My group and I generally try to eschew "mechanical realism", which is trying to apply realism to game mechanics. We go from "very rough approximation" to "batshit loco never happen", depending on the setting, the circumstances, and the current mood. Where we generally try to keep the realism is, instead, in character behaviors, or what we think human(oid) behavior would be in a particular situation.

It works ok. YMMV.

Quote from: jhkimOK, well at least we have agreed on definitions here.  So there is "realism" and there is "verisimilitude" -- and these are different qualities.  The points where they differ are where a player has preconceptions which are not true.  However, given the degree to which most RPGs break from reality, hopefully we can agree that to a large degree these two qualities overlap with each other.

In theory, they should overlap substantially.  In practice, I think they often don't.  Why?  Because role-playing games deal with things like combat, mountain climbing, lock picking, trap disarming, aircraft piloting, etc. that most player have no direct experience with.  What people "know" about these things often comes from a combination of  movies and guesses based on other things the player does know.  Even players who do research and read non-fiction about he appropriate subjects may have different ideas about what's real if the experts they've read have different opinions about what's real.  That can produce one heck of a gap between reality and verisimilitude.

Quote from: jhkimI'm willing to believe that most players prefer verisimilitude over realism in the cases where they differ.  However, speaking for myself, I prefer that if I have some false belief that the game correct me rather than playing to my preconceptions.  So for me, realism is more important.

And that's interesting.  But I still want to go back to asking how you can tell the difference between a detail that differs from your beliefs because your beliefs are wrong or a detail that differs because the author is either just as wrong as you are or the author is wrong and you are actually right.

Suppose, for example, I were to have played a skraeling in your Vinland campaign and had my character scalp a fallen opponent.  Another player objects because they have been told that scalping was introduced by the Europeans and didn't exist among American Indian cultures before the Europeans taught it to them (yes, I've heard this claim).  Without missing a beat, I cite the Crow Creek archaeological site of a pre-Columbian massacre that happened circa 1325 in what is now South Dakota and included evidence of scalping to show that it existed in the Americas before the Europeans arrived.  

So is it "realistic" for my skraeling to scalp an opponent or not?  The truth is, I'm not sure we can know, barring specific evidence that it happened in a certain region at a certain time.  All I can show is that it did happen in the Americas in roughly that time period.  So we are left with an educated guess.  Will whatever you guess be "realistic"?  In the sense that it could have happened, yes.  In the sense that it's culturally correct?  I don't know for sure.  Do you?

By the way, there is speculation that the Crow Creek massacre happened as a result of famine caused by the climate change that was occurring as the Medieval Climate Optimum turned into the Little Ice Age.  Remember my question about starvation?  It's a quite realistic problem for the Americas in the 1300s.  Take a look at some of the Crow Creek web sites for details about what they've leared about he remains.  You might find it interesting.

Now, suppose you had grown up hearing the claim that scalping was introduced by Europeans and it's a horrible practice that's been wrongly attributed to American Indian cultures by Europeans out to depict them as savages.  I write up a setting very much like your Vinland setting and include skraeling scalping opponents based on the Crow Creek Massacre evidence.  But since I'm writing a role-playing book not a textbook, I don't explain why I have American Indians scalping people before Columbus.  You read my line about American Indians taking scalps.  Is it more likely that you'll assume that I've researched my facts and change your opinion about pre-Columbian scalpings or will you assume that I'm an ignorant American who has bought into a false stereotypical image of Indians as scalping savages?  Maybe you'd give me the benefit of the doubt, but can you see where people wouldn't?

Quote from: jhkimI'm fine with this as far as what most players want.  Though actually,  it seems to me that most players want very little in the way of either realism or verisimilitude.  They're fine with flying wire-fu stunts, dragonslaying, and so forth.

That's fine.  But I think it carries all the way through.  As you've already pointed out, realism isn't binary.  I think that as a game gets more realistic, it will appeal to fewer people.  

Quote from: jhkimI don't disagree that most players are not interested in realism.  However, here you're phrasing this in absolutes about what everyone enjoys -- not to mention telling me about what I and my players enjoy.  I would prefer you at least ask regarding this rather than telling me what I like.

