More about Realism

[RPGPundit]

I think some of you might be missing the fact that the "discussion of firearms and martial arts" in RPGs at all automatically qualifies you for the "armchair commando" club.  Talking about the "realism" of firearms or martial arts in RPGs is like talking about the "realism" of Real Estate brokering in Monopoly, and talking about how big an "expert" you are in real estate brokering within the context of the game of Monopoly just makes you look like looney, because if you really were an expert  on real estate brokering you wouldn't be bothering to even ATTEMPT to criticize Monopoly because the game so blatantly has nothing to do with the real market.  Its only a game.
 
Likewise, it is an armchair commando, not someone who has had real war experience, who will usually jump out and criticize something like Rambo. Because the guy who's really been there will know that Rambo is so completely out of the scale of reality that it isn't worth criticizing. He might, if he were say a vet of the Somalia operation, criticize the blatant jingoism and historical falsehood of something like Blackhawk Down, because the latter claims to be a "true" account of the events. But Rambo is just plain fantasy, and ONLY an armchair commando could confuse it with the real.
 
Likewise, in RPGs there is no realism, nothing even resembling the real in anything but a fictional context of escapism.  So calling on so-called "expertise" to criticize guns or martial arts rules would be just as silly as having an "expert on the occult" criticizing the magic system of a game. Real just don't factor into it, and if you think it does its probably because you haven't actually seen the real.

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My point is that no RPG realistically mimics combat situations, because real combat is a fucking mess. There is nothing about real combat that would be entertaining for an RPG even IF you could realistically mimic it.

And honestly, to realistically mimic real combat you would have to be making decisions and rolling dice in real time; forget initiative, forget about thinking about what you're gonna do. You have to shout out what you're doing while the DM shouts out what your attackers are doing and rolling dice as quick as possible while the other PCs who aren't in the scene pelt you with loose D6s and scream into your ears to simulate the "fog of war".  For ideal realism, you should inject yourself with a few ccs of adrenaline at the start of the fight scene and have a few buckets of pig's blood handy to throw on the table and your clothes, and possibly your eyes, to make it as hard as possible to roll and make out what number you got.
 
That would be realism.
 
Nothing in any published RPG would be.

RPGPundit July 22 2005

[beejazz]

Um... you just described a most awesome idea for a LARP ever. I know it was sarcasm, but I have to try that now.

And what's wrong with an 'occult expert' criticizing magic?

[Hastur T. Fannon]

Wasn't there a game where the magic system was written by an "occult expert"?

(no, I'm not thinking of Mage: the Pretension)

[mythusmage]

Wasn't there a game where the magic system was written by an "occult expert"?

(no, I'm not thinking of Mage: the Pretension)

That would be neo-druid P. E. I. Bonewitz' Authentic Thaumaturgy (Steve Jackson Games). A confused and confusing muddle that mistakes verbiage and malformed English composition for erudition.

He uses anti-Aristotalian logic, jumping to conclusions, half-assed appeals to authority, and complex because complex is important for realism mechanics to produce an unusable universal game supplement Christian Moore in his Aria days would consider an incoherent mess. It mixes occultism, parapsycology, and hermetic thought in a way that would give practicisg chaos magicians headaches. It makes you wander what his PHD review board was on at the time.

It is the closest anyone has ever come to a published magic system that rivals the grand and glorious insanity that is Time Cube.

[jhkim]

My point is that no RPG realistically mimics combat situations, because real combat is a fucking mess. There is nothing about real combat that would be entertaining for an RPG even IF you could realistically mimic it.

And honestly, to realistically mimic real combat you would have to be making decisions and rolling dice in real time; forget initiative, forget about thinking about what you're gonna do. You have to shout out what you're doing while the DM shouts out what your attackers are doing and rolling dice as quick as possible while the other PCs who aren't in the scene pelt you with loose D6s and scream into your ears to simulate the "fog of war".

Thanks for your expert advice about what realistic combat is, RPGPundit.  I'm sure that when you play with pelting d6's, that's just like the fucking real thing.  Any chance for references on this?  

As far as I can tell, this is just more macho posturing about how nothing is "realistic" unless it's perfect and omniscient to the point that it's indistinguishable from reality, which is bullshit.  Do you also claim that a war genre book isn't realistic unless someone is shouting in your face while you're reading it and pelting you with wadded-up bookmarks?  

