Quote from: Wood Elf;804233I'm not sure about anyone else but huge warhammers made of stone, ungodly massive swords that weigh 10 or 15 pounds, and even daggers that weigh a pound just drives me bug nuts.

So am I alone in my obsession, or are there other nutty bastards out there?

Clearly you are not alone. Surfboard swords, bureau-sized war hammers, and spiked armor that would kill you if you walked into your own closet in the dark bug me and look ugly. Equally clearly, some folks like it.

Quote from: jibbajibba;804276Internal consistancy over realism

This.

I want to know from the outset what I'm buying into, and then not have that violated willy-nilly. The more the consistency is reinforced, the better. My suspension of disbelief should be a setting, not a trampoline.

Quote from: Terateuthis;804306For me, realism takes a back seat to Rule of Cool, Rule of Psychedelia, Rule of Weird, Rule of Gorn, and Rule of MËTAL, not necessarily in that order.

If all the above Rules are met and sufficient surrealism is thereby obtained, a sprinkling of plausibility is fine.

Could some one explain what these Rules are? I'm only familiar with the Rule of Cool.

I do like a good bit of realism. Particularly for things like the size and speed of boats and ships, how far and fast a horse can move in a day, design of a town or city, etc.

It comes back to being predictable. I want to know what is reasonable in a given situation and work from there. A guy in chainmail armor and gear needs to leap over an 8 foot pit, his chances of making it are...? The PCs need to chase after bandits riding horses and they may catch them when...? The PCs need to sneak past an encounter and they make how much noise...?

But some things don't bother me much. The fantastical is fantastical and I don't let the details bog me down. Where do Dragons and Beholders come from? What do they do for entertainment? Who cares? Magic turns a 15 pound sword into a 2 pound sword how exactly? Doesn't matter.

The world still has to have a foundation of believability and predictability however. Otherwise it's just hard to function in a chaotic environment.

Quote from: jeff37923;804352Could some one explain what these Rules are? I'm only familiar with the Rule of Cool.

The Rule of Cool is the only "real" one as seen on TVTropes.com. The others were my own tongue-in-cheek derivatives, intended mainly as humor.

The gist: My personal preferences run to over-the-top Moorcockian sturm und drang, fantasy as shock/awe/spectacle, the baroque, and "weirdness for weirdness' sake"; if these conflict with verisimilitude, so be it. More Zelazny, A Voyage to Arcturus, and Métal Hurlant, less Hârn.

Not that there's anything wrong with Hârn; personal preference =/= value judgment.

Quote from: Old Geezer;804293Things like ten pound swords and cities structured like 1890 London rather than 1290 London used to bother the shit out of me.

After 37 years of pissing into the wind, I've given up.  D&D is just a dumb game and I enjoy it for itself, dumbness and all.

Well a two-handed sword could weigh upwards of 8lb according to some notes. So its not too horribly off if you use that as a basis.

But.

The average weight was around 5lb for the Zweihander, Claymore, Bastard and even the Long Sword. Easy enough to fix if you prefer a more accurate "standard" weight.

Same with things like chainmail. Of course its heavy if you roll it up in a ball and hold it. But its worn like cloth and distributes the same way.

Also easy enough to change if so inclined.

Quote from: Terateuthis;804366The Rule of Cool is the only "real" one as seen on TVTropes.com. The others were my own tongue-in-cheek derivatives, intended mainly as humor.

The gist: My personal preferences run to over-the-top Moorcockian sturm und drang, fantasy as shock/awe/spectacle, the baroque, and "weirdness for weirdness' sake"; if these conflict with verisimilitude, so be it. More Zelazny, A Voyage to Arcturus, and Métal Hurlant, less Hârn.

Not that there's anything wrong with Hârn; personal preference =/= value judgment.

OK, thank you.

 I tried looking them up and got nothing except for a forum post of "101 Rules of Thrash Metal" which can be summed up as the writer thinking that anything not Thrash Metal is gay, which means to me that Judas Priest must make the writer's head implode.

