Quote from: Idinsinuation;252782I think the point is that when people say they want a realistic game, in truth they just want percieved reality.  Everyone's perception being different explains (in part) why we have so many different RPGs.

For the most part, I think people don't want realistic RPGs.  If you look at the popular RPGs, they are usually far removed from realistic action.  Casting spells at dragons, superheroes, etc.  

However, among those who are interested in realism, I suspect there are a fair number who don't just want perceived reality.  Personally, I'm interested in realism apart from perceived reality.  That is, I value it if a game is different from my preconceptions and yet turns out to be realistic, because I like learning new stuff.  I'll often read non-fiction books about a subject at the same time as I'm playing or running in a related game.  (Usually this doesn't have to do with the hard mechanics of the game, but sometimes it does.)  Simply playing to preconceptions precludes learning anything from a game.

Quote from: gleichman;252789Unless he can point to a class of people immune from death by gunshot, of course it makes it less realistic.

That makes the gameplay less realistic, but not the system.  

QuoteWhile I'd agree that some want a "perceived reality", I think it's a rather small amount of the total, at least for any meaning of "perceived reality" I'd use.

IMO what they want is an certain 'game experience', and I think that's a different thing completely.

I think we just said the same thing...

All I meant was that although people claim they want realism.  What they really are after is gameplay where their brain percieves realism.  Percieved realism promotes immersion and suspension of disbelief.

Ironically discussing realistic roleplaying is unrealistic.

Quote from: CavScout;252795The entire OP is a word game. You are demanding something you know can't be delivered. You've simply been called out on it.

This is most basic truth in this thread.

Quote from: CavScout;252795The entire OP is a word game. You are demanding something you know can't be delivered. You've simply been called out on it.

This is most basic truth in this thread.

Quote from: Idinsinuation;252817That makes the gameplay less realistic, but not the system.

The system has been altered by house rule, and that altered system is less realistic.

Quote from: Idinsinuation;252817I think we just said the same thing...

All I meant was that although people claim they want realism.  What they really are after is gameplay where their brain percieves realism.  Percieved realism promotes immersion and suspension of disbelief.

No, we didn't say the same thing. I seriously hope people don't perceive D&D or Vampire for example as realism for that would be rather depressing. I suppose I can't discount it, but those certainly wouldn't be the people I'd be interested in addressing.

I would think most rpg gamers understand that the games they play aren't reality or close to reality. They likely selected them for that reason.

Quote from: Idinsinuation;252817This is most basic truth in this thread.

Sigh.

I was calling Engine out as he claimed that it was in fact completely possible. See the posts starting here.

The OP was picking up where that and a later exchange between us in the same thread left off. Without I wouldn't have open this one with the challenge I did.

Interesting thread. What I'm getting out of all of this is or the question is I think, "can we talk about realism in gaming in any meaningful way ?"Certainly we can use terms like verisimilitude which approximates the desired effect of realism but in an activity where most times genre trumps realism or anything remotely resembling it, what we are left with is individual preferences.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;252848Interesting thread. What I'm getting out of all of this is or the question is I think, "can we talk about realism in gaming in any meaningful way ?"Certainly we can use terms like verisimilitude which approximates the desired effect of realism but in an activity where most times genre trumps realism or anything remotely resembling it, what we are left with is individual preferences.

This ties into where I was hoping the thread would go, for I feel we can indeed talk about realism in gaming in a useful way, even with realism being a design goal.

But we have to approach it from the opposing direction from the OP and Engine's claim. Rather than asking what's realistic, it's more useful to ask what's not realistic and remove it from the game.

For example, given the following combat outcomes for the handgun duel example I used:

-Character A is hit and killed.
-Character B is hit and killed.
-Character A & B are hit and killed.
..
..
..
-A pink bunny appears and deflects the bullet.

It's very clear that the appearing pink bunny is likely very unrealistic. Even more so if it happens one in ten times during such duels.

While an extreme example, it shows that one can improve the realism of a game design by removing known unrealistic events from it. Same with those events who's chance of happening is well below the resolution of the die mechanic used to call it.

Here's where all the research Engine attempted to reach for to prove realism comes into play- not in proving realism directly, but in identifying unrealistic things that should be removed or altered in the game.

This doesn't have to be a competition.  There will be no winner.  Trophies are for people who need to be reminded they are winners.

Quote from: gleichman;252849While an extreme example, it shows that one can improve the realism of a game design by removing known unrealistic events from it. Same with those events who's chance of happening is well below the resolution of the die mechanic used to call it.

Okay for me this translates to internal consistency. Which I admit is my prefered method of determining what is "realsitic" in any given setting whatever the genre. Mechanics are an integral part of the "internal consistency" equation.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;252864Okay for me this translates to internal consistency. Which I admit is my prefered method of determining what is "realsitic" in any given setting whatever the genre. Mechanics are an integral part of the "internal consistency" equation.

