# The Difference Between Realism vs. Believability



## innerdude (Jul 28, 2010)

I've been ruminating for some time now on what I see as being a common misconception about FRPGs. 

I've heard it said many times, "Talking about 'realism' in a game where there's elves and dwarves and gnomes and magic is stupid, because it's inherently unrealistic."

I disagree with this statement, and here's why:  

In any fictional construct--film, novel, play, shared roleplaying experience--there is "realism," and then there's something else called "suspension of disbelief," "suspendable disbelief," "verisimilitude," or "believability."

"Realism," as I'm going to define it for the purposes of this argument, is an approximation, or sliding scale, of how closely the fictional world models the "real world." 

In a work of fiction trying for absolute "realism," then every minute detail about what happens in that work of fiction must be constrained by what is solely possible within our own real, lived experience. An absolute "realist" piece of fiction will not even admit the possibility of fantasy/sci-fi/pulp action tropes, because they don't exist in our world. 

On the other hand, "suspension of disbelief," "verisimilitude," or "believability," are NOT an approximation of "realism" (meaning it's not about modeling the real world), it's about _internal consistency within the fictional construct's own set of constraints_. 

(For ease of use, I'm going to refer to this idea as "believability," but you can use "verisimilitude" or one of the others at your discretion. 

Every fictional world creates a set of rules on which the actions within it are either possible or impossible based on its own set of internal mechanisms. These "rules," or "creative mechanisms," are wholly independent of _realism_. They can approximate realism, they can completely differ from realism, but they themselves are NOT the same thing as "realism." 

Something can be utterly and totally "unrealistic," yet still be "believable," _because all of the actions taken within the fictional world hold true to its own internal set of mechanisms_.  We accept fictional worlds with elves, dwarves, and gnomes, and magic because within the constraints of the fictional world, those things are that world's "realism." 

So when someone starts talking about "realism" in an RPG, I think it's very important to ask them, "Are you talking about 'realism' as it relates to the 'real world,' or are you talking about 'realism' as it relates to the construct of the game world?" because these two concepts are completely different. 

If the fictional world has chosen to model, or not model some of its own internal constructs after the "real world," the question isn't how "real" it is, but how _consistent _it is. If the fictional construct deviates from "the real world," there typically needs to be a reason/explanation for the deviation, and it usually needs to be applied consistently. If you want to say that elves are seven-foot, 300 pound giants in your world, that's fine, as long as there's a reason, and as long as it's consistent.  

A great example of this being done poorly is _Star Wars_ Episodes I, II, and III. One of the reasons they suck so bad (besides the horrific dialogue and acting) isn't because they lack "realism," it's because they lack _believability_. The actions, behaviors, motivations, and consequences of the actions of the heroes/protagonists aren't even consistent _within their own constructed environment_, let alone our "real world." 

What I'm saying is that like good fiction novels, films, and plays, RPGs don't need to be realistic, but need to have a level of _believability_ to the way their mechanics interact within the chosen fictional construct. 

Having elves and dwarves is inherently "unrealistic"--but it doesn't mean it's not "believable" within a game world like Forgotten Realms or Golarion. 

Saying, "Well, in my world all humans have magical abilities that makes it so when they throw a sword, it automatically comes back to them" isn't "realistic" OR "believable" in the Forgotten Realms, because it goes against the Realms' own internal constructions. 

Why do comic book heroes often have backstories? Why do we need to see Peter Parker get bit by that spider in the movie? It's not because it's "realistic," but because it makes what Spider-Man is later capable of "believable."


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## FireLance (Jul 28, 2010)

While I don't disagree with what you have written, I think the line between realism and believability gets muddled when you have mechanics which are assumed or implied to model what is possible in the real world, or to be non-magical, e.g. the Martial power source in 4E. 

That is where I think the fundamental disconnect comes from. Almost everyone agrees that things which are impossible in the real world can be made possible in a fantasy world through the use of magic. However, not everyone agrees that things which are impossible in the real world can (or should) be made possible in a fantasy world without the use of magic.

Nobody bats an eyelid when a cleric's prayer heals a wound or a bard's singing stops a companion from bleeding to death. That's explicitly magic. However, some people find it unbelievable or unrealistic when a warlord's shouting enables an unconscious ally to get back on his feet and keep fighting because normal people can't reliably do that in the real world.


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## Bluenose (Jul 28, 2010)

Realism: It could happen that way in real life.
Believable: It could happen that way in genre media.