I think you are doing what you were complaining I was doing earlier.  You are making this binary.  I agree realism falls along a range.  There are people who will enjoy very realistic games and I'm willing to admit, if it makes you feel better, there may be some people who would enjoy an completely realistic game.  But I see plenty of evidence that even people who claim that they want realism usually want it softened in some way, at least for their characters.

Quote from: jhkimThere are many players who do enjoy having unpleasant things happen to their characters.  That is why some people play Call of Cthulhu instead of Teenagers from Outer Space.  Thus, making things more pleasant for the characters does not always make the game more fun for the players.

Correct, but unpleasantness is not binary, either.  I'm not claiming that some players can't enjoy games that are more unpleasant than others.  What I'm claiming is that role-players have a line of unpleasantness that draws a line at things they just don't want to hear about in the game.  That can be expressed as liberties with reality or through character selection.  For example, if your players don't like the idea of enduring draconian sex roles for their female characters, they can choose characters exempt from those roles.  And many otherwise realistic games include magic healing because, without it or modern medicine, even minor injuries by modern standards can be deadly.

I'll admit an immersive bias and I'm assuming a certain level of player identification with their character.  I suppose it's possible for players who keep their characters at sufficient distance to be indifferent about horrible things happening to them.  So I'll acknowledge that this might not be universally true.  But even when players don't identify closely with their characters, there are often things that will bother them at a player level if it's included in a game.  So I think the pool of players without any line would be very small.

Quote from: jhkimI can talk more about specific examples, but I'd like to at least agree on the principle first.

I don't deny the existence of unpleasantness in popular games.  My claim is that I'm skeptical that any player really wants to play the full horrors of reality, especially directed at their PCs.  

All of this goes back to why people consider realism and fun to be in opposition.  They know that reality is full of a lot of things that they don't think are fun.  Most games trim at least some of them, intentionally or unintentionally.  Even the realistic ones.

Quote from: jhkimLook, you seem to have lost the point that this is a fucking game.  Regardless of how realistic the mechanics we use, no one is ever actually going to get shot.  Is playing the game going to give you the true experience of being shot then?  No, of course not.  No one ever claimed that it did.

And you seem to have lost the point that it was an analogy, though perhaps a very bad one.

Civil War re-enactors, perhaps more than any other hobbyists, are known for demanding a high degree of realism.  So strong is their desire to identify with the experiences of real Civil War soldiers that they are willing to endure physically unpleasant experiences.  My point was that even a person willing to sleep out in the freezing cold in authentic period gear to experience the unpleasant sharp edges of reality personally draws a line at how much unpleasantness they are willing to endure for realism.  There are things too horrible to experience first hand.  

Now, it's true that in role-playing games, players don't have to endure physical pain, discomfort, or injury.  But they can experience very real mental discomfort from the unpleasant things they experience in the game.  For example, many women find sexism and things like sex-specific attribute modifiers unpleasant enough to make them not want to play in games with them, even though those things do not physically harm the women.

The major problem that I have is that you continually slant realism as being "unfun" and even "horrific".  I feel that this is playing towards the common bias that "realism" means "gritty".  i.e. People will often say things like how it is more realistic to play a peasant than to play a prince.  

As a typical example, here's a quote from GURPS Martial Arts: "Realistic fighters won't be able to face multiple opponents, realistic investigators will not solve a crime with one quick look at the scene, and realistic mages will not be able to shatter armies with a spell."  

Now, I think you agree that this last bit is simply stupid, but I feel you're engaging in the same bias.  For example, suppose I decide to play a queen or a well-to-do, talented Bohemian woman rather than a working-class moll who is oppressed and raped.  You seem to be suggesting that this is trying to "soften realism" and that this indicates I would be hypocritical for wanting this and realism.  I don't feel that is the case.  That's just choosing what I want to play within reality.  

Quote from: John MorrowWhat I'm claiming is that role-players have a line of unpleasantness that draws a line at things they just don't want to hear about in the game.  That can be expressed as liberties with reality or through character selection.  For example, if your players don't like the idea of enduring draconian sex roles for their female characters, they can choose characters exempt from those roles.  And many otherwise realistic games include magic healing because, without it or modern medicine, even minor injuries by modern standards can be deadly.