Games like Harpoon and free kriegspiel don't have dice being pelted at the players, but they're used by real militaries to train people for real situation -- so I think they qualify as realistic.  True, those aren't RPGs, but they also don't include pigs blood or dice pelting.

[RPGPundit]

That would be neo-druid P. E. I. Bonewitz' Authentic Thaumaturgy (Steve Jackson Games). A confused and confusing muddle that mistakes verbiage and malformed English composition for erudition.

He uses anti-Aristotalian logic, jumping to conclusions, half-assed appeals to authority, and complex because complex is important for realism mechanics to produce an unusable universal game supplement Christian Moore in his Aria days would consider an incoherent mess. It mixes occultism, parapsycology, and hermetic thought in a way that would give practicisg chaos magicians headaches. It makes you wander what his PHD review board was on at the time.

Dude, Bonewitz got his degree from UC Berkeley in the 70s; his degree is not just worth less than the paper its written on, it de-values the paper's worth!

And I stick to my point: any self-proclaimed "occult expert" is by definition showing himself to be too retared to be any such thing if he starts spouting off about magic systems in RPGs, because any real "expert" on the subject would understand that RPGs aren't meant to have anything to do with "reality". The guys who go around talking about "realistic" magic systems are the same wiccan jerkoffs who think that they're raising "cones of power" by dancing around with 300lbs chain-smoking "nature priestesses" during easter and get into fistfights with 15 year olds over who has the right to call themselves "Lord Merlin".

As for a genuine take on the effects of magic, see my comments over on the Unknown Armies thread; that game more effectively parallels the psychological/sociological consequences of going on a serious headtrip about the occult than any other RPG I've seen.

RPGPundit

[RPGPundit]

As far as I can tell, this is just more macho posturing about how nothing is "realistic" unless it's perfect and omniscient to the point that it's indistinguishable from reality, which is bullshit.  Do you also claim that a war genre book isn't realistic unless someone is shouting in your face while you're reading it and pelting you with wadded-up bookmarks?  

A war genre book can be "authentic" in the sense of portraying and trasmitting real information or an accurate synthesis of the events that went down.  If you think that it actually "realistically simulates" what it was like to be there, in the sense that you think you can now talk expertly about being in the jungles of nam with your buddies because you read a war diary about it, then there's something wrong with you.

Games like Harpoon and free kriegspiel don't have dice being pelted at the players, but they're used by real militaries to train people for real situation -- so I think they qualify as realistic.  True, those aren't RPGs, but they also don't include pigs blood or dice pelting.

Games like these were and sometimes are used because they teach would-be officers valuable lessons in strategy, tactics, and resource management. However, they are in no way "realistic" in the sense of being able to accurately recreate the effects of genuine battle, much less decision making during a genuine battle, which is what the gist of my argument is all about.    I mean, after all, the military doesn't consider an officer with 1000 hours of wargame training and 0 hours of actual combat a "veteran", do they?

That's why I say no RPG combat system is actually "realistic"; they are just different degrees of emulating different genres. And, in fact, no one playing a game would actually WANT a game to have "realistic" combat, because such a game would be far less then fun (except perhaps those few mental defectives that think that RPGs aren't supposed to principally be about fun).

I mean, dude, Im not sure I get what you're aiming for here, but you're really starting to come off as one of those guys who is a little confused about the difference between gaming and real life... the "You don't play D&D for 12 years without learning a few things about courage" guys...

RPGpundit

[arminius]

Nah, you're just talking about different definitions of realism. I've seen the same thing when people go off on how wargamers' interest in realism is infantile or whatever.

For that matter, what about your Roman Empire campaign? Are you saying realism had nothing to do with your decisions on how to set it up and run it? Aren't there some unrealistic things that someone else could have done that would have made the game worse?

[jhkim]

Look, you're arguing a fucking stupid premise -- that to be "realistic", then someone would have to play the game and then immediately qualify for veteran status in the real military.  

Since no game lives up to this, then you therefore claim that no RPG has anything remotely to do with reality, and anyone who mentions reality at all with respect to RPGs is completely off base and insane.  

That's a logical fallacy.  