Quote from: jibbajibba;804276Internal consistancy over realism

Pretty much this. Plausibility is nice, but I'm willing to let it slide a bit as long as everything gels in a more or less reasonable fashion. Before reading this thread, f'rex, it had never occurred to me before that there's anything wrong with a dagger weighing 1lb. Now I think about it, I can't help but wonder if every dagger in D&D is actually filled with lead. Within the context of the game, however, it makes at least as much sense as anything else.

I like my settings to be internally consistent and, generally, the more closely I can relate them to an existing real-world historical or legendary era, the more I like them.

For instance, it annoys me that in Westeros the biospehere of the North is still a Taiga of evergreen trees, when with years-long seasons it should instead have short, tough shrubbery. But I forgive Game of Thrones overall because it does such a brilliant job with its culture and history that it makes up for that.

I like my rules to offer associated mechanics (rules-as-physics) that reflect the setting.

Realism compared to our world doesn't matter.  Realistic within the setting, yes.  So in nearly all settings, swords aren't understood to be something significantly different then in our world, so swords that aren't similar to the ones in ours are jarring.  The existence of dragons doesn't automatically validate humans wielding Buster Swords that can cleave castle walls.

How much realism? Just enough to provide a baseline to help contrast the fantastic elements. Otherwise if everything is fantastic, then nothing is.

Then again, I'd love to try a gonzo fantasy sci fi game akin to Moebius and Jodorowsky (no, not quite Numenara)...

Quote from: Wood Elf;804233I fully realize that these are, generally, games based upon fictional worlds, events, characters, phenomena, etc. But I've always liked a higher degree of realism in my games, mostly along the lines of equipment, social structures, economics, and so forth to better engender a feeling of familiarity amongst the players, thereby making the fantastic elements that much more interesting and esoteric. To me it brings more awe to the game table and encourages more player(character) involvement in the world.

I like the weapons, armour, and other equipment to be familiar and make sense from both a design and mechanics standpoint. Maybe it is just my obsession with history and authenticity as a re-enactor/interpreter or the fact that I make medieval weapons and tools for a living, but I want shit to look and perform realistically. I'm not sure about anyone else but huge warhammers made of stone, ungodly massive swords that weigh 10 or 15 pounds, and even daggers that weigh a pound just drives me bug nuts.

So am I alone in my obsession, or are there other nutty bastards out there?

I don't know if an RPG needs to be realistic. But I'd like to do realistic things in my RPGs if needed.

Internal Consistency and verisimilitude are more important to me then realism in general but varies based on the genre. High Anime Flavored fantasy has less realism than gritty survival but in any genre I don't care about things I consider trivial like minutia about equipment function. I'm more concerned that the characters feel like people and act in understandable ways.

Quote from: TristramEvans;804342This.

I want to know from the outset what I'm buying into, and then not have that violated willy-nilly. The more the consistency is reinforced, the better. My suspension of disbelief should be a setting, not a trampoline.

Yes.
Verisimilitude and internal consistency, even better when the setting is backed by a properly underpinned setting, can make for a much longer, deeper game.

Not as important for shorter ones.  But if you want to get the players deeply engaged and thinking in character for years, this is a huge help.

I don't like the term 'realism' as it describes how closely the game in question hews to our reality.  So I see that to be the reason many of us go this direction.

It is also why I've stayed in the same setting so long adding an layering and adding, and the reason I keep most players in the same few play areas.

Detail and consistency.

for the most part i dont care about realism but there are a few things i like to be a bit realistic

Gravity this is the big one i hate falling damage rules that somehow does not take into account acceleration and then those that do often forget to put a cap on for terminal velocity.

Another one is taxs it always bothered me that so many games dont have taxs the taxs i do levy tend to be pretty low rates (1%) but its there. And in a similar vein where does the state spend there money in the setting im working on the main kingdom has free universal health care (although you have to travel to the capital for most of it) and cheap public transport in the form of portals all over the place (the main portal to greyhawk is free though as is the use of the portal to union) and decent education but all this money spent on improving the city has left there military vastly under equipped.

I saw a lot of people mentioned spiked armor while it certainly makes no sense on the battlefield its not so ridicules for dungeon delving.

i also like to have some more realistic pricing on items thats based on more then just balance it bothers me that astral driftmetal only costs 1000 more gold then normal armor the description indicates that its really rare and it feels to me that that should add a lot more to the price.