Out of curiousity, what games are you talking about that are realistic other than their healing magic?  Offhand, I can't think of any game that has healing magic that doesn't also have a dozen other kinds of magic as well.  And most of those aren't trying to be particularly realistic.  

Quote from: John MorrowEven players who do research and read non-fiction about he appropriate subjects may have different ideas about what's real if the experts they've read have different opinions about what's real.  That can produce one heck of a gap between reality and verisimilitude.

Quote from: John MorrowAnd that's interesting.  But I still want to go back to asking how you can tell the difference between a detail that differs from your beliefs because your beliefs are wrong or a detail that differs because the author is either just as wrong as you are or the author is wrong and you are actually right.

I described at length my answer to that earlier -- which roughly was that I can't tell by a quick read, but over time as I read related books and see it, I will often notice some (though not all) such issues.  

More generally, I don't see what your point here is.  First, you say that there is a big gap between verisimilitude and realism.  Next, though, you're asserting that I can't tell the difference.  So what are you suggesting is the difference between designing-for-realism versus designing-for-verisimilitude?  Will they produce results which are noticeably different?  

From my point of view, I find that if I just make things up because they sound good without caring about the reality, the results do not stand up to extended scrutiny.  

Quote from: John MorrowSuppose, for example, I were to have played a skraeling in your Vinland campaign and had my character scalp a fallen opponent.  
...
So is it "realistic" for my skraeling to scalp an opponent or not?  The truth is, I'm not sure we can know, barring specific evidence that it happened in a certain region at a certain time.  All I can show is that it did happen in the Americas in roughly that time period.  So we are left with an educated guess.  Will whatever you guess be "realistic"?

If it's well-informed, consistent, and thought through, then yes -- it is relatively realistic.  Let's keep a sense of scale here.  Consider what the typical RPG is like (in terms of physics, economics, politics, and so forth), then consider what the real world is like.  There is a vast gap between them which makes your scalping example absolutely insignificant.  

If you were in my Vinland game, then any archeological evidence from the Dakotas region would be irrelevant, like citing Russian archaeology for what your Frenchman did.  I'd decide based on what we had established about your tribe and why you were doing it.  In my campaign, it never appeared -- I guess because I never saw any mention of it in any of the first contact narratives that I read, which were my primary source.  Based on my take on the local Algonquian tribes, I don't think it would be appropriate.  I also didn't have it among the Iroquoian tribes to the north -- they ate their enemies instead.  I could see establishing it for a southern tribe, or adopted by the Pequot for some reason, though.

Quote from: jhkimThe major problem that I have is that you continually slant realism as being "unfun" and even "horrific".  I feel that this is playing towards the common bias that "realism" means "gritty".  i.e. People will often say things like how it is more realistic to play a peasant than to play a prince.  

Actually, that bugs the hell out of me too.  Playing a group of gilded youths enjoying privilige and money in the 1980s is just as realistic as playing disenfranchised miners, both existed.

But then, in the real world I often hear people say that "so and so isn't living in the real world", so this isn't a thing from gaming, it's a thing from life.  But Donald Trump's life is just as real as the life of a street child from Rio, the Donald's is just a hell of a lot more pleasant.

For realism, I think all you really need is consistency and a sense that the world acts according to understandable laws whether they be our laws or not.  So, if fighters can fall 100 foot and survive, that can work if people in the world know that and act on it (though thinking up why might be challenging).  The trick is consistency.

The real world has cause and effect, and people look out for cause and effect and act upon their findings.  If the game world acts similarly, then it will probably feel realistic, if it does not, then it won't.

Simple as that really.  Magic and so on  has relatively little to do with it.  

Human nature is also key, people acting credibly.  If a small number of people have magic, and the game has no answer for why they are not in charge or controlled by those who are in charge then it will not feel realistic, because we may not know ballistics or what combat is like or any of that stuff but we know people because we are people and we know damn well that in any world inhabited by people individuals with power like that wouldn't be left just to wander around on their tod.

