Yes, I agree Brendan. It's good when we realism geeks can also read the room as players and use discretion about when to speak up. Which I'd say is generally only when:

* It's a whole group of realism geek players or we've agreed we'll stop for realism discussion, which I've almost never seen be the case except when designing, playtesting and/or wargaming.

* The GM has requested/invited me to correct/support them on technicalities during play.

* The game is not in immediate roleplay mode and such things are being discussed with interest and no one's tuning out.

* It's just a very quick adjustment and I think people will appreciate it and/or not mind at all.

* It's something that's a big error that will change an important outcome, and/or will seem glaring somehow (to others, not just to me) in retrospect. Even then, I might not speak up if it seems like pointing out the error will result in major disaster for a PC, especially if it's a conflated error where an earlier mistake I let slide led to a now-critical mistake that if corrected would likely directly cost a PC life or limb.

For most other issues / cases, I think it's almost always best to help the GM and game stay on the situation being played, even if we're getting surreal. If I have issues I think would help, or are messing with my enjoyment, I try to hold them for between-session discussion with the GM. I generally weigh for myself how interested I am in continuing playing, and stay and let the GM run how he/she runs, or leave, rather than trying to change how the GM or other players play.

And, as a realism nut GM, I also rarely want to stop playing and have a realism discussion. If a player stops playing in almost any way, I generally continue leading the game rather than joining their digression. If the digression persists, I call it out and get them to stop or leave. If it's a realism argument, as a compulsive realism nut I will hear it and consider it automatically, and decide if and how I want it to affect the game, and get on with the game (adjusted or not) right away, possibly acknowledging it if easy, but almost never getting into a discussion unless it can be done very quickly or if everyone's interested in it (which might be the case). That is, I read the room, but with a strong preference to keeping play going, and leaving any wanted discussion for after play.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;859837I would say if no one else noticed and everyone is having fun, your better off waiting until after the game or until things slow down enough to bring it up because you are breaking everyone else's immersion if you stop things mid fight or at a particularly exciting moment.

Again, I only bring it up because I've seen the expert in the room bring things to a crashing halt too often.

That's been my complaint over in the Traveller thread... guys who are experts, or just imagine they are, that are unable to hold their tongue on even the tiniest trespass into their vast storage of trivia.
I don't see it nearly as much in fantasy games but anything modern or scifi seems to ramp it up.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;859837Again though it is about reading the room. That is the key. If people are clearly interested in the lecture, if people clearly want that in their game, then yes. But it doesn't matter what people agreed to or said at the start of the campaign if they are not really interested in it. People might say at the start they want realism, then the game starts and you realize they want something more like 24 or James Bond. They might also say "realism" and mean something completely different than what you think it means. You are not doing anyone a favor by giving them a lecture they have no interest in. That is my point.

I understood your point the first time. I just happen to disagree with it, and no amount of clarification can make me accept a point that I knowingly rejected.
When I pitch a game, I'm always making it clear whether I intend to run it by story logic or purely by cause and effect logic. If people joined a realistic spy game and decided that they want something like 24, we'll have a talk. The talk will serve me to clarify whether there is still enough interest in the campaign for it to be worth continuing, or we are going to stop it. If not, I might offer a next campaign, it might be based on the story mode, but this one would be over and it's likely to be in a different setting.
Deciding they are not, after all, after what was initially on offer does not give players the right to expect me to change what I was offering. Same goes for GMs, for that matter.

Quote from: AsenRG;859888I understood your point the first time. I just happen to disagree with it, and no amount of clarification can make me accept a point that I knowingly rejected.
When I pitch a game, I'm always making it clear whether I intend to run it by story logic or purely by cause and effect logic. If people joined a realistic spy game and decided that they want something like 24, we'll have a talk. The talk will serve me to clarify whether there is still enough interest in the campaign for it to be worth continuing, or we are going to stop it. If not, I might offer a next campaign, it might be based on the story mode, but this one would be over and it's likely to be in a different setting.
Deciding they are not, after all, after what was initially on offer does not give players the right to expect me to change what I was offering. Same goes for GMs, for that matter.

