A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[Bedrockgames]

I'm certain there's a player base out there that actually wants "really real realistic reality realism" as the sole and complete focus of their gaming experience.

For all seventeen of those people, they already have GURPS. The rest of us have to make do with other systems that are, you know, actually fun.

I just think it is very dismissive for people to assume their preferences are prevalent, but assume someone who says they want realism doesn't really know what they want (or assume there is a minuscule number of them). Also, I don't think anyone is saying they want it as a sole and complete focus, just that they want it present (I honestly don't understand why it would need to be the sole focus for it to be important to someone). That is totally reasonable. The said, 100% realism isn't something I am generally after. But I have met tons of players who want it (and yes they do often gravitate toward GURPS ) But there are also plenty in the D&D pool who expect more realism than others. And a lot of the debates over editions arise over perceived issues around realism and plausibility.

 

[Imaro]

Maybe six or seven years ago I had a conversation on these forums about this very topic around why I felt 4e was giving me such a poor play experience.

My view at the time (and still remains) was that CRPGs have now vastly exceeded TTRPGs' ability to plug in to this kind of input/reward/feedback loop. The games you've mentioned, plus things like Diablo, Torchlight---oh, and dare I say World of Warcraft?---are all vastly better at expediting the explore/reward/feedback loop than TTRPGs are.

Even CRPGs that go for bigger, broader storylines like the Baldur's Gate series, Pillars of Eternity, Knights of the Old Republic, Skyrim, etc., still have a much faster action/reward/feedback loop than TTRPGs.

And it's my considered opinion that 4e failed in large part because it was trying to replicate this action/reward/feedback loop as a tabletop experience, but it was doomed to fail from the start, because it neither A) differentiated itself from CRPG products that were already doing this, and doing it well, and B) the actual gameplay experience couldn't "complete the loop" fast enough to engage the player base it was ostensibly targeting.

You don't pull in a World of Warcraft player into the TTRPG market by saying, "It's just like WoW, only you roll dice!" You pull them into the market because it offers a DIFFERENT experience.

Am I saying that TTRPGs can't offer some of this same feedback loop? Well, yes of course it can. I mean, the entire OSR movement is a testament to this fact. But trying to distill TTRPG play into this kind of action/reward/feedback loop indefinitely I think is ultimately a lost cause. Because CRPGs simply do this better, faster, and with less upfront investment in time, money, and required social capital.

I'd be infinitely curious to hear from the One-True-Sandboxers out there if they really do like "sandboxing" the whole time----or if the "sandboxing" portion of the campaign is just a ramp-up to get their hooks into the game world / plot so they can start pursuing stuff that matters to their character.

I'll keep this brief since I doubt I'm going to change your opinion on this but...

As an avid (video) gamer I think you've got some real faulty premises going on in your logic here, I think it's exactly D&D's ability to do the input/reward/feedback loop (that is the basis of it's play) so well that has kept it (and still keeps it) the #1 rpg for most of it's entire lifetime.


IMO some areas where 4e broke this was... too much balance (especially around magic items, encounters, etc.) in these videogames the rewards for exploration are real, you want a god roll weapon or a rare perk or powerful armor that actually powers you up and gives you a real advantage in the game... and if you're good enough, lucky enough or have a good enough team you'll risk more difficult areas of play to get a chance at better rewards. 4e instead gave us the expectation of balanced encounters, bland pseudo rewards that could easily be substituted out with a +x modifier, a set # of treasure parcels at every level, and a power curve that kind of dropped to super easy through paragon and epic tier. Not to mention it then created a combat engine that instead of being exciting, fast paced and easily resolved was sloooowwwww (another area where videogames were already ahead that 4e just made worse). It basically, when played as presented, made exploration, at least from a reward perspective, pointless that's why these videogames do it so much better than 4e.

Now honestly I think anything done in perpetuity is going to get boring at some point and I also think your are drawing a false dichotomy between exploration and story/plot... they aren't mutually exclusive or at odds with each other and my preferred method is a combination of the two.