So, consistency is one thing, human nature is the other.  If people react to the game world credibly, the game will feel realistic even if it is chock full of dragons, fireballs and flying cities.  If people don't respond as we know perfectly well they would, then it will not feel realistic.

When I wrote In Harm's Way: A Napoleonic Naval RPG, I had to choose between setting the game in the real-world Napoleonic era, and setting the game in the collective world of recent napoleonic naval fiction. I could have done either, as I had done an enormous amount of research, but I chose to set it in the fictional reality of Hornblower, Aubrey, and Lewrie rather than the real world. Is there a lot of difference? No, not really. It's more a matter of emphasis rather than cut and dried differences, but it's there. It's verisimilitude versus reality.

Your character might get Yellow Jack in Jamaica, but he's going to be among the few that recover. Your character's wounds won't get gangrenous, though others will - unless you choose otherwise. Your character will be sent on interesting missions. If your ship is escorting a convoy, it will be attacked by the enemy, or one of the ships you are escorting will turn out to be a privateer, or whatever.

-clash

Balbinus's last post is right on the nose, IMO. I don't ask for absolute realism, but a modicum of verisimilitude and consistency. Enough that I can extrapolate from what I can be reasonably sure of in this world, and what I know to be "given" alterations to actual reality in the fictional world.

I can even tolerate (more than tolerate, enjoy quite a bit) the sort of thing Clash is talking about, ranging from PCs having metagame resources (hero points, extra hit points, whatever) that aren't available to NPCs, to mook rules, to scenario framing that focuses on interesting things. But within the scope of the scenario, or the range of things that my character cares about and has to deal with, I want to have at least Balbinus's version of realism.

On the whole though I also appreciate the "realistic genre", by which I mean simply low-magic, real world, or hard SF.

Quote from: Elliot WilenBalbinus's last post is right on the nose, IMO. I don't ask for absolute realism, but a modicum of verisimilitude and consistency. Enough that I can extrapolate from what I can be reasonably sure of in this world, and what I know to be "given" alterations to actual reality in the fictional world.

I can even tolerate (more than tolerate, enjoy quite a bit) the sort of thing Clash is talking about, ranging from PCs having metagame resources (hero points, extra hit points, whatever) that aren't available to NPCs, to mook rules, to scenario framing that focuses on interesting things. But within the scope of the scenario, or the range of things that my character cares about and has to deal with, I want to have at least Balbinus's version of realism.

On the whole though I also appreciate the "realistic genre", by which I mean simply low-magic, real world, or hard SF.

I think the "realistic genre" ends where the PC's extra resources can't be explained by luck, coincidence, or statistical anomaly.

-clash

More thoughts about "Realism", including the world's ONLY "realistic" RPG combat system, here:

More about Realism

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditMore thoughts about "Realism", including the world's ONLY "realistic" RPG combat system, here:

More about Realism

RPGPundit

Pretty much on the spot. I think you should include mechanics for waiting for months for something to happen with your nerves on edge, inability to sleep for days on end, and nutsack bashing to simulate the pain.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceI think the "realistic genre" ends where the PC's extra resources can't be explained by luck, coincidence, or statistical anomaly.

-clash

Where does spending a plot point to avoid sucking up a critical hit lie on that scale? What about knocking down mooks? Always being Johnny-on-the-spot when something interesting happens?

Anyway, those things are fine with me as long as they're understood to be part of the rules or culture of the game.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen Where does spending a plot point to avoid sucking up a critical hit lie on that scale? What about knocking down mooks? Always being Johnny-on-the-spot when something interesting happens?

Anyway, those things are fine with me as long as they're understood to be part of the rules or culture of the game.

I should have said "in-game." All of those can be explained in-game - that is in the characters' minds - as luck, etc. They don't break the illusion of being in a "real" world for the PCs. Sorry 'bout that! :O

-clash

Quote from: jhkimThe major problem that I have is that you continually slant realism as being "unfun" and even "horrific".  I feel that this is playing towards the common bias that "realism" means "gritty".  i.e. People will often say things like how it is more realistic to play a peasant than to play a prince.

OK.  Let me explain what I think is missing here and why it matters to me.

