Quote from: SHARK on May 28, 2021, 07:38:28 PM
Greetings!

Many people can't spell verisimilitude, or remember how to spell it. In general, *realism* in games is used as a synonym for verisimilitude. Pretty much interchangeable concepts when people are talking about fantasy game campaigns.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Thank goodness for spell-check.  It fixes it for me every single time

I would only accept "as realistic as possible" if it were limited not only by the setting/game requirements to support the fantastical but also the modeling requirements that affect game handling time and the inherent limitations of a model.

As an example, consider a hypothetical combat system that was very realistic in its approach to the physics of weapon and armor use, however the time required to use it not only adversely affected the enjoyment of the game (handling time) but also turned combat into a very chess-like, slow, "find the right answer" approach.  That is, at some point, if you layer too much fidelity to realism in the physics you lose the realism of the pace.  Note that this effect overlaps with but is distinct from verisimilitude.  That is, reaching verisimilitude is often a balancing act in the model of competing interests but even if you don't care about verisimilitude the effect is still a limiting factor.

Which is all another way of saying that realism introduces complexity, and a good game design should target its limited budget of complexity in the areas that are most central to what the game is about.

Along those same lines, I subscribe to "good enough" realism.  An example would be rules that make some simple, meaningful distinction between, say, a battle axe and an arming sword, which while not exactly realistic did encourage players to use the weapons in ways that parallel realism.  Or a more common one such as the "load time" on a crossbow in the system may not be realistic--either in isolation or comparing rate of fire between bows and crossbows.  It's good enough realism if it establishes that a crossbow has a delay sufficient that characters will be encouraged to fire, drop, and draw another weapon, at least some of the time.

Quote from: Pat on May 28, 2021, 06:30:35 PM
The word you should have used is verisimilitude.

I don't find that word very evocative for most, since most people will have to look it up.

I prefer to say "realistic themes." You're certainly correct that no game is ever entirely realistic, but it can have realistic themes.

For example, Call of Cthulhu having as it does mad monsters from beyond is not realistic, but with people being traumatised by their exposure to violence and strange things, it has realistic themes. Neither the wounding nor the sanity mechanics accurately represent physical or psychological trauma, but they do show man as fragile - which is a realistic theme, even if the details aren't realistic.

My own game Conflict has combat based on real-world stats and results - but you can't lose a limb or be otherwise disabled; if you receive a mortal wound which you recover from, you lose a point of Health - when Health reaches 0 you are still alive but sickly, and are normally discharged from uniformed service, if it drops below 0 you are deceased. So a person could step on a mine and not lose a leg - but they'd suffer permanent loss of Health, and may stop uniformed service or end up dying.

The details are never all realistic, but the game can have realistic themes. And I think that's about as much as most players want.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on May 28, 2021, 10:14:35 PM

Quote from: Pat on May 28, 2021, 06:30:35 PM
The word you should have used is verisimilitude.

I don't find that word very evocative for most, since most people will have to look it up.

I prefer to say "realistic themes." You're certainly correct that no game is ever entirely realistic, but it can have realistic themes.

"Air of realism" is a common way to define the word, and it works fine as well. But whatever we call it, I think it's an important distinction, and that's what I was trying to emphasize, not start some debate over a 2 satoshi word. Because creating an air of realism is not about being realistic in everything, or even anything in particular. That way lies madness, and overwritten games that obsess about detail and rigorous and tiresome reality checks, and often end up feeling less realistic than games that gloss over many of the same parts.

Because the air of realism is not about being realistic, but about the perception of being realistic. It's a subjective experience (if you've ever had an engineer as a player, you know their standards are different), that's often quite arbitrary because everyone has different interests and trigger points. It's ultimately a form of consensual delusion. To accept a game world as realistic isn't about being the most realistic against some objective measure, but about hitting the parts the players need in order to accept the world as pseudo-real. Tropes are important, because tropes are previously-established mental shortcuts, that have already primed to them to suspend their disbelief. If it's done well, the players will (often unconsciously) gloss over the inconsistencies and unrealistic elements, and become active participants in seeing the world as real, and even realistic.