 

[Aldarc]

you don't believe there are players who actually want realism?

I believe that there are people who say that they do, but then apply that broad (if not exceedingly vague) criteria selectively in their games, and that this tells us more about their preferences for the actual play experience they want the game to cultivate. And I believe that this latter point is more meaningful and practical than the call for realism itself or offering the trite remark that some realism exists in roleplaying games. It's a shift from the vague "I want 'realism' in my game" to the more concrete "I want my game to simulate X sort of play experience."

 

[Bedrockgames]

I believe that there are people who say that they do, but then apply that broad (if not exceedingly vague) criteria selectively in their games, and that this tells us more about their preferences for the actual play experience they want the game to cultivate. And I believe that this latter point is more meaningful and practical than the call for realism itself or offering the trite remark that some realism exists in roleplaying games. It's a shift from the vague "I want 'realism' in my game" to the more concrete "I want my game to simulate X sort of play experience."

I don't think you are basing this on much. I think if you parse anyone's claims you can probably find reason to be suspect about them, because most people are not constantly on the look out for lack of X in the games. But when they notice breaches of realism it is going to matter to them. Just because they don't notice every instance, or only get upset when it is very obvious, doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Frankly I think this is one of the big issues with discussions on topics like this here. If you can't take peoples' word about what they like, that is extremely arrogant and dismissive. And again, saying this as someone who isn't particularly interested in pure realism. But no one likes their style to be put to the inquisition. And I think a lot of posters are hiding behind a veneer of theory or analysis, but really just trying to argue against play styles they don't like or have had bad experiences talking with in edition wars.

 

[Aldarc]

I don't think you are basing this on much. I think if you parse anyone's claims you can probably find reason to be suspect about them, because most people are not constantly on the look out for lack of X in the games. But when they notice breaches of realism it is going to matter to them. Just because they don't notice every instance, or only get upset when it is very obvious, doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Frankly I think this is one of the big issues with discussions on topics like this here. If you can't take peoples' word about what they like, that is extremely arrogant and dismissive. And again, saying this as someone who isn't particularly interested in pure realism. But no one likes their style to be put to the inquisition. And I think a lot of posters are hiding behind a veneer of theory or analysis, but really just trying to argue against play styles they don't like or have had bad experiences talking with in edition wars.

It seems as if you are looking past my words so you can preach from atop your soap box. I'm not trying to play the sort of "you don't know any better" gotcha game that you are depicting this as here, and it is hardly an inquisition. I would personally appreciate a modicum of good faith from you. So please stop trying to presume my argument as being rooted in arrogance or a desire to be dismissive of others.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It seems as if you are looking past my words so you can preach from atop your soap box. I'm not trying to play the sort of "you don't know any better" gotcha game that you are depicting this as here, and it is hardly an inquisition. I would personally appreciate a modicum of good faith from you. So please stop trying to presume my argument as being rooted in arrogance or a desire to be dismissive of others.

This is a door that swings both ways. If you want me to presume good faith, then maybe you should presume posters are accurately reporting on their tastes. I am not trying to be rude. But it is also getting very difficult to ignore the insulting way some of the posters here are talking about other styles of play. I hope you appreciate my tone isn't meant to be hostile. I think part of it is the text based medium, we are able to project whatever tone we want. But what bothers me is the dismissive nature of the posts I am seeing. It is possible I am misreading them. But I think it is even more possible, people just don't realize how dismissive they are being. If people want a conversation we can have it. I am just not going to lie about my reaction to some of the ways people are wading into this topic with assumptions that, to me, seem really unfounded, and appear to come more from a play style conflict than any real analysis.

 

[innerdude]

Apologies, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], I should have added like, ten or twelve more smiley faces to the GURPS comment. It didn't come off nearly as lighthearted in writing as it sounded in my head.