When I was six years old, my mother died at 39 years of age.  She literally dropped dead from a heart attack in a supermarket while I was in school.  Other than that, my childhood was about as good as any middle class childhood could ever be and most people would consider me lucky.  So I've seen both ends.

To me, "realism" includes both the fun and unfun, pleasant and horrific, lucky escapes and fatal accidents, people surviving cancer and people dying from slipping on the ice.

I'm not suggesting that a realistic game has to be all bad things all the time.  What I'm suggesting is that a game where the punches are pulled and really bad things never happen or only happen to NPCs or at an arm's distance is sacrificing reality for fun.  It's not that playing the peasant is inherently more realistic than playing the prince.  But always playing princes and never playing peasants does give one a limited and somewhat candy-coated slice of reality.

The reason why there is a bias toward princes instead of peasants is exactly because being a peasant isn't very pleasant.  The full range of reality includes both princes and peasants and avoiding the peasants is a way of avoiding the unpleasant edges of reality.  The full range of reality, which is what many people consider when they think "realism", really is not fun or enjoyable to play for most people.  And in many ways, a game where the players play only the best parts of reality are using "realism" as a special effect or backdrop, not as something to be fully experienced by the characters, who will never suddenly drop dead from a heart attack or die from slipping on the ice.

Quote from: jhkimAs a typical example, here's a quote from GURPS Martial Arts: "Realistic fighters won't be able to face multiple opponents, realistic investigators will not solve a crime with one quick look at the scene, and realistic mages will not be able to shatter armies with a spell."

I think every bit of that is stupid.  A well trained fighter can realistically take on multiple poorly trained or untrained opponents.  An investigator can always get lucky and solve a crime with a quickly look at the crime scene.  And the idea of "realistic mages" is, as you point out, silly without further qualification.

Quote from: jhkimNow, I think you agree that this last bit is simply stupid, but I feel you're engaging in the same bias.  For example, suppose I decide to play a queen or a well-to-do, talented Bohemian woman rather than a working-class moll who is oppressed and raped.  You seem to be suggesting that this is trying to "soften realism" and that this indicates I would be hypocritical for wanting this and realism.  I don't feel that is the case.  That's just choosing what I want to play within reality.

I'm pointing out that there is a general pattern to the characters that people choose to play in a realistic game and the pattern is that they choose characters that don't have to deal with the harshest parts of the reality of their setting.  Thus if a "realistic" setting has working-class molls who get oppressed and raped, they are there for color, not to actually be role-played.  They are scenery, like trees, lakes, and birds.  Similarly, if you include racism or sexism in the game but all the players pick characters that can personally avoid dealing with most of it, what's purpose does including it serve?  You may have a very good answer (I suspect you do) but I'm not sure most people think about it at all.

If the goal of the players was really to experience realism in all of it's glory, I would expect a distribution of characters instead of them predictably being clustered around the characters who are the least bound by the realistic restrictions of their setting and most free to hold modern or modern-like perspectives on things like race, sex, class, religion, etc. (even if they were to select among exciting characters only -- see Gangs of New York for what a lower-class adventure game might look like).  

If there isn't some liability in being realistic (a claim I made that you seem to be rejecting), then why do people choose characters who are exempt from most of the troubling or difficult bits of the historical period in which they are playing?  And if you are going to evade the harsher bits of reality, what's the benefit of choosing a more historical or realistic setting and avoiding the harshness instead of simply using a fantasized setting that simply removes the harshness altogether?

Quote from: jhkimOut of curiousity, what games are you talking about that are realistic other than their healing magic?  Offhand, I can't think of any game that has healing magic that doesn't also have a dozen other kinds of magic as well.  And most of those aren't trying to be particularly realistic.

The short answer is "No", but that seems to be the camel's nose in the tent.

I was actually thinking of science fiction and modern games as much as fantasy games and meant "magic healing" in the rather broad sense of allowing very rapid and unrealistic healing.  Often, it's simply a healing rate that's unrealistic.  Sometimes it's healing skills, potions, or (in science fiction) autodocs, and so on that help the healing.  The vary fact that few systems (to my knowledge) include mechanisms for lingering disabilities or scarring after wounding is "magic".  