And yes, creating an air of realism is just a special case of genre emulation.

Quote from: jhkim on May 28, 2021, 06:24:53 PM
Yeah, it depends on genre and intent.

Systems I like that I think are deliberately unrealistic:
James Bond 007

Which one? The original was fairly realistic as it was based I believe on the pre-Roger-Moore Bond. All its tech was cutting edge but if recall right, still possible.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on May 28, 2021, 07:06:00 PM
I want rpgs realistic in the sense they follow some kind of internal logic and consistency. I'm happy to have unrealistic and certain fantastical elements as long as it's does'nt ever veer too much into high-fantasy. I just prefer low fantasy stuff in general.

Super duper floating Combat wheelchair... Uh, okay I guess in a D&D high-fantasy 5e setting (and as long as I don't ever have to GM it). But not on your life in a low-fantasy setting.

This very much so.
In say O,BX, A,and 2e its unrealistic. But there are workarounds in some cases. See my thread on that here.
In 5e its still un-realistic in standard 5e. But fits in FR where weird is the norm.

On the other hand it is un-realistic to assume that handicapped people can not become adventurers for whatever reasons. Workarounds exist for some of these. Its going to be exponentially harder though so have a backup character handy.

Everyone has their own threshold of what amount of weird they will accept and what type before the cracks start to show.

For some Fogfotten Realms is just too high fantasy, often bordering on super-fantasy.
For others Greyhawk or Known World is too bland and not fantastical enough.
Dark Sun is too bleak and having to deal with starvation and dehydration constantly is no fun. While most players for Dragon Storm were perfectly fine with having to camp and forage as needed. Others dont like even having to track food, ammo, or adhere to carrying capacity.

And carrying Capacity, encumbrance and tracking supplies seems a special bugaboo of realism players have been relentlessly trying to get rid of for a long long time.

Quote from: Omega on May 29, 2021, 01:57:43 AM

And carrying Capacity, encumbrance and tracking supplies seems a special bugaboo of realism players have been relentlessly trying to get rid of for a long long time.

Is it those things inherently that players want to ditch, or is it the the overly complicated nature of the systems used to do them? 

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 29, 2021, 08:29:15 AM

Quote from: Omega on May 29, 2021, 01:57:43 AM

And carrying Capacity, encumbrance and tracking supplies seems a special bugaboo of realism players have been relentlessly trying to get rid of for a long long time.

Is it those things inherently that players want to ditch, or is it the the overly complicated nature of the systems used to do them?

Ive never seen a complex system. Its usually you have X amount of weight you can carry and each item weights Y. The more you carry the slower you move. Or, you have 10 days of food. Each day check off one.

Apparently that is too much for some to wrap their little walnut brains around?

Players are interested in the cool stuff their characters can do (stats, spells, etc) and in choices.

Encumbrance isn't a cool thing we can do, and it doesn't give us very interesting choices.

If you're actually out in the field carrying the shit on your back, you are deeply interested in minimising what you carry overall, and maximising its utility. "Chuck out the mozzie net, carry another mag." But you are not your character, you don't have to carry all that shit, so you don't care.

It's the same as how players won't pay for their character to take a carriage across the continent and for good food. "No! We will walk, and eat iron rations the whole way."

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on May 29, 2021, 09:31:21 PM
Players are interested in the cool stuff their characters can do (stats, spells, etc) and in choices.

Encumbrance isn't a cool thing we can do, and it doesn't give us very interesting choices.

If you're actually out in the field carrying the shit on your back, you are deeply interested in minimising what you carry overall, and maximising its utility. "Chuck out the mozzie net, carry another mag." But you are not your character, you don't have to carry all that shit, so you don't care.

It's the same as how players won't pay for their character to take a carriage across the continent and for good food. "No! We will walk, and eat iron rations the whole way."

Greetings!

*LAUGHING* Fucking hilarious, Kyle Aaron!

