TheRPGSite

When people discuss realism in gaming, there's always a lot of friction over what relaism in gaming means.

To me it means that a game system does a fair job of recreating things that happen in reality in as far as we can tell. For example, a .22 pistol hitting someone in the thigh in the real world is very unlikely to kill him, at least not quickly. Unless it severes a major artery like the femoral a person hit by a .22 in the thigh will likely not be killed, at least not quickly, and may even be able to function for a time afterwards unless the bullet breaks the bone.

Now a person headshot with a .22 is in worse shape, as we know from reality.

So, to me a game would have at least some realism in it if a .22 pistol shot to the thigh has a very, very little chance of killing someone, barring perhaps heart failure or shock, but all in all in a realistic game a person should mostly survive a .22 pistol hit to the leg, whereas the same bullet in the head could kill him more often, or do permanent damage, a'la james brady.

That's my 'realism' test mostly. Does the combat rules reflect what happens in real life combat? I believe some games do a good job of this, especially if they throw in the wild card of the critical hit to reflect flukes that happen in reality.

For example: A man in a town near me years ago was killed by a single punch to the jaw from a drunken rowdy beligerant thug. The blow stunned him, he fell and smashed the back of his head on the concrete sidewalk and died, effectively from one punch.  

A neurologist will tell you the brain is fragile and simply falling straight down ont a hard surface can kill or badly injure it. So a game that allowed for a 'critical hit' to result in a punch to the jaw causing death would be realistic.

Now when it comes to 'realism' when fighting dragons, orks, daleks or klingons, well that's obviously another issue, but what I ask, or actually demand from a game system is that it's mechanics reflect reality as we know it in a way that makes an acceptable balance between complexity and playability.

Just my 2 cents on the realism issue.

I think realsim is over-rated.  The game should emulate its genre, that's more important.

I agree. Realism has no place in a Pulp game where you fight Albino Gorillas in the Amazon.

Quote from: JongWKI agree. Realism has no place in a Pulp game where you fight Albino Gorillas in the Amazon.

The fight against albino gorillas in general never benefits from realism.  Especially if you actually are fighting albino gorillas in the Amazon.  The first thing you'd say to yourself is "This can't be happening".

Ho ho ho... "if only" indeed.

For my comments on "realism" (and why I basically think "realism" is a crock of shit) see the Pundit forum.

RPGPundit

My feelings on realism crystalized many years ago while i was playing with a GM who was desperate to add a high level of realism to his game. He was successful in his goal. The game was very realistic. Sadly as the realism came in, the fun went out. I found it not to my taste. I have repeated the experiance several times, with different GMs always to the same effect. I am with the genre emulation crowd. If I want realism- I'll get a (shudder) job.

Quote from: joewolzI think realsim is over-rated.  The game should emulate its genre, that's more important.

Well, conversely, I think that genre emulation is over-rated.  There's no particular reason to make RPGs be just like television, or novels, or movies.  It's like saying "A movie should emulate the novel or genre of novels it's based on."  That's true for some movies -- the ones based on novels -- but there are other movies which are written for the screen which are great.  Likewise, some RPGs are their own thing.  

That said, I think that either fictional or non-fictional sources are fine bases for inspiration.  

Personally, my inspirations for a game are non-fictional readings roughly half the time.  Histories, biographies, personal narratives, etc.  I generally find that inserting more realism makes my games via research makes my games more interesting.

When I got into CoC in my teens, I recall a player refusing to play it because it didnt correctly simulate gun-play. Well, he did play Traveller a lot, and enjoyed TPK, but hey isnt that what CoC accomplishes anyway without the need for bullets?

Quote from: jhkimWell, conversely, I think that genre emulation is over-rated.

Hear, hear! :)

Quote from: jhkimWell, conversely, I think that genre emulation is over-rated.  There's no particular reason to make RPGs be just like television, or novels, or movies...

I agree.  RPGs are their own medium.  This is especially clear with D&D (and it is not surprising that 'D&D novels' suck, and the 'D&D film' sucks even more painfully).

Nonetheless, just as films borrow from novels, so too RPGs borrow from other genres.  There is nothing wrong with some borrowing.  (E.g., one of my favourite RPGs, Angel, is structured to be run in a similar format to a TV series, with a 'Big Bad', different episodes, etc.; I like that, and think it is effective for the game.)

Quote from: jhkimWell, conversely, I think that genre emulation is over-rated.  There's no particular reason to make RPGs be just like television, or novels, or movies.  It's like saying "A movie should emulate the novel or genre of novels it's based on."  That's true for some movies -- the ones based on novels -- but there are other movies which are written for the screen which are great.  Likewise, some RPGs are their own thing.  

That said, I think that either fictional or non-fictional sources are fine bases for inspiration.  

Personally, my inspirations for a game are non-fictional readings roughly half the time.  Histories, biographies, personal narratives, etc.  I generally find that inserting more realism makes my games via research makes my games more interesting.

Nonfiction is a genre.  Genre-emulation has nothing to do with an other media, genre is a concept.  Some genres aren't compatible with RPGs, being more compatible to movies, books, etc.  

I don't understand how a game emulating a genre has anything to do with its being "just like television, or novels, or movies."

Quote from: jhkimWell, conversely, I think that genre emulation is over-rated.  There's no particular reason to make RPGs be just like television, or novels, or movies.  It's like saying "A movie should emulate the novel or genre of novels it's based on."  That's true for some movies -- the ones based on novels -- but there are other movies which are written for the screen which are great.  Likewise, some RPGs are their own thing.

I think that genre emulation can be had without "media emulation". There are certain things that work well for books and movies, but don't work well for games. I can take things from a genre that are there purely as an outgrowth of the medium.

An example of this that comes up often is character power. Many TV shows and movies feature a "star" character that can do it all. The rest of the cast is happy playing second string because, well, they are receiving a paycheck. But in a game with multiple players, there is going to be a desire by most players to have some spotlight time; spotlight hogs are not conducive to sharing enjoyment around the table. Thus we see efforts to balance the sporlight and level of participation, something that is desirable to the game medium.

Quote from: joewolzI think realsim is over-rated.  The game should emulate its genre, that's more important.

Genre emulation is definitely where it's at, as far as I'm concerned.

That being said, there are limits, particularly when the genre is supposed to be a bit gritty.

At one time, I was attempting to run a covert operations game influenced by Tom Clancy's "Rainbow Six" novel, and had a really immature player who threw a fit when I told him that it's likely he couldn't:

(A) Go all gun-fu with a Desert Eagle .50 cal in each hand
(B) Use a Barret Light 50 anti-materiel sniper rifle as an effective room-sweeping, point-blank combat weapon
(C) Arm himself with a katana (always with the katanas!) as an effective terrorist-take down weapon.

Quote from: jhkimIt's like saying "A movie should emulate the novel or genre of novels it's based on."

No, this is comparing two pieces of well...for the lack of a better word...art. Whether each in the above scenario effectively simulates either a fictional genre or real event is, in fact, a seperate question.

Quote from: joewolzNonfiction is a genre.  Genre-emulation has nothing to do with an other media, genre is a concept.  Some genres aren't compatible with RPGs, being more compatible to movies, books, etc.  

I don't understand how a game emulating a genre has anything to do with its being "just like television, or novels, or movies."

Well, I'm not sure what you mean, then.  When I hear of genre emulation, I generally understand this to mean imitating an established body of fiction in other media like pulp action, superheroes, etc.

Let me suggest an example to ask about.  Suppose I'm preparing for a modern military game.  I read Blackhawk Down and other real accounts of combat.  I also read other non-fiction like Albert Love's  War Caualties  (http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwi/casualties/love3.htm) which document wounding in modern wars, and work with people in the army.  I put together my game based on these to produce results which match what I read.  Am I seeking genre emulation, realism, or both?  Offhand, this sounds to me like what the anti-realism people are complaining about.  

On the other hand, could you suggest an example of genre emulation which isn't about imitating other media?

Quote from: jhkimWell, I'm not sure what you mean, then.  When I hear of genre emulation, I generally understand this to mean imitating an established body of fiction in other media like pulp action, superheroes, etc.

Let me suggest an example to ask about.  Suppose I'm preparing for a modern military game.  I read Blackhawk Down and other real accounts of combat.  I also read other non-fiction like Albert Love's  War Caualties  (http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwi/casualties/love3.htm) which document wounding in modern wars, and work with people in the army.  I put together my game based on these to produce results which match what I read.  Am I seeking genre emulation, realism, or both?  Offhand, this sounds to me like what the anti-realism people are complaining about.  

That's a problem of emulation you'd have there, in the scenario: it sounds like you don't know whether your interest in emulation is in emulating "war movies" or "historical warfare":  And that's exactly what we mean by the importance of genre Emulation.

For example, if you are playing "Star Trek" the RPG, you don't want the game to be filled with stuff about real-world physics, and trying to create real-world scientific explanations for everything, because basically there you are confusing the genre of hard sci-fi with the genre of "Star Trek" (yes, Star Trek is its own Genre at this point).  If you try to incorporate all kinds of physical laws from our world into your game, it won't end up "feeling" like Star Trek.

Likewise, if you try to incorporate a lot of Patriotic American Jingoism and gun-fetishistic claptrap into your "real war" campaign in any part of the campaign other than Congress and Fox News, it won't feel like a "real war" campaign. It'll feel like Blackhawk Down or any other propagandistic film.

To me, emulation is just about the most important thing both a game designer and a GM has to take great care to ensure. Know WHAT sort of "genre" you are trying to imitate, and do things that help imitate it (and strongly avoid stuff that would kill the "feel" of the genre).

RPGPundit

Quote from: jhkimAm I seeking genre emulation, realism, or both?  Offhand, this sounds to me like what the anti-realism people are complaining about.  

On the other hand, could you suggest an example of genre emulation which isn't about imitating other media?

You are seeking emulation of a realistic genre.  Genre has nothing to do with any kind of media.  Genre is "a class of messages sharing important structural and content features and which, as a class, creates special expectations in an audience."*

The last bit is the most important.  Genre is about the expectations of the audience.  If your audience (you and your players) is expecting one thing (stupid wuch wire fu crap) and you are going for another thing (Conan), you're breaking genre.

*Daughton, Suzanne; and Hart, Roderick.  Modern Rhetorical Criticism, 3rd. Edition.  Boston: Pearson, 2005.

EDIT- I forgot to add the citation, sorry.

Quote from: RPGPunditThat's a problem of emulation you'd have there, in the scenario: it sounds like you don't know whether your interest in emulation is in emulating "war movies" or "historical warfare":  And that's exactly what we mean by the importance of genre Emulation.

I didn't mention war movies anywhere in my post, so I thought I was fairly clear.  I guess you're confused by my reference to reading Blackhawk Down, maybe thinking that I was referring to "reading" the movie (?).  I chose that because it is probably the most recognizable book of combat reporting at the present, not because there was a film adaptation.  The book is a fairly good example of reporting, I thought.  The author could have done more with the interviews of the Somalians involved, but I understand that it was difficult to get people to from that side to talk to.  

Quote from: RPGPunditLikewise, if you try to incorporate a lot of Patriotic American Jingoism and gun-fetishistic claptrap into your "real war" campaign in any part of the campaign other than Congress and Fox News, it won't feel like a "real war" campaign. It'll feel like Blackhawk Down or any other propagandistic film.

To me, emulation is just about the most important thing both a game designer and a GM has to take great care to ensure.

Well, in the example I was talking about, I would have zero interest in emulating the feel of any propagandistic war movie.  So I don't see why it's important.  

Quote from: joewolzYou are seeking emulation of a realistic genre.  Genre has nothing to do with any kind of media.  Genre is "a class of messages sharing important structural and content features and which, as a class, creates special expectations in an audience."*

The last bit is the most important.  Genre is about the expectations of the audience.  If your audience (you and your players) is expecting one thing (stupid wuch wire fu crap) and you are going for another thing (Conan), you're breaking genre.

Thanks for the definition.  (Incidentally, I have a related but distinct definition of genre in an essay, Understanding Genre in RPGs (http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/genre/definition.html).)  Phrased your way, it seems to me that breaking genre is often a good thing. Essentially, breaking genre means differing from players preconceptions.  That's not inherently a bad thing.  Some players might hate anything which doesn't match their preconceptions -- but some players enjoy surprises and/or learning.  

It may mean having a game where no one is sure what it's going to turn out like, and they find out by playing.

Quote from: jhkimPhrased your way, it seems to me that breaking genre is often a good thing. Essentially, breaking genre means differing from players preconceptions.  That's not inherently a bad thing.  Some players might hate anything which doesn't match their preconceptions -- but some players enjoy surprises and/or learning.  

It may mean having a game where no one is sure what it's going to turn out like, and they find out by playing.

I can see that way.  Your essay is pretty cool, btw.  I don't think breaking genre is a good or bad thing, I think maintaining genre is what a good game does.  I like the idea of occasionally breaking genre.  Who doesn't want zombies in their...well anything really?

When I'm playing games, I don't want realism. Realistic violence == pain, and I'm VERY familiar with both. Bullet wounds HURT LIKE FUCK! Stab wounds are "hit & miss" if you pardon the pun. Blunt objects hurt too, just differently.

If you added a lot of realism to gaming, half of the game would be your PC in the hospital. Wow, what exciting adventure, eating your food through a fucking straw. Or hearing from the doctor that they had to replace part of your bone with metal, and NO, it DOESN'T give you any kind of advantage. All bone prosthetics do is get cold and ache. Oooooh, what a fucking advantage. Because I got SHOT, I can tell if it will rain tomorrow!

I love it when we get the camoflauge wearing "Gun/Combat Experts" who come into my d20 Modern game. They want to dual weild Desert Eagles, claim you can shoot someone at point blank range with a 40mm grenade launcher and have it explode in the body, claim a katana will cut through an engine block, tell me that it is easy to kill people with a knife, and hordes of other bullshit crap.

Then, I tell them "Nope, sorry, rules are as they stand, if you dual weild those Desert Eagles, you will take a -8/-10 penalty. In addition, each magazine for the weapon has a very noticable weight, so you will take weight penalties."

Then they start talking about this, that, or the other thing.

Lately, we've got a lot of people who supposedly went over to Iraq or Afghanistan, and try to tell me that they have combat experience in those theaters.

A simple question lets me know if they actually had experience in the Army (Most of these hopped up wannabees either claim to be Marines or Army) at all. "Did you do sports over there?"

The assholes you tell me: "Yeah, we played football and shit." are goddamn liars.

Slap
Pull
Observe
Release
Tap
Shoot

It's been awhile, and even I remember that kind of shit.

Anyway, a lot of these superheroes who claim they know you can fire 2 M-249 SAW light machineguns, one in each hand, from a standing position, have watched too many goddamn movies, and have ZERO experience.

The people who scream for combat realism are the people who don't realize just how shitty combat is. Yeah, Blackhawk Down was a cool movie, but it seems that a lot of people forget a primary fact of that operation.

Most of the people involved... Died.

No Gun-Kata bullshit is allowed in my games. If they want realism, then they can go play America's Army, or better yet, sign their ass up. There's their fucking realism.

The "reality" of combat is: Fear, pain, blood, dying, screaming.
The reality of after-combat is: Pain, euphoria, hospitalization, nightmares, physical crippling, and all that fun stuff.

When they come into my d20 Modern, and start complaining it isn't real enough, I usually hand them the local Marine Corps recruiters card and tell them: "There's your reality."

Well, people are free to have and express their opinions, this isn't fucking rpg.net after all.

To me, a game has to have at least some realism or I can't get into it. Rifts is an example of a game where the mechanics are so utterly  unbelievable I can't stand it.