Some things can be both, some can be one or the other, and some can be neither. But once you've identified the genre, believable should in my opinion trump realistic. 

Now, identifying what's believable and/or realistic, that's a separate problem.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 28, 2010)

FireLance said:


> While I don't disagree with what you have written, I think the line between realism and believability gets muddled when you have mechanics which are assumed or implied to model what is possible in the real world, or to be non-magical, e.g. the Martial power source in 4E.
> 
> That is where I think the fundamental disconnect comes from. Almost everyone agrees that things which are impossible in the real world can be made possible in a fantasy world through the use of magic. However, not everyone agrees that things which are impossible in the real world can (or should) be made possible in a fantasy world without the use of magic.
> 
> Nobody bats an eyelid when a cleric's prayer heals a wound or a bard's singing stops a companion from bleeding to death. That's explicitly magic. However, some people find it unbelievable or unrealistic when a warlord's shouting enables an unconscious ally to get back on his feet and keep fighting because normal people can't reliably do that in the real world.



I think that this has always been a problem in D&D. It is why I left it in the first place. The simple interpretation of game rules is as a phycis engine and some games are built that way but I think that D&D never was. 
At its roots it a wargame simulation. Wargames try to simulate outcomes, that is, if you take France in 1814 you will end up with 3 or 4 battles somewhare on the Brussels road and the Allies will just shade it and then set the VP on historical performance.
This is why armour makes you harder to hit rather than adsorbing damage and other oddities of D&D.
For an interesting take on 4.e I refer you to this post


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## NoWayJose (Jul 28, 2010)

I think that most people get the difference between realism and versimilitude these days. After years of Internet debate, I think people have gotten more conscious of this issue and, after years of semantic nitpicking, also more careful about using the correct terminology.

I also agree that exactly what is believable is still contentious (witness a recent thread that was closed when the debate got too hot for some).

The issue gets more complicated with RPGs where the system informs the believability or unbelievability of the in-game setting. I can play Monopoly and have no desire for believability -- clearly, it's an abstract game. I can play one of those tactical miniature games that have a short background story and character cards with background blurbs  and yet still have no desire for immersion and believability -- the fluff is just for flavor, it's still a boardgame. I think that D&D (4E more than 3E) can't quite make up its mind over its priorities -- is it simulationist or is it more of a metagame -- not in the sense that the developers were indecisive, but that their efforts to reconciliate rules and fluff is too sporadic to be consistent. I think Chaosim's Call of Cthulhu has overall great believability sandwiched between the rules and the fluff -- probably my favorite game for "real" role-playing, the fluff is almost always immersive and the game rules feel relatively inconspicuous during play.

Different players have different expectations. Personally, I need a certain amount of believability to enjoy an RPG. If I wanted just tactics and strategizing, I'd prefer to play a boardgame which has no pretentions about being anything other than a tactical/strategy game and I can enjoy it for what it is.


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## Deset Gled (Jul 28, 2010)

innerdude said:


> Something can be utterly and totally "unrealistic," yet still be "believable," _because all of the actions taken within the fictional world hold true to its own internal set of mechanisms_.




I tend to agree.

Using your terminology, realism and believability are essentially analogous to accuracy and precision.  Realism (accuracy) is a measurement of how close, on average, things are to the real world.  Believability is a measurement of how repeatable things are within the world.

The bullseye is reality.  Your world lies wherever you place it on the dartboard.

High realism, low believability






High believability, low realism





(Images hotlinked from Accuracy and precision - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)


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## S'mon (Jul 28, 2010)

I think Plausibility - Believability - is what enables Suspension of Disbelief, which is important for me in playing/GMing an RPG.   I generally find rules-light games better for me for SoD as they leave me more brain processing-power available to come up with explanations for what just occurred.

Example - GMing for my three-year-old last week, free-kriegspiel style:

"OK, the Duergar start towards you.  Roll 3+ to hit"

Bill gleefully rolls a 5 on a d6

"Your arrow takes the lead Duergar in the chest.   He falls off the bridge into the river, and is swept downstream..."

Whereas a more rules-heavy system tends to more tightly define the narrative, and can make improvisation harder.  This can be problematic if I find it hard to justify rules-driven events within the setting, eg the 4e PC who goes from dying to full hp after a short rest, without benefit of magical healing, or from dying to full hp + full healing surges after a night's rest.


