I agree there has to be the start of a comparison point with reality, as in a base to extrapolate from possible scenarios into impossible scenarios depending on impossible contexts.

But you can very much have believable things that suspend your disbelief without them being realistic at all. Another example: the sound of TIE fighters in space. When you hear that sound, you know a TIE is coming. If you see a TIE fighter but you don't hear that sound, something is amiss: it breaks immersion into the SW universe. These elements of sound in space in Star Wars participate to the feel of SW and actually, far from breaking immersion for most viewers, participate to the experience of what a SW movie is, what the universe feels like. Hence, verisimilar.

That's really my point here: verisimilar, or believable, doesn't mean it necessarily has to be realistic. Your Venn diagram implies it does.

Quote from: taustin;695198I didn't start the namecalling, retard. Now, yes, I'm namecalling, because that's all you're doing, and all you will be doing. You, too, have completely derailed the original subject so that you can prove how small your dick is by calling me names.

All I've been doing is namecalling?

Perhaps you should go back and reread your response here tomorrow, and hopefully you will see how you're coming off to others.

Quote from: Benoist;695279I agree there has to be the start of a comparison point with reality, as in a base to extrapolate from possible scenarios into impossible scenarios depending on impossible contexts.

But you can very much have believable things that suspend your disbelief without them being realistic at all. Another example: the sound of TIE fighters in space. These elements of sounds in space in Star Wars participate to the feel of SW and actually, far from breaking immersion for most viewers, participate to the experience of what a SW movie is, what the universe feels like. Hence, verisimilar.

I see where you're going, even though with SW movies (or BSG or Firefly who do sound in space differently) you're dealing with genre conventions, which has it's own built-in assumptions which suspension of disbelief relies on.

I just don't see verisimilar to only mean believable in a suspension of disbelief way.  I probably wouldn't use the term in some of the same sentences you would, especially if we were talking about game design, in which I would probably use it more like the "closer to truth" definition.

As an example, if the Game of Thrones setting established that Dragonbreath was hotter the larger the dragon, and then it showed one of Dany's young dragons breathing fire hotter then that of the monstrous Balerion the Dread, I don't know that I would call that breaking verisimilitude.  It's definitely inconsistent and violating the internal logic of the setting.

However, if in the books young Arya Stark could lift more weight then Gregor Clegane, I certainly would call that breaking verisimilitude, even if, since Martin wrote it, it's supposed to be "canon".

Quote from: CRKrueger;695282I see where you're going, even though with SW movies (or BSG or Firefly who do sound in space differently) you're dealing with genre conventions, which has it's own built-in assumptions which suspension of disbelief relies on.

I don't think that's "genre" in a literary sense I'm talking about here. Star Wars sound does not belong to and isn't representative of a "genre", except its own, if you want to construe it that way, which would be a post-modern way of describing it, but not really accurate, IMO. I'm talking about in-world logic. One of the reasons Star Wars made such an impression when it came out on the big screen in 1977 was that it felt so genuine, so believable, with its used universe, its sounds in space, its believable Force. I'm talking about some of the setting's believable elements which are not "realistic" by any definition of the word and yet, participate to a sense of immersion in the world.

Quote from: CRKrueger;695282I just don't see verisimilar to only mean believable in a suspension of disbelief way.  I probably wouldn't use the term in some of the same sentences you would, especially if we were talking about game design, in which I would probably use it more like the "closer to truth" definition.

To me verisimilitude is literally just that: the appearance of reality as it relates to the game world.

It's the truth of the game world. Not the truth of our own.

BTW someone once asked on the forums what defined Star Wars as a universe, and I was not kidding when I answered "sound in space". Though that might have come off as "it's unreal" or "it makes no sense and it's cool", I actually meant what I am explaining here. That the Star Wars universe is a reality of its own, to the mythos level, and the simplest expression of this believable other-world of Jedi and lightsabers and flying pieces of garbage that can do the Kessel run in 12 parcecs is that sound in space we keep hearing while we watch the movies.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;695133oh joy.  Another thread of taustin being taustin.  The word 'realism' is perfectly fine to use.  He quoted verisimilitude, so he knows how to use a dictionary.  Look up 'realism' and he'll see it's just fine for how it's been used.  Also neglected to see that in his own definition, they are synonyms.

and then doubles up by complaining about people calling names after just getting done making dick references.

Yeah, it IS useful to identify those sorts of people here ... the ones who just figure if they keep on shouting "I'm right!  I'm right!  Anyone who disagrees with me is wrongwrongWRONG!" at the top of their lungs, they can just declare victory.  

Maybe I should just establish Ravenswing's Law (in the spirit of Godwin's Law): making penis references in an Internet debate is the last refuge of the intellectually bankrupt.

Quote from: Benoist;695269So verisimilar things are not necessarily realistic. Your Venn diagram doesn't reflect that.

You know what Ben, this is quite right. It also fits in with this:
Verisimilitude is a description applied when a rule or set of rules, or even a setting "feels" realistic in the opinion of the decision maker. It may or may not have anything to do with actual reality, but it can have its place.