I am not suggesting players have a right to demand a different kind of game from what you offered. I am not talking about the GM, I am talking about the players. When you have that one guy who pipes in regardless of whether people want to hear him lecture or not. This isn't about the GM being forced to run a different kind of game. It is about people who disrupt the flow of play to lecture everyone on realism or how things really were in history, when they don't want to hear it. That is why I keep emphasizing reading the room being important. If you want to run a particular kind of game, and people signed up but then want something different, that is a whole other type of problem.

By the way, if you don't agree with me that is fine. I am not overly concerned here about convincing everyone to agree with me. I am just happy to weigh in on one of the habits in our hobby that I find annoying and disruptive.

Quote from: Simlasa;859879That's been my complaint over in the Traveller thread... guys who are experts, or just imagine they are, that are unable to hold their tongue on even the tiniest trespass into their vast storage of trivia.
I don't see it nearly as much in fantasy games but anything modern or scifi seems to ramp it up.

I am a fan of hard science fiction and I think there is a lot of that in science fiction fandom. Some of it is fine. I don't mind having a long discussion with another fan about something like that. It is when I'm focused on playing a game or watching a movie that I don't want to hear it so much. I remember when I went to see I, Robot in the theater there was a row of super Asimov fans behind me. All they did the whole movie was loudly point out things they felt were wrong, implausible or misguided, or not in the spirit of the stories. It ruined the whole movie for me. I don't remember the film, I just remember hearing them go on and on.

It is about knowing when and where and reading the room. If someone wants to talk to me about how salt was extracted and processed during the Song Dynasty after the game, I am all open ears. Depending on how realistic I am trying to be about such things, I may incorporate their feedback (though experience has taught me to double check info provided by players who consider themselves experts). During play, I'd rather they keep that kind of trivia to themselves, even if it is an attempt to add some accuracy.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;859896I am a fan of hard science fiction

And that's the problem right there:  Calling it 'hard'.  Because to a lot of the fans, it's like they miss the second word 'Fiction' and only focus on the Science.  And frankly, although some Sci-Fi swings closer to the Science side, it's still no different between Star Wars and Star Trek or Space Odyssey 2001 and The Andromeda Strain.  They all work on the premise of 'What if X happened'.

What makes the arguments worse is that Science has a basis in real fact and they often boil down into people whipping out the e-Peen and spraying their information -some of which may be supposition or even incorrect and out of date but they're unwilling to let it go- all over the face of the conversation, getting into other people's points of view and creating a sticky mess that no one wanted in the first place.

Point is: Using the nomenclature of 'Hard Science Fiction' only precipitates those messes because most who discuss it only focus on the Science.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;859899And that's the problem right there:  Calling it 'hard'.  Because to a lot of the fans, it's like they miss the second word 'Fiction' and only focus on the Science.  And frankly, although some Sci-Fi swings closer to the Science side, it's still no different between Star Wars and Star Trek or Space Odyssey 2001 and The Andromeda Strain.  They all work on the premise of 'What if X happened'.

What makes the arguments worse is that Science has a basis in real fact and they often boil down into people whipping out the e-Peen and spraying their information -some of which may be supposition or even incorrect and out of date but they're unwilling to let it go- all over the face of the conversation, getting into other people's points of view and creating a sticky mess that no one wanted in the first place.

Point is: Using the nomenclature of 'Hard Science Fiction' only precipitates those messes because most who discuss it only focus on the Science.

I do think the category is useful. I think in gaming people might get caught up in splitting hairs on this stuff but when it comes to novels, I definitely see a guy like Clarke doing something very different from something like you had in Star Wars. I love both, but Clarke's definitely imposed limits on himself that are science based and that shapes the kinds of stories he can tell. For whatever reason that stuff really spoke to me as a kid and I had no problem identifying it as hard science fiction (and I am not much of science geek). I feel that the constraints these authors imposed on themselves by sticking with real world science, produced some interesting ideas and stories. They were the books I tended to enjoy more. That doesn't mean science fiction that hand waves explanations more or isn't as constrained by real world science is bad. I think that stuff is great too. They're just different and having that split as a category can be useful.

In gaming though, if the issue is people are playing an RPG like traveler and one group is trying to use Hard Science fiction as a bludgeon to say it can't be done another way, I'd have an issue with that. These categories are just good models for grouping like things together. I think when you start getting "oughts" or "shoulds" from such categories it isn't very productive. Just because I like Hard Science fiction for example, that doesn't mean I have any interest in dictating what a science fiction or hard science fiction campaign should look like to my group. As long as I can intuit and sense what people mean I am not that concerned with what words they use to get there.