*double post*

Quote from: T-WillardIf you added a lot of realism to gaming, half of the game would be your PC in the hospital. Wow, what exciting adventure, eating your food through a fucking straw. Or hearing from the doctor that they had to replace part of your bone with metal, and NO, it DOESN'T give you any kind of advantage. All bone prosthetics do is get cold and ache. Oooooh, what a fucking advantage. Because I got SHOT, I can tell if it will rain tomorrow!

This is exactly why a lot of gamers want realism. Players have to think outside the "fight with everyone and everything" box to achieve goals in the game. Fighting is still an option, but it's a scary last resort, not a simple, reliable way around most obstacles.

Quote from: YamoThis is exactly why a lot of gamers what realism. Players have to think outside the "fight with everyone and everything" box to achieve goals in the game. Fighting is still an option, but it's a scary last resort.

(http://users.gmpexpress.net/adkohler/agree.gif)

But Rusty has a point. Lots of folks don't appreciate the reality that it's not a lot of fun to be injured. Otherwise, more of us would take it up as a hobby or vocation. ;)

Quote from: Caesar Slaad(http://users.gmpexpress.net/adkohler/agree.gif)

But Rusty has a point. Lots of folks don't appreciate the reality that it's not a lot of fun to be injured. Otherwise, more of us would take it up as a hobby or vocation. ;)

Well, in a D&D type game healing spells can remove a lot of healing time, and in SF games high tech healing can get a player back up fast.

I dont mind healing spells and nanotech medkits as long as they're part of the game and work in a fashion consistent with the setting, that kind of realism is part of gaming.

What I object to is when someone with no skill with a weapon at all has the exact same chance of a critical hit or fumble as someone with a very high skill level. That is what I mean by 'unrealism".

My list of things that have been suggested in the name of realism (My response in bold:

• 40mm grenades that explode inside a human at point blank range. 40mm grenades have a rotation depending arming trigger that only allows the round to go off after a certian distance. This was added during Vietnam after multiple heat of the moment friendly fire incedents. (If you want an example, Kerry himself got hit by shrapnel when he fired the M-79 40mm grenade launcher at too close a target) If it doesn't rotate enough times, it just sits there, waiting.
  
• Being able to fire accurately 2 pistols at once while doing the rip-a-clip tricks. Recoil. Yes, some people can fire 2 pistols on the run, but that is months or years of practice
  
• Running and firing an M82 anti-material rifle with one hand. ("I saw someone do it, seriously!"-Common Quote) Yes yes, we all saw the movie Sniper, but the M82 is a HEAVY fucking weapon, you ain't firing it one handed, and close up, the guy with the correct weapon can shift targets faster and more accurately than someone with an M82. Right tool, right job.
  
• Being able to fire an anti-tank munition in an enclosed area and modern anti-tank rockets have no backblast. My biggest clue someone is a liar about being in the military is what they refer to the weapons as. The AT-4 != LAW rocket. Both have blackblast. The Javelin is an anti-armor weapon, but it is NOT just a shoulder fired tube, there's a whole targeting assembly to use. Unlike what we saw on Rambo, AT-4's and LAW rockets have a backblast area that will kill or severely injure people at close range
  
• That katana's are apparently mono-molecular edge weapons that can slice through time itself. Here's a little historical tidbit. They used to stack up prisoners and cut through them to determine how good the katana was. Some dickhead prisoners would swallow rocks, in the hopes of breaking the blade. Katana != Monomolecular sword, and the Matrix was full of shit.
  
• If the enemy gets hit in the chest by a 9mm round, they are dead, but if the PC does, it's "just a flesh wound" This pisses me off. Most of these hyper-realism assholes want the realism applied to the enemy, not to them. Let me put it straight. Unless you're wearing body armor, a torso shot with a 9mm has an 80% chance of hitting a fucking lung. Trust me on this, breathing with a punctured lung == Teh Suck.
  
• Being able to fight hand to hand with a pistol without any penalties. BUZZ! The enemy will hold onto your pistol wrist with everything he has. Close fights like those end up kneeing, biting, clawing, punching, pistol whipping frenzies. Real Life != Equilibrium.
  
• That a GE minigun will miss the PC because of recoil, when it's door mounted in a goddamn UH-64! That minigun is used to hose down fucking crowds, and is mounted directly to the helicopter airframe, in a HUGE fucking mount system. What little recoil is there won't matter, you'll be a dead motherfucker.
  
• That "anti-tank rockets" will cause people to explode if it hits them, and damage everything in a huge explosion. THAT'S NOT HOW THEY FUCKING WORK, YOU ASSJACKS! Modern anti-tank rockets depend on an explosively forged penetrator round. Take a good look at the tanks killed during both Gulf Wars. See that palm sized hole? Yeah, that was the kill shot.
  
• Body armor protects you from vehicle accidents. Having been hit by a 5-ton driven by a drunken reservist while attending NTC at Ft. Erwin, I can safely say that my armored vest did not keep my limbs or jaw from getting broken.
  
• Body armor doesn't protect you from knives. Again, this may have been true several decades ago, but modern vests depend on plates, and even the kevlar weave plates from Desert Storm protect you from puncture weapons, otherwise they would have been worthless against shrapnel.
  
• Characters can throw a grenade as far as they can a football. Buzz! It may only be the size of a baseball, but depending on what type of grenade (which can affect its shape) it can weigh as much as six pounds.
  
• It shouldn't cost any time to reload. Having reloaded before, let me tell you, it takes FOREVER when you are being shot at.
  
• NVG Goggles let you see through walls. No they don't. Tents, yes, if there is enough light/heat. Walls? No.
  
• Small arms can destroy tanks. NO THEY CAN'T!!!! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL PEOPLE THIS? A modern battle tank is immune to goddamn small arms. The most they'll do is deadline the fucking tank due to shit like missing antenna. A 7.62mm round will NOT penetrate the fucking armor of an Abrams, Leopord, or Challenger! STOP LISTENING TO DUMBASSES WHO CLAIM THAT TANKS CAN BE DESTROYED BY SMALL ARMS!
  
• Drum clips don't jam. Yes, they do.
  
• You can't sleep in modern body armor. Yes, you can.
  
• Raybans can stop shrapnel. Guess what, you're right! Unfortunately, they only cover your eye sockets, the rest of your face is over there, smartass.
  
• [Fill in the blank] type of munition doesn't exist because they've never heard of it. Hey, douchebag, who did the fucking research. PDM's exist, blow me.
  
• [Insert Martial Arts Move] can not only take someone's weapon away, but you can shoot them with it. Maybe, I dont' know, I'm not Steven Seagull or whatever the fuck his name was. But he's 50 feet away and will shoot you five times in the 12 seconds it takes you to cross that space. (now see next claim)
  
• [Insert Martial Arts Type] will let you dodge bullets. No, they won't.
  
• A chainsaw that hits someone will automatically kill them! No, they won't. Less than 10% of all chainsaw accidents that resulted in a hospital emergency room visit were fatal.

That's just a short list, off the top of my fucking head, of the dumb as fucking shit rule modifiers all these "realism experts" wanted changed.

Notice how the majority of them only benifit PC's, or seem to come from the same place of realism where you can slice apart the side of a moving SUV with a fucking katana.

I've noticed these hyper-realism motherfuckers start screaming when I start talking Fortitude/Willpower saves against wound shock, wounding properties of small arms, recoil affecting full auto, barrel heat/expansion, dented magazines, fouled chambers, and fun stuff like that.

I guess they only want realism when it benifits them and/or makes their character cooler than everyone else.

Quote from: T-WillardI guess they only want realism when it benifits them and/or makes their character cooler than everyone else.

Yeah, and when they eventually get a healthy dose of realism thrown into the mix, cries of deprotagonisation (or however it's spelt) can be heard miles away.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Dominus NoxWhen people discuss realism in gaming, there's always a lot of friction over what relaism in gaming means.

Usually it means, "shitty things happen."

So, for example, two true stories.

A Belgian farmer every day drove down his driveway into the main road, and went over a "rock." One day after several years he got sick of the thing, and decided to dig it up. Unfortunately, it was a land mine left over from WWI, and he blew himself to smithereens.

An Aussie farmer every day drove down his driveway into the main road, and went over a "rock." One day after several years he got sick of the thing, and decided to dig it up. It turned out to be a large nugget of gold about 22kg.

"Realism" in rpgs is usually taken to mean "the landmine you thought was a rock" rather than "the piece of gold you thought was a rock." It usually means shitty things like wounds in combat and disease, rather than nice things like finding gold, getting promotions for no real reason, meeting the spouse of your dreams, and so on.

"Realism" is thus usually just an excuse for the GM to be a prick to the players. Its proper name is "sadism." Actual realism would be something else, something not yet tried by any rpg system.

Quote from:  Everything above by T-WillardTRUTH

Your posts are the reason I don't play realistic games very often.  I haven't been in any where near the shit you have, but I don't want to hear other people's crappy explainations either.

Quote from: JimBobOzUsually it means, "shitty things happen."

So, for example, two true stories.

A Belgian farmer every day drove down his driveway into the main road, and went over a "rock." One day after several years he got sick of the thing, and decided to dig it up. Unfortunately, it was a land mine left over from WWI, and he blew himself to smithereens.

An Aussie farmer every day drove down his driveway into the main road, and went over a "rock." One day after several years he got sick of the thing, and decided to dig it up. It turned out to be a large nugget of gold about 22kg.

"Realism" in rpgs is usually taken to mean "the landmine you thought was a rock" rather than "the piece of gold you thought was a rock." It usually means shitty things like wounds in combat and disease, rather than nice things like finding gold, getting promotions for no real reason, meeting the spouse of your dreams, and so on.

"Realism" is thus usually just an excuse for the GM to be a prick to the players. Its proper name is "sadism." Actual realism would be something else, something not yet tried by any rpg system.

Oh horseshit.

That guy had more of a chance of finding a fucking land mine in Belgium than the guy did of finding a 22kg gold nugget.

So I take it that your idea of realism would be the players running into the bad guys lair, and everyone is gathered around a cake waiting for the stripper to pop up, with their weapons neatly stacked in the armory?

Realism would be bad guys who use the same damn tactics, ones that are tried and true, the same builds that the players use over and over and over, and use the same weapon+skill/feat twink that every player usees.

What do you want, in response to "realism?" Your examples are both examples of DM Fiat, not realism.

GM: "You're walking down the road and hear a rusting in the bushes!"
Player: "I open the bushes and we all look in."
GM: "It's a medusa, you're all dead."
OR
GM: "It's a naked woman who invites you all to ass fuck her, oh, and you all gain 10,000 XP for finding her!"

Neither are fucking roleplaying, their both fiats.

Also, let us all send prayers and kind thoughts to T-Willard who has obviously been traumatised by his experiences... no, not his combat experiences you morons! His experiences with fuckwit gamers! :eek:

Funny, we don't have "SPORTS" Down Under. We had other acronyms, though, like "the seven Ps": Proper Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. "Doctor ABC": Danger, Response, Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Or BYTM. "Better You Than Me."

Here the test to see if they were a bullshitter would be to ask them "the role of the infantry"? It got drilled into us: To seek out and close with the enemy, to kill or capture him, to seize and hold ground, and repell attack, by day or night, regardless of season, weather or terrain. Short version: to kill cunts!

I've met few bullshitters, though. I think it's because Down Under the military stuff is given less Rambo-esque mystique, and because it usually comes up early on that someone in the group was a grunt, so any bullshit will be quickly detected.

Instead we tell lies about how at school we used to be great sportsmen and shagged lots of h4wt chixxorz, or if talking online, how we met Gary Gygax and bitchslapped him, and have got a 235 IQ or some shit like that. :D

Anyway, let's send our kind thoughts and prayers to poor traumatised T-Willard. May he never game with fuckwits again!

Quote from: JimBobOzAlso, let us all send prayers and kind thoughts to T-Willard who has obviously been traumatised by his experiences... no, not his combat experiences you morons! His experiences with fuckwit gamers! :eek:

Funny, we don't have "SPORTS" Down Under. We had other acronyms, though, like "the seven Ps": Proper Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. "Doctor ABC": Danger, Response, Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Or BYTM. "Better You Than Me."

Here the test to see if they were a bullshitter would be to ask them "the role of the infantry"? It got drilled into us: To seek out and close with the enemy, to kill or capture him, to seize and hold ground, and repell attack, by day or night, regardless of season, weather or terrain. Short version: to kill cunts!

I've met few bullshitters, though. I think it's because Down Under the military stuff is given less Rambo-esque mystique, and because it usually comes up early on that someone in the group was a grunt, so any bullshit will be quickly detected.

Instead we tell lies about how at school we used to be great sportsmen and shagged lots of h4wt chixxorz, or if talking online, how we met Gary Gygax and bitchslapped him, and have got a 235 IQ or some shit like that. :D

Anyway, let's send our kind thoughts and prayers to poor traumatised T-Willard. May he never game with fuckwits again!

If you take the stupid shit aimed at me out of it, it's a pretty good peice on how not everyone's experience is the same, and there's fuckwits all over the place.

I'd give it a 6 out 10 for the information, that's for sure.

Now, I'm still waiting for you to answer the fucking question. I mean, I obvious hurt your poor widdle feelings since you just blasted at me instead of answering the question (The "Make fun of/attack poster rather than answer question method of weaselling out of a question)

QuoteWhat do you want, in response to "realism?" Your examples are both examples of DM Fiat, not realism.

GM: "You're walking down the road and hear a rusting in the bushes!"
Player: "I open the bushes and we all look in."
GM: "It's a medusa, you're all dead."
OR
GM: "It's a naked woman who invites you all to ass fuck her, oh, and you all gain 10,000 XP for finding her!"

Neither are fucking roleplaying, their both fiats.

So what would be added for realism as far as you are concerned?

If you can't answer, feel free to attack the fact I like to drink.

PS- (Had to close a tag)

It should have been obvious then, that I wasn't referring to Australians, or people not from the US ARMY, when I made the reference I did. Or was it just easier to start nailing at me rather than answering the fucking question?

Quote from: T-WillardSo I take it that your idea of realism would be the players running into the bad guys lair, and everyone is gathered around a cake waiting for the stripper to pop up, with their weapons neatly stacked in the armory?

Actually, that would be pretty awesome, and plenty realistic for my taste, though it might be difficult to manage it without resorting to "fiat". If the game has any form of "surprise" mechanic, though, I could easily see it interpreted into this scene.

Quote from: Elliot WilenActually, that would be pretty awesome, and plenty realistic for my taste, though it might be difficult to manage it without resorting to "fiat". If the game has any form of "surprise" mechanic, though, I could easily see it interpreted into this scene.

Yeah, the more I stare at that, the funner it seems like it would be to add into a campaign, just to see what the player's would do. If nothing else, the look on their faces would be absolutely fucking priceless.

--Edit--

Hmmm, make up the BBEG's base. If the PC's don't trip any alarms and are sneaky, they can run into that scene, as they sneak in. Maybe they don't discover any guards at their posts, and a truck reading "Julio's Erotic Pasteries" on the side parked just inside the gate.

The more I think about it, the more fucking sure I am that I'm gonna include this shit.

That way, when it's all over, they can have their cake and eat the filling too!

Quote from: T-WillardIf you take the stupid shit aimed at me out of it, it's a pretty good peice on how not everyone's experience is the same, and there's fuckwits all over the place.

I'd give it a 6 out 10 for the information, that's for sure.

Now, I'm still waiting for you to answer the fucking question. I mean, I obvious hurt your poor widdle feelings since you just blasted at me instead of answering the question (The "Make fun of/attack poster rather than answer question method of weaselling out of a question)


So what would be added for realism as far as you are concerned?

If you can't answer, feel free to attack the fact I like to drink.