Mostly I was just tweaking a far,far,far extreme subset of the gaming populace who really does think "realistic realism" is the absolute, uttermost virtue of any game system. Part of the humor was my unspoken assumption that there's a near-zero chance that any of those kinds of players would be present on this forum, because most players who are like that do seem to A) gravitate to GURPS, and B) generally would not deign to give so much as the barest hint that any other system could possess any merit whatsoever.

But the "point-behind-the-point" in my lightheartedness was to say that I think most of us on these boards recognize that "realism" in TTRPG play (however we define/view it) is absolutely a valid component for play consideration. I don't think anyone who looks for consistency, verisimilitude, coherence, immersion, "living world" sensibilities, etc., would ever argue that these things do not have a fundamental place in the enjoyment of our play. I'm certainly not arguing that.

One of the reasons I'm drawn to Savage Worlds is that its abstractions/shorthand for doing discrete task resolution have a very clear sense of how to plug in the results into the type of game world it assumes. Savage Worlds by default operates fantastically well at the "John McClain/Die Hard/James Bond" level of "world consistency," and I think this is one of its major strengths. Much of Savage Worlds' perceived elegance lies in the ability of players, within just a few hours of play, to get a strong sense for how the assumed "game world physics" reacts to what they do. By clearly communicating this to the players, it frees them to be creative within the boundaries of the system's assumed limits.

 

[Lanefan]

Though I'm not the person to whom this was directed, a few thoughts anyway:

Do you mean something like “baseline familiarity centered around our own physical systems?” Gravity is a thing, some interactions transfer more energy than others, nonparasitic plants need light for photosynthesis, humans (and animals like them) express themselves based on biological and social imperatives. Stuff like that?

I don’t think (broadly) that anyone would disagree with that (@Aldarc included).

Let's hope not.

I think the friction arises when we try to sort out the nature of a certain paradox that seems to violate our baselines arbitrarily, what to extrapolate from it, what is the consequence/utility (from a gameplay perspective) of digging too deeply or hewing too closely/granularly (to our baselines). Further still, the more Through the Looking Glass components get ported to our games, the more friction there is (as even our seemingly trivially “true” baselines become challenged).

You're on to something, but I'll jump it one step further: the friction comes from how (or even if) we try to import or overlay or integrate those components with the baselines we already have in place; and whether people agree both on the approach being used and on the results thus obtained.

For my part, I try to think how those components would work and what they would do were they to exist in the real world, and go from there: an integration approach. I even go so far as to think about how magic could be made to fit in to our baseline physics, admittedly using a rather big shoehorn in the process. The results inform the setting as to how things (usually) work when magic gets involved e.g. a fireball, lacking constraints, will expand to a spherical shape rather than a cube (and the heat thus generated will tend to rise); Reverse Gravity's duration has to be rewritten such that someone outdoors hit by the spell isn't sent into low orbit (seriously, read the spell carefully in any edition then do the math!), and stuff like that.

That said, a few baselines still get chucked in favour of fun and-or tradition: lightning bolts in reality don't rebound off walls, for example, but they will in any game I ever DM.

EDIT - That isn’t even touching on the questions of:

1) Does hewing to x too closely cause gameplay issues (balance, overhead)?

Balance, schmalance. And while it can cause a bit more overhead I feel the not-much-extra effort is more than worth it.

2) Does hewing to x too closely interfere with having interesting inputs to gameplay (framed conflicts, proposed action declarations, exciting obstacles).

Not entirely sure this would ever be an issue; for the most part this isn't changing anything very much within the setting, rather it's simply trying to give a firm and consistent foundation for explaining how it all functions.

Lan-"depending on edition Reverse Gravity as written can send the target somewhere between 25 and 42 miles up, given normal earthlike fall-acceleration rates, before its duration expires"-efan

 

[Aldarc]

This is a door that swings both ways. If you want me to presume good faith, then maybe you should presume posters are accurately reporting on their tastes.

I'm afraid this is a false equivalence, and it's framed such that only way that you will show me good faith is if accept a certain premise as true and you are also presuming in bad faith that I am not showing good faith in my argument. So no, this does not swing both ways. It swings with you showing bad faith towards me and then doubling down on it as if they held equivalent moral weight.