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## Bluenose (Jul 28, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> Personally, I need a certain amount of believability to enjoy an RPG. If I wanted just tactics and strategizing, I'd prefer to _play a boardgame_ which has no pretentions about being anything other than a tactical/strategy game and I can enjoy it for what it is.




Make that a *game *which has no pretentions about believability and you're making more sense. There's an awful lot of boardgames which are intensely 'realistic' in approach, as well as tabletop wargames and computer games with the same approach.


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## lutecius (Jul 28, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> I think that this has always been a problem in D&D. It is why I left it in the first place. The simple interpretation of game rules is as a phycis engine and some games are built that way but I think that D&D never was. [...] This is why armour makes you harder to hit rather than adsorbing damage and other oddities of D&D.



this leads to another misconception I see a lot on EW, that because D&D always had gamist elements, more gamisms don't change the nature of the game. or because you didn't mind the old quirks, you should accept the new ones. 
(this also works for sci-fi elements)

but I do wish they had implemented armor as damage reduction in D&D.


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## Barastrondo (Jul 28, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> I think that this has always been a problem in D&D. It is why I left it in the first place. The simple interpretation of game rules is as a phycis engine and some games are built that way but I think that D&D never was.




You need look no further than the concept of "hit points" to find your proof, I'd argue.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 28, 2010)

I think nerds tend to overestimate the value of consistency.


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## Mallus (Jul 28, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> I think nerds tend to overestimate the value of consistency.



Bingo. Sometimes, in these discussions, I get the feeling like I'm reading literary criticism written by engineers.

Which, come to think of it, is probably what I'm reading.

It's all very system-oriented, and not at all like conversations about believability I've had w/non-nerds.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 28, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> I think nerds tend to overestimate the value of consistency.



I think nerds tend to overestimate the value of crying out 'nerd!'


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 28, 2010)

Barastrondo said:


> You need look no further than the concept of "hit points" to find your proof, I'd argue.



Oh no! I have had that argument here and saying I won is a bit like saying the Brits won the Somme.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 28, 2010)

Mallus said:


> Bingo. Sometimes, in these discussions, I get the feeling like I'm reading literary criticism written by engineers.
> 
> ...



Well, you are mostly.


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## lutecius (Jul 28, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> I think nerds tend to overestimate the value of consistency.



yeah, the "you're thinking too hard about fantasy" line makes lots of sense on a d&d forum, too. it's also a great contribution to the discussion


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## Barastrondo (Jul 28, 2010)

lutecius said:


> yeah, the "you're thinking too hard about fantasy" line makes lots of sense on a d&d forum, too. it's also a great contribution to the discussion




Personally, I don't agree with the premise that "it is impossible to overthink fantasy." At some point the valuable stuff you are recovering is perhaps not worth all the valuable stuff you have discarded to get there.That said, the point at which it becomes "thinking _too_ hard" is really, really difficult to pin down, and varies by person. 

One of the things about fantasy is that it's built on a foundation of myth, and myth's power doesn't have to do with plausibility or laws of physics. I think there are actually two metrics of "believability": there's the pseudoscientific version in which you try to explain how a medusa's gaze works with Newtonian physics, and there's the mythic version where the gut check is "Does this sound like a logical extrapolation of a mythical or literary precedent?" These two things clash all the time. Hell, in some cases trying to build a giant that works scientifically can lose your audience because they don't think a giant that works with the square/cube law is appropriate to the Jack stories and Norse myths they've got in mind. If your audience is bored with your giants, have you overthought them? Opinions vary, but I would probably side with "yes". Find a different audience and maybe the answer will be "no."


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## innerdude (Jul 28, 2010)

Mallus said:


> Bingo. Sometimes, in these discussions, I get the feeling like I'm reading literary criticism written by engineers.
> 
> Which, come to think of it, is probably what I'm reading.
> 
> It's all very system-oriented, and not at all like conversations about believability I've had w/non-nerds.




LOL, well sometimes that's true--in my case especially. 

I brought this topic up, because I feel as gamers we repeatedly discuss some topics, like rules heavy vs. rules light, or DM as adjudicator vs. DM as creator. 

And I think that defining "realism" and "believability" creates a framework around which to discuss those other things. 