PS- (Had to close a tag)

It should have been obvious then, that I wasn't referring to Australians, or people not from the US ARMY, when I made the reference I did. Or was it just easier to start nailing at me rather than answering the fucking question?

Side note: we're debating GAMES over the INTERNET...

...What is at stake, that you are getting so upset? Realism aside, this is about as unreal as it gets.

Games are unrealistic in their very premise. They focus almost exclusively on a world's response to the players, as opposed to visa versa (your examples, where the world "acts" and the players are forced to respond... if they are even able). This empowers the players allowing them to *gasp* relax and have fun. War is hell. This isn't war. It's a game.

Quote from: T-WillardOh horseshit.

That guy had more of a chance of finding a fucking land mine in Belgium than the guy did of finding a 22kg gold nugget.

Definitely! However, it happened. Yet in rpgs, characters sometimes suffers random unavoidable death in the name of "realism", but they almost never get random good fortune in the name of "realism."

Why do we think only shitty things are realistic?

Quote from: T-WillardSo I take it that your idea of realism would be the players running into the bad guys lair, and everyone is gathered around a cake waiting for the stripper to pop up, with their weapons neatly stacked in the armory?

:D Not really. But that is no less unrealistic than a lair with orcs in one room, skeletons in the next, and an umberhulk scratching his balls in the doorway.

And in fact, don't bad guys have parties every now and then? Army units have piss-ups, and pointless parades, why not Evil Overlords?

Quote from: T-WillardRealism would be bad guys who use the same damn tactics, ones that are tried and true, the same builds that the players use over and over and over, and use the same weapon+skill/feat twink that every player usees.

That's not realism, that's reasonableness. If the PC 18th level wizard has a Wish spell, that's not "realistic", since magic doesn't exist. But if the PC can have it, so can the NPC, that's "reasonable." Realism and reasonableness are different things, as you described earlier, talking about how being injured and psychologically traumatised would be realistic, but not fun - not reasonable, in the context of playing a game.

What do you want, in response to "realism?" Your examples are both examples of DM Fiat, not realism.

Quote from: T-WillardNeither are fucking roleplaying, their both fiats.

GM fiat reduces player fun? Often, yes. But "fun" may or may not be "realistic", as you described so well earlier.

Quote from: beejazzSide note: we're debating GAMES over the INTERNET...

...What is at stake, that you are getting so upset? Realism aside, this is about as unreal as it gets.

Games are unrealistic in their very premise. They focus almost exclusively on a world's response to the players, as opposed to visa versa (your examples, where the world "acts" and the players are forced to respond... if they are even able). This empowers the players allowing them to *gasp* relax and have fun. War is hell. This isn't war. It's a game.

Ummm, whose upset?

JimBobOz was poking fun at me, and I was poking back, and I'm pretty sure we're both thick skinned enough not to get our feelings hurt by photons from a monitor. Hell, I even asked him a question in PM's. He ain't bein' nasty, he's bein' friendly.

Hell, he didn't even harsh my Wild Turkey buzz.

Quote from: T-WillardThe people who scream for combat realism are the people who don't realize just how shitty combat is. Yeah, Blackhawk Down was a cool movie, but it seems that a lot of people forget a primary fact of that operation.

Most of the people involved... Died.

Quote from: Caesar SlaadBut Rusty has a point. Lots of folks don't appreciate the reality that it's not a lot of fun to be injured. Otherwise, more of us would take it up as a hobby or vocation. ;)

OK, I'm completely at a loss on this one.  There are an awful lot of things which I do in games which I do not do in real life.  Sure, actually tromping through the wilderness sleeping in armor, with no modern conveniences sucks.  Sure, it sucks to be slaughtered by cultists.  So what?  

Playing a game, even a realistic one, doesn't actually injure me.  I know that you understand this, yet your statements simply don't make any sense once you add in this fact.  None of this means that it can't be fun in a game.  

P.S. Out of 160 men initially sent with Operation Gothic Serpent, 18 were killed.  I don't know where you got the idea that most of them died -- maybe the movie?

Quote from: T-WillardIf you take the stupid shit aimed at me out of it, it's a pretty good peice on how not everyone's experience is the same, and there's fuckwits all over the place.

There was no stupid shit aimed at you. In saying that bad gaming was more traumatic than war, I was making a joke about how horrible bad gaming can be, and how annoying fuckwit gamers can be. It was a joke at the expense of fuckwit gamers, not at your expense, T-Willard.

Quote from: T-WillardI'd give it a 6 out 10 for the information, that's for sure.

Well, I was only a grunt. :)

Quote from: T-WillardNow, I'm still waiting for you to answer the fucking question. I mean, I obvious hurt your poor widdle feelings since you just blasted at me instead of answering the question (The "Make fun of/attack poster rather than answer question method of weaselling out of a question)

Again, I didn't blast at you, you misunderstood, and/or I expressed myself badly. Please have another look at what I posted, and try to see if it could look as I've described my intent - to mock crap gamers, not to mock T-Willard.

As for a response, one's posted now. Be patient. Not everyone can compose and send a response in thirty seconds.

Quote from: T-WillardIt should have been obvious then, that I wasn't referring to Australians, or people not from the US ARMY, when I made the reference I did. Or was it just easier to start nailing at me rather than answering the fucking question?

I find it easier to only defend myself when I'm actually being attacked. Life is less tiring that way. I was responding to what you said, I was not refuting what you said, or bashing you.

I think that usually when gamers talk about "realism" they mean "realistically shitty things happen", they don't mean "realistically good" or "realistically neutral" things happen. And as you said, gamers opften expect the "realism" to apply only to NPCs.

Now chill the fuck out, mate :p

Quote from: T-WillardUmmm, whose upset?

JimBobOz was poking fun at me, and I was poking back, and I'm pretty sure we're both thick skinned enough not to get our feelings hurt by photons from a monitor. Hell, I even asked him a question in PM's. He ain't bein' nasty, he's bein' friendly.

Hell, he didn't even harsh my Wild Turkey buzz.

Oh, sorry then, I hear "answer the fucking question" and I see some b-rate movie interrogation... lots of pistol whipping... maybe Samuel L Jackson.

But as long as things are cool.

Quote from: JimBobOzThere was no stupid shit aimed at you. In saying that bad gaming was more traumatic than war, I was making a joke about how horrible bad gaming can be, and how annoying fuckwit gamers can be. It was a joke at the expense of fuckwit gamers, not at your expense, T-Willard.

Either way, it still made me laugh.

QuoteWell, I was only a grunt. :)

Oof, too dangerous for me.

QuoteAgain, I didn't blast at you, you misunderstood, and/or I expressed myself badly. Please have another look at what I posted, and try to see if it could look as I've described my intent - to mock crap gamers, not to mock T-Willard.

Hell, mock away, I can take it. Shit, I post half-blasted out of my mind most of the time anyway.

QuoteAs for a response, one's posted now. Be patient. Not everyone can compose and send a response in thirty seconds.

Cyborg talent, I assure you. :)

QuoteI find it easier to only defend myself when I'm actually being attacked. Life is less tiring that way. I was responding to what you said, I was not refuting what you said, or bashing you.

I think that usually when gamers talk about "realism" they mean "realistically shitty things happen", they don't mean "realistically good" or "realistically neutral" things happen. And as you said, gamers opften expect the "realism" to apply only to NPCs.

Now chill the fuck out, mate :p

How's adding 2 ice cubes?

Anyway....

I agree, if you posted about the PC's having a chance to find our stripper drooling bad guys all jerking it while waiting for the fucking cake to pop, you can bet your left tesitcle on an anvil that someone on a fucking board will start claiming it's unrealistic, how bad-guys always are lurking around, fingering their weapons and gazing about menacingly through thier mirror finish visors, just waiting for the heroes arrive.

Or, GOD FORBID, an encounter be used for comedy/warning! THAT THERE'S BLASPHEMY, PARDNER! Let us say that you rolled "Lich, 1, undead, magic user-type" on your handy fucking dandy random encounter generator. You look at all your happily anxious player's faces, their d20's held in hot little hands so their 4th level PC's can whup some poor random asshole's skull in.

Well, shit. This lich will eat them up. Hmmm. So, for comedy, the Lich paralyzes them, roots through their gear and takes all their meal spicing, mumbling about the unreliability of local dry goods stores to stock the proper ingrediants for a halfling omelette.

You can fucking bet your sweet ass that you'll have people screaming how that campaign is too stupid, and the GM/Players aren't really roleplaying.

THAT'S UNREALISTIC! would lead the fucking way. The same as some overdressed nymph hucking a magic sword at the party and telling them "Go forth, cleanse the land of thy birth of darkness!" is unrealistic.

I'm half convinced that the assholes who scream for realism would be happier playing Halfwits & Hovels than a heroic game, because, for some weird reason, their own character emasculates them.

Huh, wonder if that's right, that their own pogohopping fucking character makes them feel like they've got a little dick, and by applying all of these "realistic" things make them feel like they just got head from Little Oral Annie when they actually succeed?

Wait, what the fuck were we talking about again?

Quote from: jhkimOK, I'm completely at a loss on this one.  There are an awful lot of things which I do in games which I do not do in real life.  Sure, actually tromping through the wilderness sleeping in armor, with no modern conveniences sucks.

PCs are great! So tough.

"So, we can spend five pounds each on horses to take us across 400 miles of wilderness to our destination. Or, for free we can walk."
"400 miles, that's what, at least 20 days? Yeah, okay, no worries, we'll walk for three weeks."
"Do we have enough iron rations?"
"What, that jerky and dried fruit and nuts and cheese? Sure, I'm happy for us to eat that for three weeks."
"What about blankets and stuff?"
"Let's just get a tarp and a few blankets. We'll improvise stuff for fires along the way."
"Let's go."
"Hey, at least we saved five pounds each!"

:D

You know, I can sort of understand some complaints in RPGs.  The complaint about storytelling I can understand and sympathize with.  There are an awful lot of role-playing texts which give bad GM advice and specifically about preparing and sticking to a linear story.  

But realism?   OK, let me make a quick glance through new RPG releases and people's typical posts about their campaigns.  The dominant games are D&D and Exalted, with various D20 games, Rifts, and a few other White Wolf titles mixing it out.  The attitude seems to be that it's edgy and gritty if our games don't have characters dusting themselves off after dropping over cliffs.  It seems like emulating James Bond movies (a la Spycraft) is on the more gritty and realistic side of things.

So what the fuck?  Is trying out a little more realism than the typical diet of fantasy action diet somehow threatening?  

To draw a parallel to movies: I'm fine with watching Iron Monkey or James Bond, but I also enjoyed watching Das Boot and a Band of Brothers.

Maybe we should talk about unrealism in a negative sense instead of realism in a positive sense. In other words: identify specific qualities that can be fixed through good design or good practice.

Anyway, when this topic came up on rpg.net, I had a post that I can't really improve on,
http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=5793530&postcount=33

I don't like the term "realism" since it is, really, so subjective (does magic exist in reality? Some people say "yes!").

However, I don't like it when the game-system generates results that are clearly falsifiable. Falling damage in early Hero was a problem since, capping out at 30d6, a tough police officer (6 PD, 15 BOD) could reliably jump from a building and live. When the PCs did this *intentionally* (to escape death at the hands of a monster) it was somewhat problematic for me.

I think any game that gives discrete measures for strength, endurance, or ability to withstand damage is going to have problems: that's okay because often having a lot of decent answers or even "reasonable" or "reliably referenced" answers may outweigh always having "the right answer."

But I do consider games like GURPS to be improved if the answers for things they usually give match up to my expectations.

-Marco

Quote from: jhkimOK, I'm completely at a loss on this one.  There are an awful lot of things which I do in games which I do not do in real life.  Sure, actually tromping through the wilderness sleeping in armor, with no modern conveniences sucks.  Sure, it sucks to be slaughtered by cultists.  So what?  

Playing a game, even a realistic one, doesn't actually injure me.  I know that you understand this, yet your statements simply don't make any sense once you add in this fact.  None of this means that it can't be fun in a game.  

I'm not sure what the point of departure is here. You may "get it"; that may be somewhat less than universal. I think many folks who ask for "grittines" in their gaming might find they like is a bit less if games really ran it in a realistic fashion.

(I still remember an early Twilight 2000 game I played in where I had a character shot early in the game and spent the rest of the session in bedrest.)

The upshot is when people ask for a "realistic" game, I think it should be taken as a relative thing... realistic compared to the bulk of modern games, which very much aren't realistic. In the big scheme of things, they still may be pretty generous.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad

Quote from: jhkimPlaying a game, even a realistic one, doesn't actually injure me. I know that you understand this, yet your statements simply don't make any sense once you add in this fact. None of this means that it can't be fun in a game.

I'm not sure what the point of departure is here. You may "get it"; that may be somewhat less than universal. I think many folks who ask for "grittines" in their gaming might find they like is a bit less if games really ran it in a realistic fashion.

(I still remember an early Twilight 2000 game I played in where I had a character shot early in the game and spent the rest of the session in bedrest.)

So you're implying that when you had a character that was injured, you as a player just sat around and did nothing for the rest of the session, and thus it was unfun?  If so, that seems to me to be a pretty obvious mistake.  In any high-lethality system, regardless of whether it's realistic, you need to keep players involved if their character is killed.  This is just as true in, say, an unrealistic horror game as in a realistic game.  

When I played T2K, we continued playing with another character in the squad if our character was killed.  I don't recall cases of bedrest -- mostly we were on the run and didn't have that option -- but the same principle could work.  We did similarly in Ars Magica with grogs.  

Quote from: Caesar SlaadThe upshot is when people ask for a "realistic" game, I think it should be taken as a relative thing... realistic compared to the bulk of modern games, which very much aren't realistic. In the big scheme of things, they still may be pretty generous.

I'll buy that as the average.  It's always good to inquire more closely rather than just relying on a single word like "realistic" to tell what people are looking for.

Quote from: jhkimBut realism?   OK, let me make a quick glance through new RPG releases and people's typical posts about their campaigns.  The dominant games are D&D and Exalted, with various D20 games, Rifts, and a few other White Wolf titles mixing it out.  The attitude seems to be that it's edgy and gritty if our games don't have characters dusting themselves off after dropping over cliffs.  It seems like emulating James Bond movies (a la Spycraft) is on the more gritty and realistic side of things.

So what the fuck?  Is trying out a little more realism than the typical diet of fantasy action diet somehow threatening?  

My point is that "realism" is a chimera (as in, an illusion, not as in the D&D monster).

Making a game "gritty" doesn't actually make it "realistic". Gritty isn't a chimera; gritty is something you can do with a game. High-lethality, whatever.

But its like I wrote in my blog once: "realistic" combat simulation wouldn't be just gritty mechanics. "Realistic" combat simulation would be your GM screaming into your ear "WHAT DO YOU DO?! WHAT DO YOU DO!?" while the other players pelted barrages of dice at you and blew cigarette smoke in your eyes after you had been spun around till you got dizzy; to simulate the "realistic" effects of trying to keep your head and make split-decisions in combat.
"realistic" combat would be player characters getting shot and rolling 1D20 to see how many seconds they spent gazing at the pool of their own blood.

When most people say they want "realism" in gaming, they are really saying that they want:
a. a chance to show off their supposed (and almost always fake) geek armchair expertise about guns/katanas/whatever.
or
b. They want to be able to do something like Band of Brothers, which isn't real at all, but is rather a gritty cinematic emulation.