Part of the problem is that I haven't played enough historical settings to know for sure so I could be wrong.  Do you know of any realistic games that don't have unrealistically fast healing or have rules for wounds producing disabilities?

Quote from: jhkimI described at length my answer to that earlier -- which roughly was that I can't tell by a quick read, but over time as I read related books and see it, I will often notice some (though not all) such issues.

Fair enough.  I'm nit-picking and I'll accept your answer, though I'm going to comment a bit more on related issues below.

Quote from: jhkimMore generally, I don't see what your point here is.  First, you say that there is a big gap between verisimilitude and realism.  Next, though, you're asserting that I can't tell the difference.  So what are you suggesting is the difference between designing-for-realism versus designing-for-verisimilitude?  Will they produce results which are noticeably different?

Often, I don't think they will, which is my point.  And sometimes when they do, people will think the realistic result is wrong because it conflicts with what they think is real.  For a smooth running game, that can be a bad thing, especially if you want the game to feel realistic.  It won't if it violates a players verisimilitude, even if it is, strictly speaking, "realistic" and true to real life.

Quote from: jhkimFrom my point of view, I find that if I just make things up because they sound good without caring about the reality, the results do not stand up to extended scrutiny.

Fair enough.  But if you care about the consistency and implications (which is "consistency") rather than reality, itself, do you still have the same problem?  I've found that working backward from the results I want can do a pretty good job of producing results that stand up pretty well in play.

Quote from: jhkimIf it's well-informed, consistent, and thought through, then yes -- it is relatively realistic.  Let's keep a sense of scale here.  Consider what the typical RPG is like (in terms of physics, economics, politics, and so forth), then consider what the real world is like.  There is a vast gap between them which makes your scalping example absolutely insignificant.

Since the scalping example is the sort of place where I've often seen conflicting views of reality pop up in games, I'm not sure it's insignificant.  In my experience (YMMV), the players are much more concerned about realism as reflected in what characters say and do and can do in the system than broader issues like physics, economics, politics, and so forth.  And I say this as a person who wrote the economics and population essays in the Tribe 8 Companion because I wanted to understand how those large scale issues might work in that setting.  How characters behave in a historical setting is important and anachronistic behavior in the PCs can be as unrealistic and jarring as anachronistic behavior in the NPCs.

Quote from: jhkimIf you were in my Vinland game, then any archeological evidence from the Dakotas region would be irrelevant, like citing Russian archaeology for what your Frenchman did.  I'd decide based on what we had established about your tribe and why you were doing it.  In my campaign, it never appeared -- I guess because I never saw any mention of it in any of the first contact narratives that I read, which were my primary source.  Based on my take on the local Algonquian tribes, I don't think it would be appropriate.  I also didn't have it among the Iroquoian tribes to the north -- they ate their enemies instead.  I could see establishing it for a southern tribe, or adopted by the Pequot for some reason, though.

The archaeology from the Dakotas is useful in showing that scalping was not introduced to all of the Americas from Europe and had at least the potential to be a domestic practice before the arrival of Europeans.  As for your research on first contact narratives and other research, I'd accept your interpretation if I were playing in that game but it's important to understand that it's an interpretation, an educated guess, because an absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence.  

Yes, I'm being nit-picky but it can be important if you are playing in someone else's game, set in a period that you know quite a bit about, and they make a different interpretation than you would.  If you felt fairly strongly that scalping would be inappropriate for someone in an Algonquian tribe and another GM had them practicing it based on some evidence that wasn't mainstream or even a guess, would it make the game feel less realistic to you?  And if they included that in a published setting and you read it but it wasn't sourced, how would you react to it?  Put simply, what happens when two people make different guesses and feel the other guess is unrealistic?

Tying this all back to the original point, if the stated goal is "verisimilitude" rather than "realism", then the standard of whether a setting detail or system feature is "Does this feel plausible?" rather than "Is this the way things are in the real world?"  The former is a much easier standard to meet, can produce a strong feeling of "realism" even when it strictly isn't, and avoids issues related to holding the setting and system to the standards of the real world.  That's why I tend to think it's better to shoot for "verisimilitude" than "realism".  It's what you'll usually wind up with, anyway, and it's a much easier standard to live up to and live with.

