More about Realism

[James McMurray]

Yes, a couple of losers arguing over which martial art is better and how many times your katana should be folded in order to reliably cut through +1 armor is stupid. However, to then take that and extrapolate it out to anyone that wants a game to be more realistic is a sure indicator of ass in hat disease. You can easily have one without the other, in both directions.

To me there are two types of realism in games: physical and social. Both are important, but the level of importance is up to the group playing.

Physical realism involves combat, movement, and pretty much all things, well, physical. Generally people point first to combat to determine if a game is realistic because that's what most gamers focus their sessions on. Other things can also figure in though, such as whether a spacecracraft has to counteract momentum, or how easy it is to survive a fall.

Social realism involves believability in interpersonal relations. For instance, if your players in a game set in modern New York stumble into a homeless shanty town and everyone they meet speaks only in Shakespeare quotes, that's unrealistic. Presumably there is something going on outside the players' knowledge of the situation. If not, the GM is failing to maintain suspension of disbelief and may find himself losing his audience rapidly.

The first one is mostly handled by the game rules. Hit points are more realistic than immortality, but less realistic than well-written critical charts with bleeding and broken bones rules. Physical realism is usually the only one being addressed in "realism debates" although you can certainly find people ready to argue how Musashi would have Greeted Bruce Lee if they'd ever met.

The second is mostly handled by the GM, but any good game's campaign setting will lay the ground rules for what is realistic. If the game says that anyone holding agreen scarf is automatically allied with other greens against anyone holding a purple scarf, that becomes the game's social reality.

For me I like a good amount of physical realism (where possible) in most games. I'd rather have a system where you can bleed and break an arm. I want my spacecraft to be able to use and have to cope with inertia. Social realism though is, to me, much more important. If a game uses hit points only, but has a good cause and effect structure for PC actions then I'm happy.