No one can fucking agree on what "realistic" mechanics would even be. Hell, no one can even seem to fucking agree on what "realistic" damage/combat would be; all the so called 300-lb. nacho-munching "combat experts" out there have their own pet theories on "why the Uzi is the most dangerous gun evar", or why the "Uzi is a piece of shit that suxxors" or "why you can kill a man with just one blow if you know tae kwan do but not karate" or "why you can't dodge bullets, ever"; or "how a katana could cut through a tank". Or the exact fucking opposite of any of the above arguments.
And all of this, almost always, couched in such a way as to make the original theorist sound like a badass. "yea", snorts the mouth-breathing 300lb. computer tech, "i've read a LOT of Soldier of Fortune and i know my way around guns"... or "yea i've been taking Temple Kung Fu for 7 years now so I know how lethal you can be with your bare hands" says the scrawny 92lb weakling that you just saw run away screaming when he thought he saw a spider in the carpet in last week's session.

Its bullshit, all of it. The fact that no one can reach a serious collective consensus beyond the occasional two guys with the same agenda agreeing with each other proves that its bullshit. And to top it all off if you were using ACTUAL "realism" you'd end up with a game that wasn't very fun to play at all (unless you consider having to roll a will check to avoid voiding your bowels when you start being shot at as "fun to play").

People want a lot of different things when they say they like "realism"; and none of it has anything to do with actual "reality" at all.

RPGPundit

I like a game to be intelligible. If the mechanics are consistent, that's a first step. Problem is, mechanics don't cover everything, and the connection between mechanics and stuff that isn't mechanics can be mishandled.

Case 1: I sign up for a space warfare game (say, Traveller) and partway through the second session it becomes apparent that "the fleet" is run like a D&D adventuring party, with every ship effectively the personal property of its captain, no chain of command, no formations, no planning before battle. It may be fun, but it's not realistic. It's a special case of I don't know how often I've seen fantasy/SF worlds which have no real social structure, which in turn makes NPC behavior unintelligible, especially in the "big picture".

Case 2: Inconsistency with regard to basic physics and the economic/social implications of the world as encoded in the game mechanics. To steal an example from JimBob, if flying is common in the world, why don't castles have roofs? What I prefer here is to work backwards and rethink the inclusion of mechanical elements that would have the macro-effects I want to avoid, but if your tastes can handle it, the opposite approach of putting roofs onto the castles is okay. But having to repeatedly handwave inconsistencies of this sort makes the world disorienting for the players--no plan or initiative can really be evaluated because you don't know when the GM is going to extrapolate from the rules and when the GM is going to handwave things.

Quote from: RPGPunditIts bullshit, all of it. The fact that no one can reach a serious collective consensus beyond the occasional two guys with the same agenda agreeing with each other proves that its bullshit. And to top it all off if you were using ACTUAL "realism" you'd end up with a game that wasn't very fun to play at all (unless you consider having to roll a will check to avoid voiding your bowels when you start being shot at as "fun to play").

People want a lot of different things when they say they like "realism"; and none of it has anything to do with actual "reality" at all.

This is a fucking stupid criteria -- because you're saying that if a game is "realistic" then it has to be perfect with absolutely no disagreement over anything by the players.  

By your logic, playing in the high fantasy genre is equally impossible.  No one agrees exactly what high fantasy means.  One player might say, "Well, the protagonist never dies in high fantasy stories, so therefore it should be impossible to kill my PC".  Another player might say "High fantasy PCs don't act like they're immortal so they should be killable."  And so forth.  In fact, it's all just an excuse for people to show off their Tolkien trivia.  

Therefore, there is no such thing as high fantasy play.  It's a chimera which no one is actually trying for, none of which has anything to do with high fantasy.  

Does that make sense?  Fuck, no.  The fact that no one can perfectly agree on every detail doesn't mean that something doesn't exist.  Get fucking real.  Toon is not at all realistic.  Twilight 2000 is fairly realistic.  There are lots of games in between.  The fact that you can nitpick doesn't negate the basic terms.

Quote from: RPGPunditWhen most people say they want "realism" in gaming, they are really saying that they want:
a. a chance to show off their supposed (and almost always fake) geek armchair expertise about guns/katanas/whatever.
or
b. They want to be able to do something like Band of Brothers, which isn't real at all, but is rather a gritty cinematic emulation.

In my case it's a little different. When people say they want realism or rather they say they want the campaign (any genre) to be realistic it could mean a couple of things.

a. They want the combat to be less Hollywood. You know stuff like running out of ammo. Damage taken when jumping/being hurled through glass. Collateral damage in the form of innocent civilians. The role of law enforcement(maybe) in limiting gratuitious combat. Little details like these.

b. They want fully fleshed out npcs and relationships which affect their characters. Most times, npcs come of as merely ciphers, and their role in the campaign has no real influence on the way how things turn. (This is the tricky part, making the npcs credible but at the same time, not allowing them to overshadow the pcs)

Now, this may or may not have anything to do with realism but (ignoring the contradiction) I do think it adds verisimilitude to my games.

Regards,
David R

I guess my criteria for realistic is that I imagine how a scenario would go down if I was my own PC, there in the game world. What do I feel would happen if I attacked a troll with a knife or went charging at a infantry platoon with a pair of Desert Eagles?

If the rules more or less produce results consistant with that, I am happy. :)

Quote from: Dominus NoxWhen people discuss realism in gaming, there's always a lot of friction over what relaism in gaming means.

In my experience (bearing in mind that I've mostly been spared the sadistic GMs that seem to be driving people to create systems to protect them from bad GMs or make them hate the very idea of "realism" in role-playing games), realism simply means "verisimilitude" or the perception or illusion of reality and it's fundamentally a suspension of disbelief issue.

What that means in practice is that what matters is what players think is real, not what's really real.  So if a player believes that a katana can cut through the armor of a tank, for whatever reason, it doesn't matter if it can or it can't.  It will feel realistic to them if a katana can cut through tank armor and will not feel realistic if a katana can't.  That's what most people mean by "realistic".  

That's an issue for many due to "willing suspension of disbelief".  As J.R.R.Tolkien put it in his essay "On Fairy Stories":

QuoteThat state of mind has been called 'willing suspension of disbelief.' But this does not seem a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator.' He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates as 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, 'inside.

Verisimilitude makes it easier for people to believe that the "Secondary World" of the fantasy seems "true".

Quote from: Dominus NoxThat's my 'realism' test mostly. Does the combat rules reflect what happens in real life combat? I believe some games do a good job of this, especially if they throw in the wild card of the critical hit to reflect flukes that happen in reality.

The problem is that most peoples' sense of realism is based on anecdotal evidence and guesses.  I've read a lot of anecdotal cases of people getting shot in the leg dying (the femoral artery is a pretty big target) but surviving head shots from handguns (the skull is effectively an internal helmet).  The torso seems to literally be a crap shoot as illustrated by an  article in Discover Magazine a few years back.  

A doctor who had spent some time patching up Central American rebels in the 1980s talked about a shoulder wound he saw there where the bullet entered the shoulder, ricocheted off a bone and down into the person's belly where is shredded his intestines and he died.  In an Emergency Room in the US, he treated a young man who was shot in almost the same place.  The bullet passed right through his shoulder and he was sent home with a bandage.

And I think this illustrates one of the most important functions of a game system that treats combat in detail.  It's entirely possible that two people sitting at any gaming table will have mutually exclusive views of reality based on anecdotal evidence or less.  The rules act as the agreed upon physics of the game setting.  Regardless of what you are I think happens when a person is shot in a certain location, the system will tell us what happens in the game word.  And it also allows a person to hitch their verisimilitude to the consistency provided by the system rather than their view of the real world.  So it matters less if a person believes a katana can penetrate a tank or not if they are willing to allow the agreed upon rules to be the final arbiter of whether it can or not.

Quote from: John MorrowIn my experience (bearing in mind that I've mostly been spared the sadistic GMs that seem to be driving people to create systems to protect them from bad GMs or make them hate the very idea of "realism" in role-playing games), realism simply means "verisimilitude" or the perception or illusion of reality and it's fundamentally a suspension of disbelief issue.

What that means in practice is that what matters is what players think is real, not what's really real.  So if a player believes that a katana can cut through the armor of a tank, for whatever reason, it doesn't matter if it can or it can't.  It will feel realistic to them if a katana can cut through tank armor and will not feel realistic if a katana can't.  That's what most people mean by "realistic".  

That's an issue for many due to "willing suspension of disbelief".  As J.R.R.Tolkien put it in his essay "On Fairy Stories":



Verisimilitude makes it easier for people to believe that the "Secondary World" of the fantasy seems "true".



The problem is that most peoples' sense of realism is based on anecdotal evidence and guesses.  I've read a lot of anecdotal cases of people getting shot in the leg dying (the femoral artery is a pretty big target) but surviving head shots from handguns (the skull is effectively an internal helmet).  The torso seems to literally be a crap shoot as illustrated by an  article in Discover Magazine a few years back.  

A doctor who had spent some time patching up Central American rebels in the 1980s talked about a shoulder wound he saw there where the bullet entered the shoulder, ricocheted off a bone and down into the person's belly where is shredded his intestines and he died.  In an Emergency Room in the US, he treated a young man who was shot in almost the same place.  The bullet passed right through his shoulder and he was sent home with a bandage.

And I think this illustrates one of the most important functions of a game system that treats combat in detail.  It's entirely possible that two people sitting at any gaming table will have mutually exclusive views of reality based on anecdotal evidence or less.  The rules act as the agreed upon physics of the game setting.  Regardless of what you are I think happens when a person is shot in a certain location, the system will tell us what happens in the game word.  And it also allows a person to hitch their verisimilitude to the consistency provided by the system rather than their view of the real world.  So it matters less if a person believes a katana can penetrate a tank or not if they are willing to allow the agreed upon rules to be the final arbiter of whether it can or not.

OK, I read and respect your views, and to reply to them In would simply suggest that the guy who was hit in the shoulder and had the bullet shred his vitals so badly he died was a case of a 'critical hit" that did super damage, whereas the other guy was a case of a regular hit and a piss poor damage roll.

So a critical hit rule, like gurps and d20 have, would simulate your cited cases nicely.

Quote from: John MorrowIn my experience (bearing in mind that I've mostly been spared the sadistic GMs that seem to be driving people to create systems to protect them from bad GMs or make them hate the very idea of "realism" in role-playing games), realism simply means "verisimilitude" or the perception or illusion of reality and it's fundamentally a suspension of disbelief issue.

What that means in practice is that what matters is what players think is real, not what's really real.  So if a player believes that a katana can cut through the armor of a tank, for whatever reason, it doesn't matter if it can or it can't.

Hm.  Well, on a broad level, this matches.  There is a lot of stuff in RPGs which the players all agree aren't real.  However, I prefer for a realistic game to break with my preconceptions rather than feeding them.  Put another way, consider two games:  For the first, the designer does some research into his subject, checks his sources, and so forth.  For the second, the designer polls some gamers on what they think and makes up something which matches that.  I'll buy the first game over the second any time.

Quote from: jhkimPut another way, consider two games:  For the first, the designer does some research into his subject, checks his sources, and so forth.  For the second, the designer polls some gamers on what they think and makes up something which matches that.  I'll buy the first game over the second any time.

Are you sure you can tell the difference?

Quote from: Dominus NoxOK, I read and respect your views, and to reply to them In would simply suggest that the guy who was hit in the shoulder and had the bullet shred his vitals so badly he died was a case of a 'critical hit" that did super damage, whereas the other guy was a case of a regular hit and a piss poor damage roll.

My point was simply that it's random.  It's not the sort of thing a shooter could normally control.  A fraction of an inch one way and the bullet passes through.  A fraction of an inch the other and it bounces round the bones ofthe pelvis and chest.  It's a wonderful argument for random open-ended damage rolls, actually.

I think the first thing to do is to distinguish between "realism" as a reflection of reality - which is only rarely relevant ("but there is no such thing as magic!") and realism as operating consistently with players' expactations of the genre - basically verisimilitude.  

That means I'm not discussing realism in the sense of "how much damage would that round do based on detailed ballistics reports?" but "did that gun operate more or less as I, someone familiar with the type of world we're playing in, would expect it to?"

So realistic combat, in a swords and sorcery game, would mean combat that behaved more or less as you see it in the relevant novels, or as people see it in their heads - players should have the same general sets of options, similar things should occur with similar frequencies, and actions which would be a good idea in theory should be a good idea in practice.  Games which achieve this are, all else being equal, better games, but they will usually only achieve this by dint of having more complicated rules (at a given level of abstraction - you can solve this whole broblem by moving actual combat into colour commentary and just calling it a generic conflict, but I don't wanna) - which is, all else being equal, a bad thing.  

Good games will strike a balance between realism (by which we mean genre emulation) and complexity.  D&D, for my money, is unrealistic (in the sense of emulating its genre poorly) without sufficient ease of use to make the shortfall worthwhile.

Pundit's approach - "here is something realistic, no game does it, therefore there is no such thing as degrees of realism" is a non sequiter.  He likes simple games, and he is willing to put up with games which do a relatively poor job of emulating genre as a result.  That's fine, but he should be open about it.

Quote from: John Morrow

Quote from: jhkimPut another way, consider two games: For the first, the designer does some research into his subject, checks his sources, and so forth. For the second, the designer polls some gamers on what they think and makes up something which matches that. I'll buy the first game over the second any time.

Are you sure you can tell the difference?

Can I tell the difference browsing in a store?  Possibly not.  However, when in a campaign for a time I will almost always read about the subject of the campaign.  For my Vinland game, I read some of the first contact narratives as well as the Icelandic sagas and other non-fiction books about the cultures and periods.  I've read various other books about the period and the nature.  So over time I will notice, yes.

Quote from: YamoI guess my criteria for realistic is that I imagine how a scenario would go down if I was my own PC, there in the game world....

This is the level of realism that I aim for.  I think of it as realism at the decision making level - the game presents more or less the same options and likelihoods of success as someone would face is the real world.

I think it's important to keep separate realism and level of detail.  They're related but only very loosely.  Lots of games have tons of detail based on wacky assumptions so they might give the illusion of being realistic by pretending to take many things into account but the results don't match reality.

For me, realism doesn't need detailed damage systems, such as hit locations, trauma, differing types of damage or things like that.  It just needs to have reasonable odds of success, dying, or becoming incapicitated.

For example, imagine that the best swordsman in the world facing three professional swordsmen.  What are his odds of fighting them and what are the odds of running away?  In the real world, his odds of winning wouldn't be very good.  Try running simple scenarios like that with various rules and see what happens.

Quote from: jhkimCan I tell the difference browsing in a store?  Possibly not.  However, when in a campaign for a time I will almost always read about the subject of the campaign.  For my Vinland game, I read some of the first contact narratives as well as the Icelandic sagas and other non-fiction books about the cultures and periods.  I've read various other books about the period and the nature.  So over time I will notice, yes.

Well, I think you are mixing two issues here now, setting and system, though there is some overlap.

With respect to system, would you really notice whether (for example) the percentage chance of dying from a leg wound was based on military research, was based on historical sources, or was pulled out of the air based on what felt right to the author?  Do you personally know what the odds of dying from a leg wound are?  Do you really play systems that support the historical realities of combat, which include slowly bleeding to death and dying of infection, perhaps days after the battle?  Do the systems you use address shock, a critical component of traumatic injuries?

With respect to setting, even if you read various books about the period and nature, you may simply be reading another author's bias and extrapolations.  Many authors write their modern attitudes and even political biases into their works.  As a result, not only can you find conflicting interpretations for many historical milieus but there are pervasive unquestioned and unsupported biases that get written into many mainstream works.  See Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization for  a good treatment of one pervasive form of bias and how it affects not only interpretations of evidence but whether an archaeologist gets research grants.  