Quote from: BalbinusActually, that bugs the hell out of me too.  Playing a group of gilded youths enjoying privilige and money in the 1980s is just as realistic as playing disenfranchised miners, both existed.

Correct.  But understanding why people choose to pick gilded youths ratehr than disenfranchised minors will help you understand why people equate "realism" with "not fun".  And even if you are playing guilded youths enjoying privilege and money in the 1980s, how many will die from a cocaine overdose or in a mundane car accident?  

The fundamental problem here might simply be that different people mean different things by "reality".  So I'm left wondering, does anyone advocating "reality" really mean a game where a PC might die from an overdose, from slipping on the ice, or from a random heart attack or is the "reality" that's being advocated always assume a gilded slice of reality?

Quote from: BalbinusBut then, in the real world I often hear people say that "so and so isn't living in the real world", so this isn't a thing from gaming, it's a thing from life.  But Donald Trump's life is just as real as the life of a street child from Rio, the Donald's is just a hell of a lot more pleasant.

Donald Trump's life is not as real in the sense that he's insulated from a lot of the consequences and random hardships of real life.  Yes, he lost some friends and colleagues in a horrible helicopter accident and, yes, he's had to deal with failed marriages and an ex-wife taking him to the cleaners.  But he's never had to worry about where his next meal is coming from or whether he'll freeze to death in the night because he has no heat.  In that sense, he's insulated from a lot of what reality has to offer.  And I think that "insulation" from the bad parts are what a lot of people are talking about.

Quote from: BalbinusFor realism, I think all you really need is consistency and a sense that the world acts according to understandable laws whether they be our laws or not.  So, if fighters can fall 100 foot and survive, that can work if people in the world know that and act on it (though thinking up why might be challenging).  The trick is consistency.

But we have a better word for that -- "consistency".

Quote from: BalbinusThe real world has cause and effect, and people look out for cause and effect and act upon their findings.  If the game world acts similarly, then it will probably feel realistic, if it does not, then it won't.

That's "verisimilitude".  I'm all for "verisimilitude".

Quote from: BalbinusSimple as that really.  Magic and so on  has relatively little to do with it.

Correct.

Quote from: BalbinusSo, consistency is one thing, human nature is the other.  If people react to the game world credibly, the game will feel realistic even if it is chock full of dragons, fireballs and flying cities.  If people don't respond as we know perfectly well they would, then it will not feel realistic.

Bear in mind that there is no widespread agreement on what "human nature" is or if it even exists.   In fact, I strongly suspect that many of the worlds political disagreements are really differences of opinions about human nature in disguise.

Quote from: flyingmiceI think the "realistic genre" ends where the PC's extra resources can't be explained by luck, coincidence, or statistical anomaly.

It's important to notice that any mechanic or GM fudging that privileges the PCs in a way that NPCs are not priviledged can become noticable over time, even if strictly plausible the first time or few times.  Getting hit by lightning once and surviving can be plausibly explained by luck, coincidence, or statistical anomaly.  Getting hit 50 times and surviving can't.  (Well, it could be explained as a "statistical anomaly" but there are limits to how many "statistical anomalies" many players are willing to accept as excuses.)

Quote from: John MorrowIt's important to notice that any mechanic or GM fudging that privileges the PCs in a way that NPCs are not priviledged can become noticable over time, even if strictly plausible the first time or few times.  Getting hit by lightning once and surviving can be plausibly explained by luck, coincidence, or statistical anomaly.  Getting hit 50 times and surviving can't.  (Well, it could be explained as a "statistical anomaly" but there are limits to how many "statistical anomalies" many players are willing to accept as excuses.)

It becomes a lot harder to plot out that graph when it's hit by lightning and survived once, fell off a cliff and grabbed a tree root once, got shot at but the gun misfired once, ran out of gas in a plane but there was a cleared field nearby once, oops, ran out of Luck...

To be clear, I'm talking about resource-limited mechanics, not fudging.

Otherwise, I agree.

-clash