Regards,
David R

I concur. Internal consistency is important to me when I lay down a design. If you violate it, you must have a good reason. That said, even this is subjective. What is consistent to one or more people may be unacceptable drivel to another.

Bill

Quote from: Drohem;252695......................would be simulationist game systems, such as BRP/RQ and GURPS.

Hello?

 Got my attention now.

How about instead of "realism" how about going with PLAUSIBLE.

 There's actually been a few game sessions....where players and I said something like "Thats maybe not realistic, but it is plausible."


- Ed C.

I love games that shoot for realism. I agree that consistent "grain", internal logic, and playably generalized rules make a better game than an overly detailed, cumbersome mess. But so few games even identify realism as a design goal anymore that I can help but root for the ones that do.

Games that can comfortably divide attention among all those things are great.

Quote from: Engine;252700The sheer amount of information required to produce a flawless simulation of fantasy combat would be unlikely and certainly unwieldy. Your character sheet would need to be a thousand pages of muscle response times and whether you'd eaten breakfast and the material properties of your weapon's forge. No, thank you. If this is the realism we cannot have, I dance with glee.

Hence, statistical approximation.

The thing is that in real life as in rpgs we have a certain degree of randomness. There are a whole swag of factors which are smaller than that randomness and will be lost in it. What I had for breakfast affects how good a shot I am, yes - but the wind and how long it is since I cleaned my weapon and the noise of battle and whether I'm being directly shot at affect it so much more that we can ignore it.

So we just deal with the big things, the things as big as the randomness. The extraordinary number of variables in reality we simulate not by listing them all, but by rolling the dice. Thus not every little thing is realistic, but the sum of it all, the feel of the game session, that's realistic. There's no feeling of "what the fuck? that was stupid!" afterwards.

Quote from: EngineNearly all game systems attempt to model reality; some do so more accurately than others. Those which are more accurate, we would call "more realistic." Those which are acceptably accurate - for whatever our needs might be - we might call "realistic." Will such a game be a flawless statistical model of reality? No. It might be realistic, to some degree or another, but it is not real.

I prefer to say that this or that campaign is... not "realistic" but realistic-themed. That is, not every detail is going to be a perfect simulation of reality, but the general themes, the feel and tone of the thing, will be realistic.

Rather than whether a sword does 1d6+1 or 1d6+2 damage, I find the behaviour of PCs and NPCs is much more important to me in the whole thing seeming "realistic". For example, take a look at the series of events which led to the Metropolitan Police in the UK killing an innocent man. It's the sort of fuckup PCs make all the time. The exact range and accuracy of their firearms and the exact effect of seven rounds in the head aren't as important as the general theme of the story - people under pressure making mistakes.

I could easily imagine something like that as a scenario in a game session, the players sweating as they were pressed for a decision.
"Is it him? Do we move?"
"I couldn't tell... he was too far. It might be him."
"We have to know for sure. He's going into the Underground now."
"Shit... I..."
*zzzt zzzt buzzzz* "Comms are down, what are you saying? Is it him?"
"Fuck! Team Alpha, follow him!"
"He's waiting on the platform. He's carrying a backpack."
"Yes but so are thousands of others. Is it him?"
"Can't say."
etc.

That would be a realistic-themed scenario. That's something that gets into players' heads and makes them think much more than a page of stats of guns, or how fast they can run, or whatever. It's not realistic, but it has realistic themes. I think that's the best way.

Ahem, realistic in gaming doesn't mean, that it look similar to reality, but the fact, that it look like someones interpretation of what reality looks like... so in most cases for example gunfight would not look like in reality or military handbook, but like in movies, and players would still think, that it's "realistic" (unlless they are informed, but with how many people who at least read military handbooks have you played?)

No, "realism in gaming" does mean that the overall results of the game session look similar to what we see in reality.

Certainly there are players who base their ideas of reality on movies they've seen. But like teenaged boys watching pr0n and thinking that's what sex is like, they're soon disabused of that notion. If the GM and/or one or more of the players know better than the nonsense in movies, then they can sort the ignorant player out. If the whole group is ignorant then they will all be happy with a movie world, and there's no problem.

Realism is not in itself a good thing in a game. Fun is. Realistic themes can but do not always make the game more fun. We don't want it all the time.

Quote from: Fritzs;252911Ahem, realistic in gaming doesn't mean, that it look similar to reality, but the fact, that it look like someones interpretation of what reality looks like... so in most cases for example gunfight would not look like in reality or military handbook, but like in movies, and players would still think, that it's "realistic" (unlless they are informed, but with how many people who at least read military handbooks have you played?)

I would say that realistic means similar to reality -- not the same as reality, but bearing a resemblance rather than having deliberate difference.  In most cases, games aren't realistic, and deliberately so.  For that matter, most movies aren't realistic, and deliberately so.  

I'd say that nearly all of the players I've played with understand that the typical Hollywood gunfight is not realistic, and don't equate seeming like the movies with realism.  They might not have read military handbooks, and couldn't accurately say about what was wrong -- but they perfectly well understand that most movies are unrealistic.