Do you remember the commotion on rec.games.frp.advocacy (some crossposted to misc) when James Wallis put up his "I can write at least as well as William Manchester" challenge and recommended Manchester's A World Lit Only By Fire only to create a firestorm of people telling him why they thought Manchester was a hack and wrong about many things?

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.misc/browse_frm/thread/9a3138387b20f26

Another example is the narrative of Easter Island as a lesson in the danger of humans ignoring their environment, which may not be what really happened:

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/53200?fulltext=true&print=yes

So even if you read books about history and nature (and especially if they are books written for the general public rather than academics), there is no guarantee that your game is really  realistic, either.  

That's not to say that research is useless or that we can never know the truth about anything.  It can provide all sorts of details and ideas that can enrich a setting or system and it can help get rid of obvious misconceptions.  But at the end of the day, what I think most people care about is whether it's plausible and fun than whether it's real and authentic.  

As the thread titled "Accuracy vs. Modern Sentiment?", this thread, and various threads in many places concerning historical sex roles, racism, and so on illustrate, there are elements of reality that players don't want to deal with because they don't think they are fun.  Yes, you can try to adjust certain historical elements to make them more palatable to modern sensibilities but then a lot of the realism goes out the door upon close inspection.

Bored now, need whiskey and JimBobOz to help bring this thread back to life.

When, as a game designer, you're agonizing about whether to make the incubation period of syphilis 2d8+1 days or 4d4+1 days, you know something has gone badly wrong somewhere

(I went with 4d4+1.  The curve matches the standard deviation better, the d4 doesn't get enough use and using something sharp and pointly to roll for a venereal disease just seemed right)

Quote from: John MorrowSo even if you read books about history and nature (and especially if they are books written for the general public rather than academics), there is no guarantee that your game is really  realistic, either.  

That's not to say that research is useless or that we can never know the truth about anything.  It can provide all sorts of details and ideas that can enrich a setting or system and it can help get rid of obvious misconceptions.  But at the end of the day, what I think most people care about is whether it's plausible and fun than whether it's real and authentic

No, this is the same baseless argument that "realism" means that you have to be omniscient and perfect.  That is ridiculous.  Sure, people can disagree about reality, and two experts in a field may have arguments over particular points.  That doesn't negate the term "realism", particularly in the field of RPGs where the standard is wading through dozens of orcs.  

Realistic means "close to reality" -- like what Yamo and Nicephorus said.  i.e. Roughly what would happen in real life.  

Your statement also uses the cheap rhetorical tactic of framing "fun" as opposed to "real".  You can apply this to anything as a empty argument that it's not fun.  For example, would you prefer your game to be "dark and gritty" or "fun and light"?  That's a pointless question, because some people have fun with dark and gritty games.  By the same token, some people have fun with realistic games (which isn't the same as dark and gritty).  

Quote from: John MorrowAs the thread titled "Accuracy vs. Modern Sentiment?", this thread, and various threads in many places concerning historical sex roles, racism, and so on illustrate, there are elements of reality that players don't want to deal with because they don't think they are fun.  Yes, you can try to adjust certain historical elements to make them more palatable to modern sensibilities but then a lot of the realism goes out the door upon close inspection.

You're over-generalizing.  Yes, most players don't give a shit about realism at all.  They enjoy over the top fantasy, like slaying dragons with swords, thirty-foot jump kicks, and so forth.  Of the minority, many players only want limited realism or realism only in certain areas.  However, that's different than blanket statements like "Realism doesn't exist" or "Do you want what's fun, or what's real?" or any of the other statements given.  

For example, in the "Accuracy vs Modern Sentiment" thread that many people responded that they preferred to keep the historical sexism and racism.  But you generalize that away by saying that since some people preferred to ignore historical sexism, that means that therefore no one wants realism.

Quote from: jhkimRealistic means "close to reality" -- like what Yamo and Nicephorus said.  i.e. Roughly what would happen in real life.

The problem, which I think you might keep missing, is that there are almost as many views about "what would happen in real life" as their are people to have opinions about it.  If there isn't any consensus about what would happen in real life, then how can you have a game that is "close to reality"?  Whose reality?  Remember, you've already rejected the need for an "omniscient and perfect" realism so what does that leave us?  Subjective realism.  The perception or feel of realism.  Verisimilitude.

Quote from: jhkimYour statement also uses the cheap rhetorical tactic of framing "fun" as opposed to "real".  You can apply this to anything as a empty argument that it's not fun.  For example, would you prefer your game to be "dark and gritty" or "fun and light"?  That's a pointless question, because some people have fun with dark and gritty games.  By the same token, some people have fun with realistic games (which isn't the same as dark and gritty).

I'm using a point that has been tossed at me in numerous in the past and it is valid.  The sentiment behind it is that reality can be very unpleasant and there are limits to how much unpleasantness people want in their games.  Even in "dark and gritty" games, the full nasty nature of the setting is rarely directed toward the PCs.  Instead, it's experienced at arms length as something that happens to NPCs.  Similarly, I've yet to hear a description of a historical game that presents the period in question without changes creeping in, often to make things less unpleasant, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Let me put it this way.  Have you ever had a PC die from an infection or disease?  How many female PCs have been raped in your games?  How many dead children have the PCs had to deal with in your games?  How many of the PCs have starved to death or died of thirst in your games?  How many PCs have frozen to death in your games?  How many PCs have been murdered without any chance to defend themselves (e.g., poison, a knife to the throat at night, or a sniper)?  Heck, how often do your PCs have one of their problems solved by a happy coincidence or the local authorities?

If you remember the discussion we had about your Vinland game, I mentioned the summer weather up at Lake George and I think you added a thunder storm to one part of your game as a result.  How many GMs totally forget about the weather and how many players actually notice it's missing?    As I explained on the Steve Jackson Games forums concerning one of their GURPS: Space editions, most planetary generation systems can tell you how many AU a planet is from the star but none that I'm aware of even try to tell you what the weather is like when you step off of your spaceship.

Quote from: jhkimYou're over-generalizing.  Yes, most players don't give a shit about realism at all.  They enjoy over the top fantasy, like slaying dragons with swords, thirty-foot jump kicks, and so forth.  Of the minority, many players only want limited realism or realism only in certain areas.  However, that's different than blanket statements like "Realism doesn't exist" or "Do you want what's fun, or what's real?" or any of the other statements given.

My argument is that most players and GMs lack the knowledge to know the difference between something that is real and something that is made up so long as the made up value seems reasonable.  And if two experts can disagree over what's real, even picking an expert opinion is no guarantee that someone won't think it's not accurate or realistic.

Again, it all boils down to verisimiltude more than accuracy.  30-foot jump kicks look gravity-defying so people know they aren't realistic, but how far can a real martial artist jump and deliver a kick?  Do you know?  

Quote from: jhkimFor example, in the "Accuracy vs Modern Sentiment" thread that many people responded that they preferred to keep the historical sexism and racism.  But you generalize that away by saying that since some people preferred to ignore historical sexism, that means that therefore no one wants realism.

The reason why I dismissed those sentiments is that even where people say they wanted those things, they went on to talk about ways of evading the unpleasantness.  There is a recognition that directing the full brunt of the racism or sexism of a historical setting at a PC probably wouldn't be fun.

But even where the players and GM do want realism, warts and all, I'm not sure they have the capacity to tell the difference between realism and a guess except in very special cases.  

It's also so difficult to forget the myriad of modern assumptions that we take for granted, including all sorts of things like our perception of time, our understanding of biology, our beliefs about what makes a person good or bad, and so on, that most people can't help but to think about situations in the game anachronistically.  The end result is more of a historical pastiche or costume drama rather than something "realistic".  

That's not to say that it can't be fun and can't be more realistic than a game that ignores reality to, say, allow 30 foot flying kicks.  But it's simply an issue of degree, not  being absolutely true to real life.

Look, there is a philosophical argument that we never know true reality -- all of us only know what is inside our own heads.  If you accept this, then you can say that nothing is truly "realistic", including scientific simulations running on massive supercomputers.  It's all just about matching what is in people's heads.  

However, I personally believe in an absolute reality.  I also think that when push comes to shove, most other people do to.  I don't want to say, "Well, Game X is highly realistic... to certain 8-year-olds" and continuously qualify my terms like that.  I prefer to assume an absolute reality and also accept that sometimes we will make mistakes about it, but those mistakes don't invalidate the concept of an absolute reality which we approach.

Quote from: John MorrowAgain, it all boils down to verisimiltude more than accuracy.  30-foot jump kicks look gravity-defying so people know they aren't realistic, but how far can a real martial artist jump and deliver a kick?  Do you know?

What I see here is an attitude that "realism" needs to be a binary, which can only be applied if everything is perfectly detailed.  i.e. So, say, if Twilight 2000 has the range of a AK-47 wrong, or a character can jump 9 feet when really he should only jump 7, then that means that it's no different than D&D or Exalted.  I don't see the point of that.  It seems pretty reasonable and intuitive to say that T2K is realistic.  

Quote from: John MorrowLet me put it this way.  Have you ever had a PC die from an infection or disease?  How many female PCs have been raped in your games?  How many dead children have the PCs had to deal with in your games?  How many of the PCs have starved to death or died of thirst in your games?  How many PCs have frozen to death in your games?  How many PCs have been murdered without any chance to defend themselves (e.g., poison, a knife to the throat at night, or a sniper)?  Heck, how often do your PCs have one of their problems solved by a happy coincidence or the local authorities?

I don't agree that any of these are necessary for realism.  For example, in my Vinland campaign all of the PCs were well-to-do, respected members of the land-owning class.  They were never in any danger of starving to death or freezing to death.  Is that unrealistic?  No, it's not.  So I reject your criteria here.  

However, in just the last session that I played in, the PCs had one of their problems handled by the local authorities.  I mean, that one's pretty common.  I've had a number of PCs murdered without a fight, though generally in one-shots rather than in long-term campaigns.  (My long-term campaigns are set up to be about PCs in relatively safe positions.)  

Now, that said, most of the games that I play in are not very realistic.  The Vinland game had many breaks from reality, mostly because of its magic.  But I don't want to reject the concept of realism just because it isn't common for RPGs.  It is perfectly possible to play in games which are realistic.  

Quote from: John MorrowThe reason why I dismissed those sentiments is that even where people say they wanted those things, they went on to talk about ways of evading the unpleasantness.  There is a recognition that directing the full brunt of the racism or sexism of a historical setting at a PC probably wouldn't be fun.

For the most part, people suggested ways of avoiding unpleasantness which were within the reality.  You seem to be dead set on the idea that reality always has to be unpleasant, but it's not true.  Even in historical times, there were women in positions of power; there were people who lived their lives without starving or freezing to death; and so forth.

I would have thought that if you guys have been arguing about this since rgfa times, you would have reached some sort of agreement by now.

Quote from: T-WillardBored now, need whiskey and JimBobOz to help bring this thread back to life.

I think the horse is dead, they're just flogging it because they like flogging off.

Quote from: droogI would have thought that if you guys have been arguing about this since rgfa times, you would have reached some sort of agreement by now.

Like I said...

Anyhow, no-one wants actual realism in gaming. Because then our characters might chicken out of adventures sometimes :p  If a character gets drunk, then the player has to listen and/or describe the hangover, the big hard painful or nasty sloppy smelly Post-Drinking Shit, and so on. If a character gets laid, we'd have to describe the fumbling, the sometimes prety ordinary sex, the fart in the middle, etc. If a character is wounded, we have to roll for infection, talk about the itching of the stitches, the swollen painful pussy bleeding of the wound. If a character goes without food for a day or two, we have to describe the empty stomach, the tiredness, the weakness, etc. If a character falls in love, we have to describe the ecstatic happiness, the goofiness, the fact that the way the lover chews their food or scratches their arse makes you feel more loving towards them, and so on.

Who the fuck wants all that? Now, a realistic theme or flavour, okay, that's something different. Things which bring the setting to life for the players are good. For example in my Saxon low fantasy campaign, I threw in a few Saxon words. You mightn't think that calling it a "seax" instead of "large knife," or "Thane" instead of "lord" would make much difference, but it really did. A few alien words, a few vivid descriptions of the soldier's webbing never quite fitting right, the castle's stone floor being fucking cold in the mornings - these things help bring the setting to life, and add to fun.

Actual realism no-one wants.

When I complain about lack of realism, it has nothing to do with lack of details, JimBob.

Quote from: jhkimHowever, I personally believe in an absolute reality.  I also think that when push comes to shove, most other people do to.

I believe in an absolute reality, too.  I'm not arguing that it doesn't exist.

My argument, which was more about system than setting but can be true about settings, too, is that (A) most gamers lack the knowledge to tell the difference between reality and a guess based on "common sense" or "conventional wisdom", (B) even when a system or setting author researches an issue, their take on the issue is not necessarily "reality", and (C) even when a system or setting author researches an issue, if their interpretation differs from what the players think is realistic, it will feel unrealistic even if it is accurate.

The problem is not that an absolute reality doesn't exist.  I believe it does, too.   The problem is that we all look at it through a subjective window.  So a system or setting being true to the absolute reality is less important to a person's enjoyment of the game as realistic than their perception of realism -- their subjective assessment of what's realistic or not.

Quote from: jhkimI don't want to say, "Well, Game X is highly realistic... to certain 8-year-olds" and continuously qualify my terms like that.  I prefer to assume an absolute reality and also accept that sometimes we will make mistakes about it, but those mistakes don't invalidate the concept of an absolute reality which we approach.

Well, I agree that the goal of "realism" can be legitimate, even if a system or setting falls short.  But I think it's important to understand the distinction between "realism" (in the sense of attempting to match absolute reality) and "verisimilitude" (in the sense of trying to feel realistic) and think that the latter is often more important than the former.  It's also important to recognize that a game that tries to be realistic might not, in practice, be any more realistic than a game based on guesswork.

Quote from: jhkimWhat I see here is an attitude that "realism" needs to be a binary, which can only be applied if everything is perfectly detailed.  i.e. So, say, if Twilight 2000 has the range of a AK-47 wrong, or a character can jump 9 feet when really he should only jump 7, then that means that it's no different than D&D or Exalted.  I don't see the point of that.  It seems pretty reasonable and intuitive to say that T2K is realistic.

Not at all.  My point is that if a player believes a person can jump 20 feet and D&D allows a character to jump 20 feet but Twilight 2000 only allows a character to jump 9 feet, D&D will feel more realistic to that player than Twilight 2000, even if the Twilight 2000 figures were derived from research into human athletic performance and D&D was a guess.  And even if Twilight 2000 is well researched, that's no guarantee that the system will actually produce realistic results that fall outside of the scope or focus of the research.  Further, unless the Twilight 2000 jumping distance takes running starts, encumbrance, and a host of other issues into account that can affect jumping distance, how "realistic" is it really?

Quote from: jhkimI don't agree that any of these are necessary for realism.  For example, in my Vinland campaign all of the PCs were well-to-do, respected members of the land-owning class.  They were never in any danger of starving to death or freezing to death.  Is that unrealistic?  No, it's not.  So I reject your criteria here.

I think you keep shifting the focus here.  You claimed that placing "fun" and "realistic" in opposition was unfair because some people enjoy realism just as they enjoy dark and gritty games.  I pointed out that the reason why people consider realism to be "not fun" is that real life is full of all sorts of really unpleasant things and so are dark and gritty games.  My point here is that players who say that they want "realism" (or "dark and gritty") tend to want a subset of realism (or dark and gritty) that minimizes the unpleasant stuff that the player's character is going to experience.  

In other words, your players are playing in a world full of short brutal lives that your players would never really want to experience, so they create characters that avoid it.  The same thing that motivates your players to create characters that are exempt from the most unpleasant parts of life during that historical period is the same thing that motivates GMs and players to want to simply remove those elements from the setting.  Those elements of reality are not fun to play.

