? What about gold pieces; gold was never used as a currency and its use in D&D has always been a major flag of disbelief for me. Then there is the way magic is completely scientific and non-mysterious and the way the non-human races are portrayed..........it goes on and on.Gygax hated the master of Vermisilitude; Tolkien and D&D has always been a pulp fantasy game as a result. Tolkien was a master at tapping into our sub-concious knowledge of history because he spent so long studying it; it is why LoTR and his other books FEEL so real. He spent more than 50 years crafting the names and backgrounds to his world until they almost took on a life of their own. Much of Tolkien's work is a clever tangent of reality; not quite history, almost "race memory" if you believe in such a thing. I know lots of people don't like Tolkien, but you see, most people do; LoTR has consistently been voted the most popular work of fiction in the English Language.</blockquote>

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