That doesn't mean this isn't an important concept:
Realism is where a rule or set of rules attempt to produce results based on real factual research, and the designer can produce said research upon request. I suppose it could even be applied to settings if you wanted to do a historical game.

To move away from rules for a minute and on to the more easily understandable vista of settings, let's say you've just watched Charlie Sheen in his 1993 Three Musketeers extravaganza. You decide, hey that was awesome so I'll run a game based on the movie. Your friends who watched the movie with you agree, you run your game in that setting.

It doesn't have much to do with the realities of 17th century France but you wouldn't know 17th century France from Ben Hur so as far as you're concerned that's the real deal. This is verisimilitude, and everyone had a great time, brilliant.

A realistic setting on the other hand is where the author puts in the time and effort to research 17th century France as it actually was, learns about the important political figures, the effects of the Ancien Régime at all levels of society, the kinds of equipment, medical facilities and skillsets available, the culture and its interactions with other cultures to produce a more nuanced and detailed picture.

There's no reason why you can't view all that through the lens of Charlie's two fisted musketeering but what you now have is a broader, deeper milieu to adventure in. Stick in a dragon under a mountain somewhere and yes the whole becomes less true to life but the realistic elements remain realistic. Brotherhood of the Wolf was just such an effort to use another example from the big screen.

Quote from: Ravenswing;695312Maybe I should just establish Ravenswing's Law (in the spirit of Godwin's Law): making penis references in an Internet debate is the last refuge of the intellectually bankrupt.

Unless it happens to be a discussion about penises, which let's face it the internet has more than it's fair share of and so needs an exception written in there, thus you've associated your handle forever with discussions about penises.

Not neccessarily the route I'd have taken.

Maybe a glossary is needed of all these technical terms so that everyone knows how to use them correctly.  Wasn't there another site at one point that didn't something like that?

Quote from: Dog Quixote;695328Maybe a glossary is needed of all these technical terms so that everyone knows how to use them correctly.  Wasn't there another site at one point that didn't something like that?

I didn't really think that penises were that technical but if you google the word you'll find plenty of examples.

Quote from: The Traveller;695326You know what Ben, this is quite right. It also fits in with this:
Verisimilitude is a description applied when a rule or set of rules, or even a setting "feels" realistic in the opinion of the decision maker. It may or may not have anything to do with actual reality, but it can have its place.

That doesn't mean this isn't an important concept:
Realism is where a rule or set of rules attempt to produce results based on real factual research, and the designer can produce said research upon request. I suppose it could even be applied to settings if you wanted to do a historical game.

To move away from rules for a minute and on to the more easily understandable vista of settings, let's say you've just watched Charlie Sheen in his 1993 Three Musketeers extravaganza. You decide, hey that was awesome so I'll run a game based on the movie. Your friends who watched the movie with you agree, you run your game in that setting.

It doesn't have much to do with the realities of 17th century France but you wouldn't know 17th century France from Ben Hur so as far as you're concerned that's the real deal. This is verisimilitude, and everyone had a great time, brilliant.

A realistic setting on the other hand is where the author puts in the time and effort to research 17th century France as it actually was, learns about the important political figures, the effects of the Ancien Régime at all levels of society, the kinds of equipment, medical facilities and skillsets available, the culture and its interactions with other cultures to produce a more nuanced and detailed picture.

There's no reason why you can't view all that through the lens of Charlie's two fisted musketeering but what you now have is a broader, deeper milieu to adventure in. Stick in a dragon under a mountain somewhere and yes the whole becomes less true to life but the realistic elements remain realistic. Brotherhood of the Wolf was just such an effort to use another example from the big screen.


Unless it happens to be a discussion about penises, which let's face it the internet has more than it's fair share of and so needs an exception written in there, thus you've associated your handle forever with discussions about penises.

Not neccessarily the route I'd have taken.

This is why I said it was a subset.  Verisimilitude CAN be synonymous with Realistic, in the RPG definition, and the two terms are always related.  And someone made the point that Verisimilitude feels like realism, in the context of a setting/game.  In the description above, as long as the GM makes the Sheen Musketeer setting feel consistent and the NPCS act with motivation, and we are on our way with verisimilitude.

Quote from: LordVreeg;695337In the description above, as long as the GM makes the Sheen Musketeer setting feel consistent and the NPCS act with motivation, and we are on our way with verisimilitude.

I never said you couldn't or shouldn't do that. However I hope the example illustrates the difference between verisimilitude and realism. And there are places where realism is impossible, like if you wanted to run a global economics simulator. Even professional economists can't manage that much, so there's nothing to work from, so just do what feels approximately right, aka verisimilitude.

Quote from: LordVreeg;695337This is why I said it was a subset.  Verisimilitude CAN be synonymous with Realistic, in the RPG definition, and the two terms are always related.  And someone made the point that Verisimilitude feels like realism, in the context of a setting/game.  In the description above, as long as the GM makes the Sheen Musketeer setting feel consistent and the NPCS act with motivation, and we are on our way with verisimilitude.