The point here is that most players don't want reality with all of the sharp edges.  They want a taste of it, but not the full thing.

As for never being in danger of starving or freezing to death, I'm not sure any person in any pre-modern period at in that area was ever that safe.  Given that your game took place after the Medieval Climate Optimum and around the time when the Little Ice Age was in play, I can only assume that your characters never travelled in the winter and always had a good harvest.  Have you ever been to Lake George in January?

Quote from: jhkimHowever, in just the last session that I played in, the PCs had one of their problems handled by the local authorities.  I mean, that one's pretty common.  I've had a number of PCs murdered without a fight, though generally in one-shots rather than in long-term campaigns.  (My long-term campaigns are set up to be about PCs in relatively safe positions.)

One-shots have a very different dynamic than long-term campaigns, so that's not what I really had in mind, though I do find it interesting that those games let PCs die that way.  

Quote from: jhkimNow, that said, most of the games that I play in are not very realistic.  The Vinland game had many breaks from reality, mostly because of its magic.  But I don't want to reject the concept of realism just because it isn't common for RPGs.  It is perfectly possible to play in games which are realistic.

But what does that mean?  Why do you consider Twilight 2000 more realistic than, say, d20 Modern?  Yes, games like Exalted and Feng Shui go out of their way to let characters do impossible things.  That's not what I'm talking about.  What I'm talking about is whether you can tell the difference between a game that's based on research about the real world and a game that's based on the author's best guess about what feels real?  And if the research is based on SCA combat (as several games are), how "realistic" is that really, since the SCA is not really life-or-death combat but a combat sport?  And if the "realistic" game based on SCA combat is played by a person who fights with live steel (yes, there are people who fight with real steel swords) or who has actually been in some knife fights, how realistic is it going to feel?

Quote from: jhkimFor the most part, people suggested ways of avoiding unpleasantness which were within the reality.  You seem to be dead set on the idea that reality always has to be unpleasant, but it's not true.  Even in historical times, there were women in positions of power; there were people who lived their lives without starving or freezing to death; and so forth.

No.  My point is that if you say you want a "dark and gritty" game but only want NPCs to feel the full brunt of the "dark and gritty" side of the setting, then I question the player's enthusiasm for really experiencing a "dark and gritty" game.  They want to experience it at arms length because, well, it's not fun to be the victim of a dark and gritty setting.

Similarly, when a player tells me that they want to experience a realistic historical game that has racism and sexism in it and then does everything they can to evade that racism or sexism having any real impact on their character, I question that player's enthusiasm for really experiencing the racism and sexism of a certain historical period.  They want to experience it as background color but not directly.  At that point, you can also get to play people with more modern sensibilities in a historical setting and that makes it a modern costume drama rather than realism.  

It's like the rich people who used to tour the Five Points slums to "experience" how the poor people in slums lived.  I doubt many of them had the dedication to spend a few weeks living there to really experience it.

Yes, there are some people who have at least some of that dedication.  There are Civil War re-enactors who spend the night out in the cold in period clothing eating period food, huddled together for warmth to experience what Civil War soldiers experienced.  But even then, I doubt many would be enthusiastic about using live ammo, actually getting shot, and being treated using period medical treatments.

Quote from: droogI would have thought that if you guys have been arguing about this since rgfa times, you would have reached some sort of agreement by now.

Well, we haven't actually been arguing about this since rec.games.frp.advocacy days.  But even if we had, my opinions have changed some since those days.

*SIGH* To try to defend realism, look at some examples of game rules found in "Murphy's rules" that have things like a typical 6th level fighter in D&D being able to survive a fall from ANY height. Or maybe the original Indiana Jones rpg in which a character could be shot by a luger 20 times and recover in 2 hours.

That's what I mean when i say i want a certain level of realism in my games, I don't want situations like those.

Quote from: Dominus NoxThat's what I mean when i say i want a certain level of realism in my games, I don't want situations like those.

There were plenty of Murphy's Rules for realistic games, too.

When Steve Jackson Games first released Man-To-Man, the combat rules for GURPS, they published designer's notes in The Space Gamer.  They talked about the research they did in to weapon weights and damage and so on.  But at the end of that process, they decided to make the damage less realistic because during the playtest, the more realistic damage wasn't much fun.  So while GURPS is fairly realistic, the designers purposely decided to be less realistic than they could have been in order ot make the game more fun.

Quote from: John MorrowWell, I agree that the goal of "realism" can be legitimate, even if a system or setting falls short.  But I think it's important to understand the distinction between "realism" (in the sense of attempting to match absolute reality) and "verisimilitude" (in the sense of trying to feel realistic) and think that the latter is often more important than the former.  It's also important to recognize that a game that tries to be realistic might not, in practice, be any more realistic than a game based on guesswork.

OK, 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.  

I'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.  

Quote from: John MorrowThe point here is that most players don't want reality with all of the sharp edges.  They want a taste of it, but not the full thing.

I'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.  

Quote from: John MorrowMy point here is that players who say that they want "realism" (or "dark and gritty") tend to want a subset of realism (or dark and gritty) that minimizes the unpleasant stuff that the player's character is going to experience.

In other words, your players are playing in a world full of short brutal lives that your players would never really want to experience, so they create characters that avoid it.  The same thing that motivates your players to create characters that are exempt from the most unpleasant parts of life during that historical period is the same thing that motivates GMs and players to want to simply remove those elements from the setting.  Those elements of reality are not fun to play.

I 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.  

There 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.  

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

Quote from: John MorrowIt's like the rich people who used to tour the Five Points slums to "experience" how the poor people in slums lived.  I doubt many of them had the dedication to spend a few weeks living there to really experience it.

Yes, there are some people who have at least some of that dedication.  There are Civil War re-enactors who spend the night out in the cold in period clothing eating period food, huddled together for warmth to experience what Civil War soldiers experienced.  But even then, I doubt many would be enthusiastic about using live ammo, actually getting shot, and being treated using period medical treatments.

Look, 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.

As long as it makes sense in the context of the setting.

My dragons can fly not because dragons can fly, but because my dragons can levitate. The wings are just there for propulsion. Dragons can levitate because they have an innate ability to manipulate the topography of space-time. They don't understand how they do it, scientists don't understand how they do it. People have ideas as to how dragons do it, but the people of the setting have not yet gained the information needed to formulated even a half-assed hypothesis. Those wyrms (lung in the Orient) who can fly do so because they can manipulate space-time topography better than dragons do, but even they don't really know how they do it.

So, yes, there are martial artists in the setting who can do 30 foot leaps. Not because the setting allows for 30 foot leaps, but because they've learned magics that manipulate space-time topography so their leaps can reach 30 feet.

That's my nod at realism.

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 (http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=28301#post28301)

RPGPundit

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

More about Realism (http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=28301#post28301)

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. :D

-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

Quote from: flyingmiceTo be clear, I'm talking about resource-limited mechanics, not fudging.

Good point.  

My problem with resource-limited mechanics is that they can effect player behavior in strange ways.  The brave fighter who is willing to jump into the fray against the Black Knight because he knows he has a hero point left suddenly becomes a coward facing off against the Brown Knight because he's all out of hero points.

Quote from: John MorrowIt'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.

Quote from: John MorrowDonald 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.

OK, here's the core of the problem, I think.  You give a token nod that playing princes isn't unrealistic, but then insist that in fact, it is not.  

In my view, playing anything only gives one a limited slice of reality, not the whole of reality.  I don't think it's reasonable to expect that any work (book, movie, or game) should give the whole of reality rather than a limited slice.  Now, if anyone were getting his view of the whole of reality solely through RPGs, then I might have a problem with this.  But they don't.

Quote from: John MorrowGood point.  

My problem with resource-limited mechanics is that they can effect player behavior in strange ways.  The brave fighter who is willing to jump into the fray against the Black Knight because he knows he has a hero point left suddenly becomes a coward facing off against the Brown Knight because he's all out of hero points.

Hmmm - I've never seen that behavior in a player, but that may be just the people I game with - who are absolutely mad, I tell you! They always end up using their Luck when they have gotten in over their head and have no other way out. They may themselves be a statistical anomally, though... :O

-clash

John, you probably know this but gilded, not guilded.  As in golden, not as in belonging to a guild.

Edit:  To add, I'm well aware of the difference between realism and verisimilitude, I'm also aware that when people say realism they generally mean verisimilitude, I just don't want to go to the bother of posting that every time.

Let's see, John responding to Balbinus has lifted up the rock of "realism" and he's found, squirming underneath, consistency and verisimilitude...but I think they're pretty much the same thing. One is "understandable laws by which the world works", the other is "cause and effect".

Whereas over in the other realism thread, Pundit has unearthed accuracy.

Now accuracy is less universally important than the other(s), but accuracy also tends to be tangled up with consistency/verisimilitude (hereafter just "consistency".)

If you plan on having a game world where nothing is given unless it's written in the setting materials (particularly the setting materials that are available to the players), then there's no connection between accuracy and consistency.

Few game worlds operate that way, though. This is particularly true with game worlds that are explicitly based on historical backgrounds or genre tropes, but I also think it's true of many others, including science fiction, by virtue of implicitly accepting certain models of human nature in the setting. Note, John: there may not be a universal concept of human nature, but details of a setting can be highly suggestive. E.g., just having a high-tech setting with megacorporations and interstellar trade tells us a lot about prevailing mores and values.

Therefore most settings include, as part of their overall reality, a great deal of assumptions that aren't included in the text unless the latter included at least a few first-year college textbooks on economics, anthropology, sociology, and history. Probably even, unless the game text is very good (and some of them are) film studies and comp lit.

Therefore in order to achieve overall consistency, you really need some amount of "accuracy" or some way to harmonize the important exceptions to accuracy so that the players and GM are all on the same page.

At that point, the "realism" advocate might be satisfied, if they're really concerned about "consistency". Or if they have a strong need for "accuracy" (because they like certain things about about a certain setting--they want to play in Rome, dammit, not in Gladiator), then they can find others with similar interests.

I'm a little of both, myself. I really want consistency, and I find genre and history to be good tools since I can intuitively understand how things work without having to reason through all the implications of a highly artificial set of axioms.

Quote from: jhkimOK, here's the core of the problem, I think.  You give a token nod that playing princes isn't unrealistic, but then insist that in fact, it is not.

No, I'm not claiming it's not realistic but thanks for trying to put words in my mouth.  I'm questioning the fairly limited slice of realism that people select and why.  If a player wants a realistic game, why pick characters that are likely to encounter only a comfortable and relatively familiar limited slice of it?  If you had a realistic game about life in New York City, what would it mean if everyone only wanted to play a Donald Trump?

You claim that it's unfair to equate "realism" with "not fun".  What I am pointing out is that the way many people are avoiding the problem is by creating characters that don't have to deal with the nastier side of reality.  Sure, the setting can be filled with peasants, slavery, sexism, racism, torture, rape, murder, and so on but the players simpy create characters that never have to deal with those things directly.  So, the way to make a game realistic and fun is to limit the slice of reality the players have to deal with so they don't have to deal with things they don't find fun.

Let me try another analogy.

When I lived in Tokyo, there were Americans who engaged with Japanese culture to different degrees.  While there were people who tried their best to "go native", learn Japanese, and live like a Japanese person, many tried to live a more familiar live and a few (often spouses of executives) did a pretty good job of escaping Japanese culture entirely, via spending all their time at the Tokyo American Club.

While I was in Tokyo, I lived in an America-style house, had satellite television with English-language programming, ate at a Subway for lunch, and spoke English to my co-workers at work while my wife bought American-style food at National Azabu and volunteered at the expat Tokyo Union Church.  We also spent a lot of time with other expats, including the JIGG meetings and time I spent with other gamers that I met in Tokyo.

Yes, we went a little more "native" than some other expats in our class did.  We lived in a Japanese neighborhood instead of in an expat enclave, I hung out with my Japanese co-workers after work, loved just walking around and exploring new places, went to Comiket, shopped at Japanese stores, and I took some Japanese classes.  My wife learned some Japanese crafts, spent some time with Japanese women for cultural exchange, and could navigate the subways even whent he signs weren't in English.  

Yes, I lived in Tokyo.  Yes, I experienced Japanese culture and learned how to get around and survive in Tokyo.  And I certainly saw more than most tourists see while I was there.  But I also insulated myself from a lot of Japanese culture, too, and my experience was more limited than it could have been.  That we chose to live so much like Americans in Tokyo colored our experience and does say something about how dedicated we were to experiencing Japanese culture.

As I've told people, I loved being an American in Tokyo but I doubt I'd want to be a Japanese person living in Tokyo.  Why?  Becauase there were large parts of Japanese culture I could happily ignore, primarily in the area of obligations and expected behavior, that a Japanese person or even another East Asian can't ignore as easily.  I also lived better than many Japanese.  The racism I experienced was minimal.  In many ways, I was playing the sort of character we're talking about -- socially secure and exempt from many of the rules.

So while I lived in Tokyo, enjoyed it, learned a lot, and saw a lot did I really experience living in Japan?  Strictly speaking, of course I did.  But it would be legitimate for an expat who went native or a Japanese person who lived their entire life in Tokyo to look at my experience as a pale shadow of what it's really like to live in Japan, a sort of expat fairy-tale where I could pick and choose the realities of living in Japan that I wanted to deal with and ignore most of the rest.  Maybe not the most charitable way to look at my stay but not without merit.

Quote from: jhkimIn my view, playing anything only gives one a limited slice of reality, not the whole of reality.  I don't think it's reasonable to expect that any work (book, movie, or game) should give the whole of reality rather than a limited slice.  Now, if anyone were getting his view of the whole of reality solely through RPGs, then I might have a problem with this.  But they don't.

The slice of reality that an author or role-player selects to experience says something about what they are looking for.  If players select characters largely exempt from sexism and racism in a realistic setting with sexism and racism, it suggests to me that the players really don't find sexism and racism all that fun to play but can tolerate it so long as they can shove it into the background and largely ignore it.

Quote from: BalbinusJohn, you probably know this but gilded, not guilded.  As in golden, not as in belonging to a guild.

Thanks.  My spelling is better than it used to be but still awful.  That's one of those mistakes that a simple spell checker won't catch.  I'll try to remember that in the future.

Quote from: BalbinusEdit:  To add, I'm well aware of the difference between realism and verisimilitude, I'm also aware that when people say realism they generally mean verisimilitude, I just don't want to go to the bother of posting that every time.

I think that "realism" like "simulation" means too many similar but different things to be useful for most discussions.  You can't be sure that people mean the same thing when using that word.  That's why I prefer "verisimilitude" even if it is a mouthful.  And you'll notice that I even spell it right most of the time. :)

Quote from: John MorrowYou claim that it's unfair to equate "realism" with "not fun".  What I am pointing out is that the way many people are avoiding the problem is by creating characters that don't have to deal with the nastier side of reality.  Sure, the setting can be filled with peasants, slavery, sexism, racism, torture, rape, murder, and so on but the players simpy create characters that never have to deal with those things directly.  So, the way to make a game realistic and fun is to limit the slice of reality the players have to deal with so they don't have to deal with things they don't find fun.

Well, right.  I agree with that in the larger sense.  Any realistic game will necessarily be about a slice of reality.  And so by definition, if that game is to be fun, they have to pick a slice of reality which is compatible with their fun as players.  

I don't think that is a criticism of realism in RPGs, or that it disagrees with anything I've said.  

As I mentioned earlier, I don't think that's always a whitewashed view of reality -- because what is fun for the players is not the same as what is pleasant for the characters.  I've played in a number of horror games which were the opposite, emphasizing exactly the unpleasant bits you mentioned.  Now, a game is always going to be selected to take out the boring bits, but it's never going to be about people living simple, happy lives.  For example, I'm running a WWII game at the moment which I would say is hardly pleasant for the PCs.