So true, too!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on May 29, 2021, 09:31:21 PM
Players are interested in the cool stuff their characters can do (stats, spells, etc) and in choices.

Encumbrance isn't a cool thing we can do, and it doesn't give us very interesting choices.

If you're actually out in the field carrying the shit on your back, you are deeply interested in minimising what you carry overall, and maximising its utility. "Chuck out the mozzie net, carry another mag." But you are not your character, you don't have to carry all that shit, so you don't care.

It's the same as how players won't pay for their character to take a carriage across the continent and for good food. "No! We will walk, and eat iron rations the whole way."

Well... maybe at lower levels. When I played sorcerer in PF1, I had Teleport and Mage's Magnificent Mansion as part of my repertoire. We didn't walk any further than we had to

Well, there's that for an idea. Make the players experience it.

"Game time will move at the same rate as real time. Take the carriage and be there by the next session in a week, walk and it'll take a month, and our next three sessions in between will be roleplaying your camping, eating iron rations, digging latrines and so on."

Quote from: Mishihari on May 28, 2021, 05:28:09 PM
This came up in another thread and I'm curious how widespread my view on this issue is.  It usually comes up when somebody says something like "We have dragons in the game, so why not giant, carnivorous, acid (chemical or pharmaceutical, take your pick) marshmallow peeps?  Is your imagination so limited that you can't handle that?"

Well, I would say that the real world is a rich and nuanced place where a lot of things are possible. In the fantasy world, even more things should be possible, not less. One such possibility would be having a planet where they lack the technology to make even ordinary marshmallow peeps, let alone evolve living ones. Is your imagination so limited that you can't handle that?

I know Gary has been known for using this type of argument against players who demanded more realism. But context is everything. Is it really a good use of time, effort, and page count to include a realistic hit location table when the majority of combat is against creatures with completely alien anatomies? That's the sort of context in which it makes sense to ignore realism "because fantasy." It's more of a practical matter than a philosophical one. The argument doesn't validate others dictating whether or not the StayPuft Marshmallow Man should be allowed in your campaign.

QuoteMy view is that  making the game as close to realistic as possible while still incorporating the desired fantastic elements allows players to use their real-world intuition to make in-game decisions and increases both verisimilitude and immersion.  I'm fine with having a 30 pound halfling just as strong as the 500 pound half-ogre, if having such things is one of the premises of the game.  If it isn't I would like the half ogre to be vastly stronger, because that's what I would expect in real life.

The other issue of course is playability.  Some things are too much trouble to actually model realistically, and others (hello hit points!) make the game more fun even though they're very unrealistic.

To that I would say, let's start by setting some expectations. We don't even have the real world boiled down to a finite set of rules that explain everything. Let alone a succinct and simple set of rules you could play a game by. If the best scientific minds over centuries have not given us that, what hope does a designer for a genre of game that's only been around decades have? And if the fantasy world is going to be one of even greater possibilities than the real world, then it's doubly futile.

Then there's phenomenology. Like we know if you eat less food you'll lose weight. Or if you lift heavy weights, you'll become stronger. We've always known that. But then we try to drill down to what goes on at the cellular level to cause the body to change. From this, we figure out what the chemical interactions are. And from there, we can create a pill. Take this. It will produce the same chemical interactions as dieting and exercising, and you'll shed fat and get stronger. And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Because it turns out health and fitness are their own fields of study and are not just applied biochemistry. It turns out that's the level of abstraction at which it is most practical to look at things.

So what the hell is wrong with hit points? Given what I mentioned earlier, about hit locations being a waste of time if the fantasy game involves fighting things with inhuman anatomies, it would seem to make sense that hit points are at the very least a likely candidate for being the best level of abstraction at which to handle things. What's unrealistic about hit points? What's unrealistic about the phenomenon that a "higher level" warrior is more resilient? than a "lower level" one? Or that recovering from a battle with a dragon takes longer than recovering from a battle with a goblin? Sorry. That's just the diet pills talking.

Rather than "realistic" I would say it should "make internal sense".