For example, one of the great benefits of a "rules light" system is that it lets the GM interpret rules and outcomes according to what they see as being internally consistent with their vision. If swinging from the chandelier and drop kicking a foe _feels_ internally consistent ("believable") witihin the GM's game world, they let you do it, with whatever resolution mechanic they feel is appropriate. To me, this more closely approximates "fun," if both the players and GM are on the same page about what the acceptable limits of "believability" are. 

But the World's Most Popular RPG has consistently moved towards a rules-heavy interpretation--even 4e, with its simplified skills and character paths is very rules heavy. Interpreting a laundry list of powers relative to each other, and then choosing them to synergize with your own character's powers as well as your group's takes some serious rules mastery. 

And I think there's a correlation between how a rules system is designed and how much freedom the GM has to broadly interpret both "realism" and "believability." For a GM who wants to maintain a high level of "realism," then having rules that create a high approximation of "real world" elements is important to them, because it helps them with what the see as being an intrinsic part of adjudication. For them, "realism" is an outcome they desire, because they feel it adds to what they're doing.  

Some GMs aren't concerned at all about "realism" at all; they just want "believability." For them, the question is about how far outside "realism" can they deviate before "believability" suffers. 

More and more I think that giving a GM more freedom enhances "believability" a great deal, even though it often sacrifices "realism"---but I don't think this is a bad thing.  

I also think there's another interesting thread that could be made comparing an adherence to balance vs. believability, because there's some definite trade offs between them.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 28, 2010)

lutecius said:


> yeah, the "you're thinking too hard about fantasy" line makes lots of sense on a d&d forum, too. it's also a great contribution to the discussion



I just find the 'nerd' label belittling and I think there are better alternatives, like "You're thinking too hard". On the other hard, I don't think the "nerds" (I put it in quotation marks, so that's OK) are thinking too hard in this case. Anyone who reads or watches fantasy can have strong feelings about versimilitude, but only the "nerds" (again, quotation marks) spend extra time voicing their opinions about it on Enworld.

Furthermore, it is wise and prudent for posts like the OP to be written in such an anal retentive manner. Otherwise, THEY (ie., Those Who Nitpick) will come out from dark places to attack you on semantics and derail you with devil's details. Thus the long carefully written expositions. The "nitpickers" have effectively forced the "nerds" into thinking too hard, which leads to accusations of "nerd" and "you're thinking too hard". This, of course, is totally unfair.


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## Mallus (Jul 28, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> Well, you are mostly.



I suspected as much! 



innerdude said:


> LOL, well sometimes that's true--in my case especially.



Note I'm not knocking literary criticism written by engineers... it can't be any worse than the stuff the French come up with.  



> And I think that defining "realism" and "believability" creates a framework around which to discuss those other things.



It can, but it's a tough topic. There can be quite a lot of disagreement over what's _really_ real, let alone what's believable, plausible, and/or seemingly real in the context of a fantasy role-playing game. But it is a interesting subject, no matter how often it comes up.

Let me ask you this. Does realism come from the rules? To what extent do, or even should, the game mechanics create the a believable game world?

(personally, I think a game's level of realism/believability is determined primarily by things outside the rules)


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## Mallus (Jul 28, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> Otherwise, THEY (ie., Those Who Nitpick) will come out from dark places to attack you on semantics and derail you with devil's details.



This sounds a wee bit paranoid. 

Sometimes the people disagreeing with you are simply disagreeing with you, THEY'RE not always out to confound...


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## NoWayJose (Jul 28, 2010)

Mallus said:


> > , THEY (ie., Those Who Nitpick) will come out from dark places to attack you on semantics and derail you with devil's details
> 
> 
> 
> This sounds a wee bit paranoid.



Funny. Right on time, regular as clockwork. Thanks for the case-in-point. Shall we get back on-topic or do you want to continue nitpicking the semantics of my tongue-in-cheek comment?


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## Mallus (Jul 28, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> Funny.



That's what I try for... 



> Shall we get back on-topic or do you want to continue nitpicking the semantics of my tongue-in-cheek comment?



Note my tongue is usually jammed firmly in cheek whilst posting, but I do attempt to work a little content in w/the humor.

Sure, let's talk on-topic. I just asked this question: does realism come from the rules? To what extent do, or even should, the game mechanics (ie formal system) create a believable game world?


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## renau1g (Jul 28, 2010)

lutecius said:


> it's also a great contribution to the discussion




Probably as valuable as this post  

I find 4e leans towards the less believable based on the Martial power source (as Firelance pointed out) and Healing Surges, which someone can just use after a 5 minute breather. I like the mechanics, but I do have to try a bit harder to look past the you were almost dying a minute ago, but now you're all good (going from say 1 hp to full after a short rest).