Quote from: John MorrowA well trained fighter can realistically take on multiple poorly trained or untrained opponents.

Define "multiple".  Two yes, three is pushing it.  Anything more than that and you've got to identify the alpha and take him down quickly and brutally

Quote from: Hastur T. FannonDefine "multiple".  Two yes, three is pushing it.  Anything more than that and you've got to identify the alpha and take him down quickly and brutally

From everything I've seen and read, it depends on a lot of variables like training, size, moralle, the presence of weaons, shields, armor, and so on.  I was thinking two or three but extrapolating from what I've seen, the greater the difference in skill and size between opponents, the more quickly and effectively the more poorly skilled opponents can be dealt with and taken out.  Size also matters a great deal.  So I can also imagine scenarios where the skill and size disparity is large and so is the numbers of opponenet (not thatI specificed notice or untrained opponents in my reply).

Quote from: jhkimWell, right.  I agree with that in the larger sense.  Any realistic game will necessarily be about a slice of reality.  And so by definition, if that game is to be fun, they have to pick a slice of reality which is compatible with their fun as players.  

I don't think that is a criticism of realism in RPGs, or that it disagrees with anything I've said.

I think it's an interesting observation when the things that are being avoided by the player's selections are the very things that get introducec by choosing a realistic setting rather than a fictional or idealized one.  Basically, if you put sexism and racism into the setting to make it more realistic, I find it interesting that the players then pick characters that don't really have to deal with the sexism and racism in the setting.  It makes me wonder what the value is of having it in the setting.  

It's like ordering fries with your burger and then not eating them.  It makes me wonder why you are ordering the fries.

Quote from: jhkimAs I mentioned earlier, I don't think that's always a whitewashed view of reality -- because what is fun for the players is not the same as what is pleasant for the characters.  I've played in a number of horror games which were the opposite, emphasizing exactly the unpleasant bits you mentioned.

Can you provide some details of the horror scenarios you have in mind?

Quote from: jhkimNow, a game is always going to be selected to take out the boring bits, but it's never going to be about people living simple, happy lives.  For example, I'm running a WWII game at the moment which I would say is hardly pleasant for the PCs.

You are making another excluded middle argument here and I've already said that boring is different from unpleasant.  It's not a choice between happy and boring or unpleasant and exciting.  It's a question of how unpleasant players are willing to let the game get because reality can get mighty unpleasant.

If your realistic game excludes the players ever dealing with the most unpleasant parts of reality because they aren't fun, then how different is that from playing in a fantasy setting in which those things simply don't exist at all? If a setting contains racism and sexism but the players are largely exempt from it, what purpose does it serve?

Please note that I'm not saying it can't have a purpose and I think it does.  I just think it might be useful to describe what that purpose is, as well as to recognize why players choose to avoid it.

Yet another collection of my thoughts on this subject:

Realism In RPGs Pt. III (http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1978)

RPGPundit

One of the reasons why I like realism is that I find it more interesting to play in real cultures.  That is, rather than having a female elf and male dwarf battle side-by-side because they're both on the side of good, I find it more interesting to have characters with real-world beliefs about gender, nationality, religion, and so forth.  In fact, that is one of the first parts about reality that I tend to pull into games.  

So, for example, I played in the Ripper campaign, a non-Lovecraftian horror game using a variant of Call of Cthulhu set in 1889 London.  My first PC, Grimmond, was a policeman who worked in the East End.  He was very much a bully and a racist.  At one point, he beat to unconsciousness an old Chinese man whom he thought was connected to the villain.  He was not misogynist, though he was an essentialist about gender.  He was tortured by Chinese gangsters, and later I switched to another PC, and he was killed by them.  

One of my present PCs is a Nazi double agent in 1943 of an alternate history.  He is a gay man who was grew up in the Nazi Germany, successfully hid his orientation, and then helped the resistance in conquered England.  He turned against the Nazi party, but for a long time he believed in them.  (I was informed a lot by Ernst Roehm, founder of the Nazi storm troopers.)  Certainly a big fact for him is that homosexuals are discriminated against.  It would not be at all the same to play in a setting where homosexuality was accepted.  

So I find it quite odd when you keep suggesting that discrimination and other unpleasantness never appear in games.  Based on prior replies, I expect that you'll come back with some reply along the lines that it isn't realistic to play a racist -- and it would only be realistic if I were to play a helpless victim of racism.  This just brings us back to the basic disagreement over princes and peasants again.  

I agree that playing RPGs will only give you a limited slice of reality.  The same is true of any realistic work.  If you read the biography of a king, that doesn't tell you about the lives of his peasants.  However, that doesn't mean the biography is unrealistic.  PCs are generally going to be persons of importance within the scope of the campaign.  They will have agency and action within their lives -- otherwise it would just be the GM narrating at you.  I don't think that changes the idea that realism can be interesting and fun.  

Quote from: John MorrowI think it's an interesting observation when the things that are being avoided by the player's selections are the very things that get introduced by choosing a realistic setting rather than a fictional or idealized one.  Basically, if you put sexism and racism into the setting to make it more realistic, I find it interesting that the players then pick characters that don't really have to deal with the sexism and racism in the setting.  It makes me wonder what the value is of having it in the setting.  

It's like ordering fries with your burger and then not eating them.  It makes me wonder why you are ordering the fries.

Your burger-and-fries argument seems to be against the general concept of having background at all in RPGs.  You're saying that an RPG world shouldn't have anything in it except what the PCs directly encounter, or else there is something wrong with it.  So there shouldn't be oceans in the setting unless the PCs are supposed to go sailing, and there shouldn't be kings unless the PCs overthrow them.  

I don't find this to be true.  I find that there is often value in having elements to a setting even if they aren't directly a part of the adventures.  Mind you, in many games I've played in, sexism and racism were directly part of the adventures.  

Quote from: John MorrowIf your realistic game excludes the players ever dealing with the most unpleasant parts of reality because they aren't fun, then how different is that from playing in a fantasy setting in which those things simply don't exist at all? If a setting contains racism and sexism but the players are largely exempt from it, what purpose does it serve?

Please note that I'm not saying it can't have a purpose and I think it does.  I just think it might be useful to describe what that purpose is, as well as to recognize why players choose to avoid it.

Look, I have nothing against players who prefer to avoid realism.  I've said over many times that most players probably aren't interested in realism.  Many would prefer to play in game worlds which are perfectly egalitarian, without racism or sexism.  I've got no beef with that.  

However, I think there are people who prefer to play in worlds where racism and sexism exist.  For example, in my Vinland campaign, one of the PCs spent half the campaign in disguise as a man.  So yes, that isolated her from treatment as a woman for a while, but it would have been a very different game if there hadn't been any need for this.

Quote from: jhkimOne of the reasons why I like realism is that I find it more interesting to play in real cultures.  That is, rather than having a female elf and male dwarf battle side-by-side because they're both on the side of good, I find it more interesting to have characters with real-world beliefs about gender, nationality, religion, and so forth.  In fact, that is one of the first parts about reality that I tend to pull into games.

There is no reason why you can't have beliefs about gender, nationality, religion, and so forth that are plausible and realistic in an entirely fantasy setting.  All that really requires is setting depth.

My character in the D&D game that I'm playing in has very plausible views about a wide variety of real world issues without needing to lift them from a particular historical model.  The final sessions of that game have been partially driven by his views of race, gender, nationality, loyalty, and so forth as they conflict with the views of another PC.  Plenty of depth there.  

At this point, I think the term "realism" seems to be obscuring what you are really looking for, which seems to be depth.

Quote from: jhkimSo, for example, I played in the Ripper campaign, a non-Lovecraftian horror game using a variant of Call of Cthulhu set in 1889 London.  My first PC, Grimmond, was a policeman who worked in the East End.  He was very much a bully and a racist.  At one point, he beat to unconsciousness an old Chinese man whom he thought was connected to the villain.  He was not misogynist, though he was an essentialist about gender.  He was tortured by Chinese gangsters, and later I switched to another PC, and he was killed by them.

Why did you switch PCs?  And out of curiosity, why was your PC racist?

Quote from: jhkimOne of my present PCs is a Nazi double agent in 1943 of an alternate history.  He is a gay man who was grew up in the Nazi Germany, successfully hid his orientation, and then helped the resistance in conquered England.  He turned against the Nazi party, but for a long time he believed in them.  (I was informed a lot by Ernst Roehm, founder of the Nazi storm troopers.)  Certainly a big fact for him is that homosexuals are discriminated against.  It would not be at all the same to play in a setting where homosexuality was accepted.

I've seen and read some material about Rohm and the homosexuals in the Nazi party and quite a few suggest that the discrimination about homosexuals was fairly complex and very political and Rohm's homosexuality was well known and only became a problem when his political differences with Hitler and other Nazis became a problem.  This is the sort of place where I think it's very easy for anachronisms to creep in and displace historical realities and complexities.  It's also the sort of place where different people can have a different take on what was or is real.

Quote from: jhkimSo I find it quite odd when you keep suggesting that discrimination and other unpleasantness never appear in games.  Based on prior replies, I expect that you'll come back with some reply along the lines that it isn't realistic to play a racist -- and it would only be realistic if I were to play a helpless victim of racism.  This just brings us back to the basic disagreement over princes and peasants again.

So long as you keep viewing this as an all-or-nothing excluded-middle issue, you'll think it's odd because you'll keep missing my point.  I am not claiming that people don't want anything unpleasant to happen to their characters.  I'm claiming that there are limits to the unpleasantness that most players are willing to deal with.  That limit falls somewhere between the "never" and "always" which are the only two options you seem willing to consider.  Reality doesn't pull punches.  

You argue that a setting doesn't have to be 100% realistic to be "realistic".  Fair enough.  But I think it's fair to ask why so few GMs seem to even try for 100% realism, especially when you are taking issue with people who claim that realism isn't compatible with fun.  If realism is fully compatible with fun, then why don't more people try for a 100% realistic setting?

Quote from: jhkimI agree that playing RPGs will only give you a limited slice of reality.  The same is true of any realistic work.  If you read the biography of a king, that doesn't tell you about the lives of his peasants.  However, that doesn't mean the biography is unrealistic.  PCs are generally going to be persons of importance within the scope of the campaign.  They will have agency and action within their lives -- otherwise it would just be the GM narrating at you.  I don't think that changes the idea that realism can be interesting and fun.

In other words, reality is fun so long as you take a selective slice of it that most resembles fiction.  This brings me back to what I'm really trying to understand which is, what is the benefit of "realism"?  It's a choice, like any other setting choice.  Is the issue really "realism" or is it something else like "depth"?

Quote from: jhkimYour burger-and-fries argument seems to be against the general concept of having background at all in RPGs.  You're saying that an RPG world shouldn't have anything in it except what the PCs directly encounter, or else there is something wrong with it.  So there shouldn't be oceans in the setting unless the PCs are supposed to go sailing, and there shouldn't be kings unless the PCs overthrow them.

What is or isn't in a setting's background is a choice.  Things get put there or not put there for a reason.  What's the reason for having an ocean in the setting if the PCs aren't going to go sailing?  Yes, there are plenty of possible answers to that question, but the answer matters.  Just saying, "I like oceans in my settings," doesn't tell me anything.  Why do you want oceans in your settings?

Quote from: jhkimI don't find this to be true.  I find that there is often value in having elements to a setting even if they aren't directly a part of the adventures.  Mind you, in many games I've played in, sexism and racism were directly part of the adventures.

What is the value?  That's what I'm trying to get you to describe.  Are you simply using "realism" as a euphemism for detail and depth?

Quote from: jhkimLook, I have nothing against players who prefer to avoid realism.  I've said over many times that most players probably aren't interested in realism.  Many would prefer to play in game worlds which are perfectly egalitarian, without racism or sexism.  I've got no beef with that.

You seem to have quite a beef with even a hint that "fun" could possibly be opposed to "real".

Quote from: jhkimHowever, I think there are people who prefer to play in worlds where racism and sexism exist.  For example, in my Vinland campaign, one of the PCs spent half the campaign in disguise as a man.  So yes, that isolated her from treatment as a woman for a while, but it would have been a very different game if there hadn't been any need for this.

And I think it's useful to understand why you are including racism and sexism and not including, for example, gang rapes and child murder.  Are you using "realism" as a package (i.e., fully realistic) or are you using it like any other genre, as a toolkit from which to pick and choose elements that you think would be interesting?

Quote from: John MorrowThere is no reason why you can't have beliefs about gender, nationality, religion, and so forth that are plausible and realistic in an entirely fantasy setting.  All that really requires is setting depth.
....
At this point, I think the term "realism" seems to be obscuring what you are really looking for, which seems to be depth.

First of all, I'm not looking for a single thing.  I play a variety of games, including many which have neither depth nor realism.  

That said, while I can have some academic interest in examining some fantasy religion which has a bunch of stuff piled up about it, I more often prefer real cultures and religions.  It is a far better investment-to-return ratio, for one.  For another, doing so merges my ordinary reading with my RPG reading.  For example, I'm reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" at the moment -- which is an interesting book in itself and also applies to my game since my character is a Nazi.  It would take an enormous amount of creative effort to invent a background which is as detailed as conveyed with simply saying in three words that he is a gay Nazi officer.  Reality gives you depth for free.  But even if there is depth created by a fantasy game with pages upon pages of background, it doesn't seem as interesting to me to play in that.  Reality is often more interesting.  

Quote from: John MorrowWhy did you switch PCs?  And out of curiosity, why was your PC racist?

(This is regarding my racist, bullying PC Inspector Grimmond in a horror game in Victorian London.)

I eventually switched PCs because of irreconciliable differences between him and another PC.  I was a bit peeved at the time, but it made sense that they would no longer associate.  As for why he was racist, that's a pretty open question.  I'm not sure what you're looking for.  

I wanted to make a character who was hardened to the East End.  It was a terrible place, and I wanted my PC to be tough and yet still pro-active in seeking change.  I soon had a vision of a rough brute of a man who saw himself as a defender of order.  In character, it was a product of temperament.  He wasn't raised particularly racist, but he fell to that as a way of rationalizing the problems of the East End.  

Quote from: John MorrowI am not claiming that people don't want anything unpleasant to happen to their characters.  I'm claiming that there are limits to the unpleasantness that most players are willing to deal with.  That limit falls somewhere between the "never" and "always" which are the only two options you seem willing to consider.  Reality doesn't pull punches.

But reality isn't always the pinnacle of unpleasantness.  I'm GMing a horror game now which is far more unpleasant than the vast majority of reality.  The WWII game which I am also GMing was also dealing with a pretty unpleasant slice of reality which was D-Day and the fighting that followed.  

In many genres, the fiction portrayed is often more unpleasant than the reality.  For example, war movies often give the impression of most characters dying.  Yet the number of people killed throughout the entire course of the war even in the risky 506th paratrooper regiment was about 1/8th.  Similarly, horror films often have blatantly over-gory deaths from minor attacks.  

I agree that players have limits to the unpleasantness that they are willing to deal with.  However, realism doesn't require massive unpleasantness.  You can pick some incredibly horrific times/situations to play out, but you can also pick much more pleasant ones.

Quote from: John MorrowYou argue that a setting doesn't have to be 100% realistic to be "realistic".  Fair enough.  But I think it's fair to ask why so few GMs seem to even try for 100% realism, especially when you are taking issue with people who claim that realism isn't compatible with fun.  If realism is fully compatible with fun, then why don't more people try for a 100% realistic setting?