A war genre book can be "authentic" in the sense of portraying and trasmitting real information or an accurate synthesis of the events that went down.  If you think that it actually "realistically simulates" what it was like to be there, in the sense that you think you can now talk expertly about being in the jungles of nam with your buddies because you read a war diary about it, then there's something wrong with you.

OK, so since the second idea which you came up with is fucking stupid, why don't you drop it and consider the first one.  The first concept is a reasonable definition of "realistic".  i.e. It portrays and transmits real information and/or accurate synthesis.  

That's what many war genre books do, such as Blackhawk Down.  That's what perhaps a handful of war genre movies do (say, Das Boot).  That's what normal people mean when they say that a book is realistic -- not that reading it makes you a fucking veteran because the book throws dice at you, but because it transmits real information.  It's only armchair commandoes like yourself who imagine that "realistic" has to mean that the movie shoots real bullets at you.  

This isn't common for RPGs, which most commonly are pure fantasy, but it's not impossible either.  RPGs can, and in a handful of cases do, transmit real information.

[RPGPundit]

For that matter, what about your Roman Empire campaign? Are you saying realism had nothing to do with your decisions on how to set it up and run it? Aren't there some unrealistic things that someone else could have done that would have made the game worse?

Emulation certainly had a lot to do with how I was to set up and run it, including accurate historical emulation. I wouldn't say its "realistic", it is accurately historical, though.

RPGPundit

[RPGPundit]

That's what many war genre books do, such as Blackhawk Down.  That's what perhaps a handful of war genre movies do (say, Das Boot).  That's what normal people mean when they say that a book is realistic -- not that reading it makes you a fucking veteran because the book throws dice at you, but because it transmits real information.  It's only armchair commandoes like yourself who imagine that "realistic" has to mean that the movie shoots real bullets at you.  

Dude, the "armchair commandoes" are the ones who are arguing that their knowledge of Soldier of Fortune and "Guns and Bigg'uns" magazines mean that they are experts in sharpshooting and can therefore tell you that its "realistic" that an x.xx mm gun will fire x number of yards to accuracy or that guy can/can't kill another man with a melon peeler, etc etc ad nauseum.

The "armchair commandos" are the ones I'm bitching against.  The stupid shitheads that think that because they took a couple of kung-fu classes they're suddenly bruce lee, are real badasses (despite never being in a real fight in their lives) and can now tell you exactly what's "unrealistic" about Feng Shui and how to do "realistic" wuxia based on the secret powers they're about to gain any day now... :rolleyes:

My point is that this kind of "realism" is not only impossible, but born of the delusions of its proponents, and ultimately totally undesireable as far as playing fun RPGs is concerned.

RPGPundit

[arminius]

Right. Now howzabout if the GM offers a Roman campaign set in 50 AD and then partway through the third session it turns out there's a plot centering on a wealthy merchant who's trying to get elected to the Senate so he can then work his way up to Emperor?

Presumably you'd laugh your head off. Whatever you call the reason, it's what I think of as "lack of realism".

[jhkim]

Emulation certainly had a lot to do with how I was to set up and run it, including accurate historical emulation. I wouldn't say its "realistic", it is accurately historical, though.

Oh, yeah....

RPGs have nothing to do with accurate history!!  Those who like accurate history are weirdos who are opposed to fun!!  Plus, you wouldn't last 12 seconds in the real Roman army!!  To be accurately historical, the GM would have to take the toilet paper out of the bathroom and turn off the running water, and force the players to use it anyway!!  

[Yamo]

I think some of you might be missing the fact that the "discussion of firearms and martial arts" in RPGs at all automatically qualifies you for the "armchair commando" club.  

I do think you're painting with too broad a brush here. If a genuine misconception about something comes up in a game, there's nothing inherently wrong with correcting it.

Not all game settings are completely over-the-top ("cinematic" in RPG.Net buzzspeak) and some GMs (such as myself) actually appreciate being fact-checked, as long as it isn't done with the intent of "lawyering" the rules in any player's favor.

[Yamo]

Oh, yeah....

RPGs have nothing to do with accurate history!!  Those who like accurate history are weirdos who are opposed to fun!!  Plus, you wouldn't last 12 seconds in the real Roman army!!  To be accurately historical, the GM would have to take the toilet paper out of the bathroom and turn off the running water, and force the players to use it anyway!!  

Good call. Out-of-control historical accuracy fetishists are way, way worse than armchair commandos could ever aspire to be.