It can be synonymous, but it also doesn't have to be. That's precisely what I was trying to explain with my TIE fighter example. Star Wars feels real, and the verb is just as important as the adjective, here.

I also don't think that there's something inherently superior in being concerned by realism as opposed to verisimilitude, or that it means the GM concerned about realism will necessarily pour more work into his setting than the guy concerned with verisimilitude. I mean you can have a look at the Bandit Level in the Advice to build the mega-dungeon. I can say as the guy who wrote it that I'm not concerned about realism so much as verisimilitude, and I'm the kind of guy who cares for little details that make the environment feel more real, certainly.

But here's also where I disagree: I think that if I was to make a hierarchy of terms, I would put "realism" as a subset of verisimilitude, instead of the reverse. You are always constrained by the context in which the more-or-less-fantastic world exists. Whether we are talking about a page in a book using words to describe things, or images and sequences on a silver screen, or equations in a rules system for a tabletop role playing game.

This natural constraint of the medium means that you are necessarily making choices and shortcuts to create a universe that feels real, whether it's based on pure imagination or history, as opposed to actually modelling reality accurately. You can't model the actual way in which learning and brains and experiences build individual behaviors and capacities on a 1:1 basis because reality is just too complex for that. So you summarize a variety of areas of learning and ability as "skills" in a game system, and you choose to split hairs more or less finely, skills from 1 to 10, or 01 to 00, depending on context, whatever feels good enough for maintaining a suspension of disbelief, this idea that the world has an existence of its own, an appearance of reality.

So when you're building your Three Musketeers historical game, you are going to deal with verisimilitude primarily, whether you care for the original historical context, or not so much. You are going to build a game setting and context that is "good enough" for the table, a context that will feel real to you and your audience. There's nothing intrinsically superior or more complicated or whatever in this than a guy who would create a fantasy multiverse with dedication as well. It's all verisimilitude, to me. The only thing that changes is the relative proportions of the referents/source materials you are using in order to extrapolate and make choices of what will feel real in the game world.

Quote from: Benoist;695356This natural constraint of the medium means that you are necessarily making choices and shortcuts to create a universe that feels real, whether it's based on pure imagination or history, as opposed to actually modelling reality accurately. You can't model the actual way in which learning and brains and experiences build individual behaviors and capacities on a 1:1 basis because reality is just too complex for that. So you summarize a variety of areas of learning and ability as "skills" in a game system, and you choose to split hairs more or less finely, skills from 1 to 10, or 01 to 00, depending on context, whatever feels good enough for maintaining a suspension of disbelief, this idea that the world has an existence of its own, an appearance of reality.

By this standard realism doesn't exist anywhere, and shouldn't exist as a word until we can accurately model the entire universe down the the smallest subatomic particle.

Incidentally I don't know why people are making out one is a subset of the other or vice-versa, that's not even linguistically accurate. They're seperate things with seperate but related meanings. There are situations where they can be used synonymously but if that were the case with RPGs I don't know why people are having conniptions over the word.

Quote from: Benoist;695356There's nothing intrinsically superior or more complicated or whatever in this than a guy who would create a fantasy multiverse with dedication as well. It's all verisimilitude, to me. The only thing that changes is the relative proportions of the referents/source materials you are using in order to extrapolate and make choices of what will feel real in the game world.

I agree with everything you wrote, but I'll point out that when your world lacks versimilitude, your players will say 'that's not realistic'.  Maybe it's just harder to say in a conversation, but while we are really discussing versimilitude, whenever we talk about what destroys it, we're talking about things that appear 'unrealistic'...  That may mean that they don't correspond to the 'real world' or that they lack internal consistency.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;695364I agree with everything you wrote, but I'll point out that when your world lacks versimilitude, your players will say 'that's not realistic'.  Maybe it's just harder to say in a conversation, but while we are really discussing versimilitude, whenever we talk about what destroys it, we're talking about things that appear 'unrealistic'...  That may mean that they don't correspond to the 'real world' or that they lack internal consistency.

Yes. That's because they are misusing the word (it's not dramatic or special, we're all misusing words all the time every day), making a shortcut between what they think feels real and the referent that came to mind, actual reality. This is related to the players' expectations as they relate to the game world and its context. Basically when they're saying "it's not realistic" in most cases what they really mean is "that isn't believable/that breaks my immersion/this isn't verisimilar in this game's context."

Try the same thing with TIE fighters making no sound in the Star Wars universe and the viewers won't use the same expression, i.e. they won't tell you 'that's not realistic', but they'll tell you "this doesn't feel like Star Wars." They mean the same thing as those guys who were telling you that this or that element didn't feel "realistic" in that other game.

If you're aware of this as a GM, you can hear the complaint of a player, whatever form it takes, and understand what he or she means, as opposed to the way s/he's actually saying it. Then you can concentrate on solving the issue from a verisimilar standpoint, instead of getting sidetracked trying to split hairs too finely modeling physics or whatnot.