There are many things which are fun for some people that aren't popular for the majority of tabletop role-players.  The TRPG market is a niche market with particular interests, consisting mostly of geeky white males.  It is very fantasy focused, such that even the top cyberpunk game has elves and orcs.  There are certain trends to what is mainstream in it.  I'm sure there are patterns and reasons for RPG market trends, but that doesn't mean that the non-mainstream is always opposed to fun in general.  

Suggesting otherwise is just pressure to conform -- and pressure to conform to a group which is a niche in the first place.

Quote from: jhkimFirst of all, I'm not looking for a single thing.  I play a variety of games, including many which have neither depth nor realism.

I never said you were looking for one thing in all of your games.  I thought the subject here was "realistic" games.

Quote from: jhkimThat said, while I can have some academic interest in examining some fantasy religion which has a bunch of stuff piled up about it, I more often prefer real cultures and religions.  It is a far better investment-to-return ratio, for one.

Why do you say that?  What's the investment and what's the return?

Quote from: jhkimFor another, doing so merges my ordinary reading with my RPG reading.  For example, I'm reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" at the moment -- which is an interesting book in itself and also applies to my game since my character is a Nazi.  It would take an enormous amount of creative effort to invent a background which is as detailed as conveyed with simply saying in three words that he is a gay Nazi officer.  Reality gives you depth for free.

I think that those three words don't necessarily mean the first thing that pops into many people's heads.  Ernst Rohm and possibly quite a few other Nazis in the SA and elsewhere, for example, were homosexuals and did quite well for a long time as Nazis.  Ernst Rohm was even fairly openly gay until they became a political problem for Hitler and there is evidence that the persecution of homosexuals was political and hardly universal.  In other words, if you treat "gay Nazi officer" as a pigeonhole or single possibility rather than a broad range of possibilities, that's not depth.  It's a cliche.  

What image pops into your head if I say, "Unwed pregnant Puritan"?  Contrary to the images of Hester Prynne wearing a scarlet "A", Puritan marriage and birth records suggest that at least 10%, and sometimes an even higher percentage, of women were pregnant before marriage among the Puritans.  Very little depth can be crammed into three words, regardless of whether their source is reality or fiction.

Quote from: jhkimBut even if there is depth created by a fantasy game with pages upon pages of background, it doesn't seem as interesting to me to play in that.  Reality is often more interesting.

Why is it more interesting?

Quote from: jhkimI eventually switched PCs because of irreconciliable differences between him and another PC.  I was a bit peeved at the time, but it made sense that they would no longer associate.

Could the PC have died as a PC the way he did after you stopped playing him?

Quote from: jhkimAs for why he was racist, that's a pretty open question.  I'm not sure what you're looking for.

I'm looking for the depth.  In my experience, people who try to play characters with perspectives that they don't really understand tend to lack depth and be straw men.  I'm also looking for anachronistic attitudes, which can be very hard to avoid.

Quote from: jhkimI wanted to make a character who was hardened to the East End.  It was a terrible place, and I wanted my PC to be tough and yet still pro-active in seeking change.  I soon had a vision of a rough brute of a man who saw himself as a defender of order.  In character, it was a product of temperament.  He wasn't raised particularly racist, but he fell to that as a way of rationalizing the problems of the East End.

Have you ever run a racist that simply knows he or she is better than those they are bigotted against?

Quote from: jhkimBut reality isn't always the pinnacle of unpleasantness.  I'm GMing a horror game now which is far more unpleasant than the vast majority of reality.  The WWII game which I am also GMing was also dealing with a pretty unpleasant slice of reality which was D-Day and the fighting that followed.

I've already agreed that reality isn't always unpleasant.  

Quote from: jhkimIn many genres, the fiction portrayed is often more unpleasant than the reality.  For example, war movies often give the impression of most characters dying.  Yet the number of people killed throughout the entire course of the war even in the risky 506th paratrooper regiment was about 1/8th.

Unpleasant doesn't just mean dying.  I've yet to see any war movie that portrays the WW2 as or more unpleasantly than what's described here:

http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfib/courses/Fussell.pdf

The reason for that is that many real world incidents couldn't be made into a graphic movie without earning an NC-17 rating.  

Quote from: jhkimSimilarly, horror films often have blatantly over-gory deaths from minor attacks.

And action movies have blatantly under-gory survival from major attacks.  At what point do they cease to be realistic at either end?  Does realistic simply mean "possible in reality"?  If so, then plenty of stuff that's normally considered "unrealistic" is really pretty "realistic".  What's the standard for "realism"?

Quote from: jhkimI agree that players have limits to the unpleasantness that they are willing to deal with.  However, realism doesn't require massive unpleasantness.  You can pick some incredibly horrific times/situations to play out, but you can also pick much more pleasant ones.

Correct.  So why is a particular slice of realism picked to be horrific or pleasant preferable to a fantasy crafted to be horrific or pleasant and why is a fantasy crafted to be horrific or pleasant unrealistic?

Quote from: jhkimThere are many things which are fun for some people that aren't popular for the majority of tabletop role-players.  The TRPG market is a niche market with particular interests, consisting mostly of geeky white males.  It is very fantasy focused, such that even the top cyberpunk game has elves and orcs.  There are certain trends to what is mainstream in it.  I'm sure there are patterns and reasons for RPG market trends, but that doesn't mean that the non-mainstream is always opposed to fun in general.

No, but it does explain why there is a common reaction that realism is not fun.  There are parts of reality that do not conform to what perhaps a vast majority of role-players consider to be fun.  

Quote from: jhkimSuggesting otherwise is just pressure to conform -- and pressure to conform to a group which is a niche in the first place.

Human beings have a difficult time imagining preferences that differ greatly from their own.  So what else is new?

So, John, as a suggestion -- you're breaking down my post nearly sentence by sentence and trying to pick apart what I say.  I think dialogue works better if you try to make your point more generally.  

Now, you seem rather narrowly concerned with the unpleasant parts of pre-modern living, and particularly rare events like riding accidents, gang rape, heart attacks, catastrophic famine, etc. -- which you insist have to be possible even if they don't happen during a given campaign.  I did address techniques for playably incorporating rare events into games,  which realistically should include windfalls as well as disasters.  However, I also think this is buying into a nitpicking standard which misses the forest for the trees.  In a market where the standard is chopping heads off of dragons, I think it's preposterous to insist on standards like "Oh, unless the campaign's freezing-to-death rules are accurate, then it's not realistic and should be lumped with unrealistic games like Exalted and D&D rather than with the weird realistic ones."  

For example, you cited freezing to death as an issue.  In my Vinland campaign, I didn't write up any freezing rules though it was in a cold climate (the New York area in 1392).  However, I don't see how this is a problem for the realism as a whole.  None of the PCs ever went more than a few miles from their home during the winter, and with one exception of an adventure at a neighbor's homestead, there were no adventures during winter.  I don't see how the game would have been at all different if I had included freezing rules, since they never would have come into play.  

It applies similarly to starvation.  So in the Vinland game, we kept track of PCs holdings by an abstract Wealth system which went from 1.0 to 9.9.  So there was no counting of cow by cow what the holdings were, but we knew how many people there were (including slaves and huscarls) and rough estimates of how many cows and sheep.  Now, in principle over the five years of the campaign I could have varied the harvest by year, but I don't see how that would have changed the PCs behavior or the vision of the characters.  

For example, if you read a biography of a historical figure (like Pepin III, say) -- would you say it was unrealistic unless it talked about his dietary problems and what his chance of starvation was?  If not, then why do you insist that every RPG campaign has to include that?  Now, in some sense it is true that it is an incomplete picture of Pepin and his world if the book doesn't talk about how he ate, but it's still a stretch to call it unrealistic.

Quote from: jhkimSo, John, as a suggestion -- you're breaking down my post nearly sentence by sentence and trying to pick apart what I say.  I think dialogue works better if you try to make your point more generally.

My general point is that I still don't really undestand what you mean by "realism" or "realistic", which is why I still question the usefulness of the term.

For example, it's common for people to complain that the Hero System is "unrealistic" because normal people can survive falls from great heights.  But the reality is that people have survived falls from great heights and lived, including at least one person I know of who had their parachute fail to open.

At some points your standard seems to be that if it could happen in real life (e.g., a charmed life, never dying from an infection), then it's realistic.  By that standard, the Hero System is more realistic than a lot of people give it credit for because people can survive falls from great heights just like they do in Hero and, in fact, Hero is more realistic in some ways than systems where a normal person could never survive such a fall.  Similarly, by the "it could happen" standard of realism, Brain's concerns about whether a .45 and a 9mm are irrelevant because either handgun could kill a person with a single shot or barely slow them down.

What I am suggesting is that the same consideration of probability and patterns used to judge whether a system is "realistic" (e.g., A system that regularly lets normal characters survive falls from a 10 story building is unrealistic not because it's not possible to survive such a fall but because surviving such falls is very unlikely, though still not impossible, to survive dozens of such falls), and used by people every day to detect irregularities in real life, to all other elements of the setting.  If nobody in a Depression-era setting ever has to encounter Polio or nobody in a real world Tokyo setting ever feels an Earthquake, then I question the realism of the setting just as much as I'd question the realism of a game system where nobody can ever die from a single gunshot wound.

And the reason why I'm so "narrowly" concerned about the unpleasant parts of pre-modern living is that those are the elements that frequently get sanitized from a "realistic" setting for the exact same reason why they are sanitized from fantastic settings.  It is just as fantastic that a wound never gets infected in a "realistic" setting as it is that wounds are magically healed in a fantasy game.  Again, a sword dropped in either setting still falls, so what makes one setting more "realistic" than the other?  

You mention that you could have varied the harvest by year in your Vinland game but didn't, because you didn't think it would have changed the behavior of the PCs.  Given that you were playing at the start of the Little Ice Age, it could have played a major role in your setting if you wanted it to.  The issue here is not that you chose not to make it an issue but that it sounds like it was never a possibility you considered, even though it's an issue that loomed large in the real world.  You took an issue that was of major importance to pre-modern people and pivotal to the failure of the Viking settlement on Greenland and, perhaps, the real Vinland settlement, and abstracted it away and made it a non-issue for the players.  Why?  And how much of the real world can be similarly abstracted away to a non-issue can a GM get away with before their game becomes "unrealistic"?  Unwanted pregnancies?  Diseases?  Infection?  Weather?  Food and water?

John, now that you've written out your thesis this way I absolutely agree that a game where people don't have to worry about disease or whatnot can be criticized as unrealistic. But in that very example (your 4th paragraph), you've used "realism" as a valid criterion for evaluating games, at least in their component characteristics. Unless you insist that a game must be "wholly realistic", or else be "wholly unrealistic", realism is a meaningful dimension for comparison and criticism.

Quote from: Elliot WilenBut in that very example (your 4th paragraph), you've used "realism" as a valid criterion for evaluating games, at least in their component characteristics. Unless you insist that a game must be "wholly realistic", or else be "wholly unrealistic", realism is a meaningful dimension for comparison and criticism.

I think that realism can be a meaningful dimension for comparing individual components with respect to one being more or less realistic than the other (e.g., falling rules, the damage done by a .45 vs. a 9mm, the economic systems of a setting, historical details in a historical setting) but a less meaningful dimension for comparing entire settings or systems or assessing a setting or system, in isolation, as "realistic" or "unrealistic" on it's own merits.

With respect to a game being "wholly realistic" or "wholly unrealistic", I doubt you could find a game that would fit either category.  Even in D&D, if you drop a sword, it falls to the ground.  Thus D&D is not wholly unrealistic.  So does that mean D&D is realistic?  GURPS is fairly realistic about certain things but they purposely made damage less lethal than their research suggested it should be to make the game more fun.  Thus GURPS is not wholly realistic.  Does that mean that GURPS is unrealistic?  At which point does a game cross that line?  Or is "realism" like "pornography" -- people know it when they see it, at which point I think verisimilitude is a more useful word?

Quote from: John MorrowEven in D&D, if you drop a sword, it falls to the ground.  Thus D&D is not wholly unrealistic.  So does that mean D&D is realistic?  GURPS is fairly realistic about certain things but they purposely made damage less lethal than their research suggested it should be to make the game more fun.  Thus GURPS is not wholly realistic.  Does that mean that GURPS is unrealistic?  At which point does a game cross that line?  Or is "realism" like "pornography" -- people know it when they see it, at which point I think verisimilitude is a more useful word?

OK, how does this make it any different than any other term in RPGs -- like what is a "cinematic RPG", or what is a "dark fantasy RPG" (as opposed to a horror RPG, say), or what is rules-heavy versus rules-light, or what is a violent RPG, and so forth?  This isn't a binary label -- I thought we agreed on that before.  

Is any game totally lacking in any verisimilitude?  How exactly do you draw an objective line between a game which has verisimilitude and one which doesn't?  What if a game is perfectly in line with verisimilitude for me, but I don't like it's drowning mechanic.  Should I then call it un-verisimilitudinal?

Quote from: jhkimOK, how does this make it any different than any other term in RPGs -- like what is a "cinematic RPG", or what is a "dark fantasy RPG" (as opposed to a horror RPG, say), or what is rules-heavy versus rules-light, or what is a violent RPG, and so forth?

It may not be any different, and debates about those other terms go round and round, too.  So do debates about what "simulation" means.  And I think that's a problem if clarity of communication is a goal.  Every single time someone mentions "realism", it leads to a lengthy debate about what the term means.  Yes, I agree that you are looking for something real and distinct when you say you want a "realistic" game but I think the terms "realism" and "realistic" do a very poor job of communicating exactly what you want.

Quote from: jhkimThis isn't a binary label -- I thought we agreed on that before.

The problem is that when used comparatively, it's not binary but used as an assessment, it generally sounds like one.  For example, if I say that GURPS is more realistic than Hero, it doesn't sound like I'm saying that GURPS is, as a binary label, "realistic".  If I say that GURPS is realistic, that does sound like a binary label and I'm not sure how else you could interpret that.  

There are also two standards for realism that have come out in this discussion.  One standard looks at the distribution of outcomes to assess if a system is real while the other applies the standard that if it could possibly happen in real life, it's realistic and these are two very different standards for "realism."  Which standard does a person use when they say "realistic"?  

Quote from: jhkimIs any game totally lacking in any verisimilitude?  How exactly do you draw an objective line between a game which has verisimilitude and one which doesn't?  What if a game is perfectly in line with verisimilitude for me, but I don't like it's drowning mechanic.  Should I then call it un-verisimilitudinal?

First, you'll notice that unlike saying that GURPS is "realistic", people generally won't say, GURPS is "verisimilar".  I think that verisimilitude is more clearly an objective or goal, not a binary assessment, thus it is closer to "realism" than "realistic".  

Second, the line between a game that has verisimilitude and a game that doesn't is entirely subjective.  I think that's a feature, not a bug, because I think that the terms "realism" and "realistic" create an illusion that the assessment of realilsm in a game is objective when, in fact, it's usually subjective.  It's not that there is no objective reality.  The problem is that we experience objective reality subjectively, thus our assessment of what is or isn't real is subjective, especially when dealing with abstractions.  

I would agree that "verisimilitude" doesn't capture everything you are talking about wanting in a "realistic" game.  Part of what you seem to be talking about is using real world facts, ideas, and events as elements of a setting or a model for setting elements.  But I'm not sure the term "realism" captures that well, either.  Is GURPS' Yrth more "realistic", because it includes Christianity and Medieval Earth crossovers, than Middle Earth?  Is Time Bandits more "realistic" than The Dark Crystal just because they visit Agamemnon?  Is the recent Pearl Harbor movie more "realistic" than 2001, a Space Odyssey because it's about a historical event?

But what I'd really like to see is a reply to my longer post that addresses the more pactical problem of assessing a system or setting as being "realistic" or "unrealistic".  What are you actually assessing?