Personally, Brendon, and I want to stress that this is just MY opinion after seeing several decades worth of arguments, is that it's one definition that often gets taken too far.

Science Fiction has some common tropes, and some lean way into the Fiction part (Star Wars, to use my examples again) and others go the nearly complete Science route (The original The Andromeda Strain), but they all have several things in common, a setting where technology and science dominate and often (but not always) are the driving force of a story.  Whether it's a new thing, or how it affects society and people in general.

We already got Fantasy chopped up into several different chunks that quite frankly invade each others supposed space on an hourly basis.  Science Fiction doesn't need it.  Especially given the amount of arguments the Hard umbrella seems to cause.

Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;859904Personally, Brendon, and I want to stress that this is just MY opinion after seeing several decades worth of arguments, is that it's one definition that often gets taken too far.

Science Fiction has some common tropes, and some lean way into the Fiction part (Star Wars, to use my examples again) and others go the nearly complete Science route (The original The Andromeda Strain), but they all have several things in common, a setting where technology and science dominate and often (but not always) are the driving force of a story.  Whether it's a new thing, or how it affects society and people in general.

We already got Fantasy chopped up into several different chunks that quite frankly invade each others supposed space on an hourly basis.  Science Fiction doesn't need it.  Especially given the amount of arguments the Hard umbrella seems to cause.

Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

I think what you are getting at is the issue of purity. That is something where I most likely agree with you. I am only interested in these kinds of categories for their ability to point me toward things I might like, or to just help me speak about them generally. I am not interested in using categories as a basis for how books, games, etc ought to be; for making sure things are pure expressions of a sub-genre. So if someone writes a book and slaps Hard Science fiction on the cover, or people refer to it as Hard Science fiction, but it has a few things you don't expect to see in such a book, I won't care as long as it is a good science fiction book (or just a good book). I am not interested in the purity of the label here any more than I am in the purity of musical categories. I think when folks obsess too much on that kind of purity genres start to wither a bit and decay. Still I find Hard Science Fiction a handy label, just like a find Doom Metal a handy label, even if there are a few jerks out there using such labels to create walls or shame people out of liking things.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;859894I am not suggesting players have a right to demand a different kind of game from what you offered. I am not talking about the GM, I am talking about the players.

I am talking about the GM and players. Doesn't matter which one is in need of a lecture, someone still needs it:).

QuoteWhen you have that one guy who pipes in regardless of whether people want to hear him lecture or not.

If you have such a guy, you have a problem. It might very well be a problem with the rest of the group, though.

QuoteThis isn't about the GM being forced to run a different kind of game.

Yes, I said it isn't in the post you quoted. The GM was an example, because I was the GM the last couple of times.

QuoteIt is about people who disrupt the flow of play to lecture everyone on realism or how things really were in history, when they don't want to hear it.

And if the game is meant to refer to "the way it was in history", the problem is with the guys that don't want to listen.
(Unless the guy just thinks he knows better. But that's not a problem with the lecture, it's a problem with false information or the lack of it, so I presume that's not what you're against).

QuoteThat is why I keep emphasizing reading the room being important. If you want to run a particular kind of game, and people signed up but then want something different, that is a whole other type of problem.

Actually no, it's a subset of the same problem.

QuoteBy the way, if you don't agree with me that is fine. I am not overly concerned here about convincing everyone to agree with me. I am just happy to weigh in on one of the habits in our hobby that I find annoying and disruptive.

Same here, including the annoying and disruptive part;).

Quote from: AsenRG;859960And if the game is meant to refer to "the way it was in history", the problem is with the guys that don't want to listen.
(Unless the guy just thinks he knows better. But that's not a problem with the lecture, it's a problem with false information or the lack of it, so I presume that's not what you're against).
.

I am sorry but this is the kind of attitude I pretty much wouldn't want at my table. If people are having fun and playing with the what they feel is the level of realism they want and expect, some guy trying to educate them when they don't want it, especially during play when things are moving smoothly, is disruption. You got to read the room. If you think its your job to fix people, and they don't want it, your the issue.

And I say that as someone who loves history and strives for some measure of historical accuracy in most of my campaigns. But I also know when lecturing people about that stuff makes me a dick.