I am not trying to be rude. But it is also getting very difficult to ignore the insulting way some of the posters here are talking about other styles of play. I hope you appreciate my tone isn't meant to be hostile. I think part of it is the text based medium, we are able to project whatever tone we want. But what bothers me is the dismissive nature of the posts I am seeing. It is possible I am misreading them. But I think it is even more possible, people just don't realize how dismissive they are being. If people want a conversation we can have it. I am just not going to lie about my reaction to some of the ways people are wading into this topic with assumptions that, to me, seem really unfounded, and appear to come more from a play style conflict than any real analysis.

You may not be trying to be rude, but you're nevertheless doing a darn good job of it. In the same breath that you preach this call to good faith, you also accuse your opponents as being dismissive and arrogant, lacking good faith, holding unfounded assumptions, and engaging in insulting behavior. And then you suggest that while you could be wrong, it's likelier that others are actually the ones in the wrong. Geez. I would hate to see how rude and hostile in tone you could be when you are actually trying. This sort of patronizing doublespeak comes across knowingly or not as hypocritical. And if you have no real interest in engaging with what I wrote so you can just repeat your refrain that I am being dismissive of others, exhibiting arrogance, and speaking in bad faith, then we are pretty much done here. I'm sorry, but that's not looking for a conversation; that's looking to condemn.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Apologies, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], I should have added like, ten or twelve more smiley faces to the GURPS comment. It didn't come off nearly as lighthearted in writing as it sounded in my head.

Mostly I was just tweaking a far,far,far extreme subset of the gaming populace who really does think "realistic realism" is the absolute, uttermost virtue of any game system. Part of the humor was my unspoken assumption that there's a near-zero chance that any of those kinds of players would be present on this forum, because most players who are like that do seem to A) gravitate to GURPS, and B) generally would not deign to give so much as the barest hint that any other system could possess any merit whatsoever.

But the "point-behind-the-point" in my lightheartedness was to say that I think most of us on these boards recognize that "realism" in TTRPG play (however we define/view it) is absolutely a valid component for play consideration. I don't think anyone who looks for consistency, verisimilitude, coherence, immersion, "living world" sensibilities, etc., would ever argue that these things do not have a fundamental place in the enjoyment of our play. I'm certainly not arguing that.

One of the reasons I'm drawn to Savage Worlds is that its abstractions/shorthand for doing discrete task resolution have a very clear sense of how to plug in the results into the type of game world it assumes. Savage Worlds by default operates fantastically well at the "John McClain/Die Hard/James Bond" level of "world consistency," and I think this is one of its major strengths. Much of Savage Worlds' perceived elegance lies in the ability of players, within just a few hours of play, to get a strong sense for how the assumed "game world physics" reacts to what they do. By clearly communicating this to the players, it frees them to be creative within the boundaries of the system's assumed limits.

I got that in your post (which is why I included one in my GURPS comment). I was thinking specifically of the comments Aldarc had made, and others had made, calling into question whether people even really wanted realism. And I like Savage Worlds too. However, for someone like Maxperson, it would be one of the last games I'd recommend based on him valuing genuine realism. Savage Worlds is great for genre. And it is nice system in general in my opinion.

I think D&D occupies an odd space here because it is The Game. It kind of has to be everything to everyone. So it is natural that this will be a point of contention among D&D players (and like others have pointed out, it has always been so). I remember when I first started playing the realism debates. With D&D it was interesting because realism seemed to be present in some places and not in others. I think with D&D it is about how noticeable it is. In some editions it feels more noticeable that realism is being breached than others. I think with a game like that, where they have to cater to multiple types of players and play styles, it is a question of how prevalent each thing in the system. I am willing to bet someone like MaxPerson can stomach an edition that to him feels realistic the majority of the time, but not an edition that feels like he is constantly running into realism issues. Would be curious of his feelings on this.