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 28, 2010)

Mallus said:


> Sure, let's talk on-topic. I just asked this question: does realism come from the rules? To what extent do, or even should, the game mechanics (ie formal system) create a believable game world?



20 years ago I would have said yes, now I say no. I would go as far as to say that a strictly believable world is not necessary if you buy into its story.

Now, to explain that comment. The D&D default world and for that matter the Forgotten Realms is not to me the least bit believable. Too many top level predators, to many sentient and mutually antagonistic species and so forth.
Really smart gold hoarding dragons would become bankers and international fianciers. Convert all that gold in to fiat money and keep the metal for themselves.

Now I'll happly game there becase in any given campaign I am actually intersted in what the DM and the players come up with in the game and the setting is essentially a painted backdrop for the more intimate campaign activity.

Its not just D&D, I can drive some very large holes in Tolkien also but it does not stop me enjoying the story.
Sometimes it does annoy me, like the Honor Harrington story I read where some of the limitations the author placed on the naval action to get the Hormblower in Space feel really ticked me off.

So in my opinion rules create balanced characters and an action resolution system so that the DM can predict the encounter/challange difficulty. In that, a reasonable/easy - OMG what is happening now scenario can be prepared by me (when wearing my DM hat) without too much trouble or work.
As a player I do like to be able to do something interesting with my character and I do like tactically interesting combat.

Believibility is created by the DM and players in game. It can be helped by module writers to pick monsters on a theme rather than a zoo of creatures that have no business being in the same are together hanging about waiting for the PCs to kill them.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 28, 2010)

> Note my tongue is usually jammed firmly in cheek whilst posting...



That sounds a wee bit alarming. You should have a doctor look at it.

...OR...

I like embedding humor too but only if the larger context is useful to the discussion at hand. Discussions of versimilitude are so complicated and contentious, that anyone who derails such threads with tangential humor should be shot. [Clue: This is a test. There are at least 3 examples of sarcasm and 1 example of complete uttery hypocrisy in this post that should NOT be taken seriously. Do NOT respond to these literary devices literally; but rather try to comprehend the underlying meaning and larger context]



> Sure, let's talk on-topic. I just asked this question: does realism come from the rules? To what extent do, or even should, the game mechanics (ie formal system) create a believable game world?




Well, for starters, I disagree with your opinion that "a game's level of realism/believability is determined primarily by things outside the rules". Or more specifically, I disagree with the possible implication that 
unbelievable rules + believable fluff = believable in-game play.

I'd love to provide specifics, but I have to sleep soon (being honest, humor over).


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## Votan (Jul 28, 2010)

innerdude said:


> Some GMs aren't concered at all about "realism" at all; they just want "believability." For them, the question is about how far outside "realism" can they deviate before "believability" suffers.




I also suspect that the composition of the group matters a lot.  A group of martial artists will have dufferent issues than a group of people who sail on weekends.  Both will likely be a lot more exacting about things that relate to their area of expertise.


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## radmod (Jul 29, 2010)

As a fan of 'realism' in RPGs, I found this discussion fascinating and well thought out. 
For myself, I see no real difference between the two words; they are synonymous. However, in my experience when people talk about realism in RPGs they are talking primarily about game mechanics and, for lack of a better word, storyline. Often these are chaotic, hack and slash types who want to be able to do anything and look for anyway they can to get around the rules.
For example of game mechanics, I have a scout with a high Tumble so he can Skirmish w/o taking AoO's. This may be realistic, even believable when facing a small group of low level fighters but it is unrealistic when it comes to facing a band of high level monsters. As such, I convinced my DM we needed to readjust the rule.
For storyline, I offer the following situations. 
I put the party in a world where the local pasha had total power. One player, an anti-authoritarian insulted the pasha to the point that the PC was thrown in the salt mines for 10 years (essentially player death). That is realism and my rule #1: YOU are responsible for your own actions.
In another world, at 1st level I offered the party a series of possible adventures. One was the Seven Samurai style defense of a town against a soon arriving band of Orcs. The other hinted at treasure. The party did the treasure adventure and when they got around to the town they found it burned to the ground! That is realism.


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## steenan (Jul 29, 2010)

I'd add one think to the topic of believability. 

There are two kinds of believability, two ways in which it can be achieved. They come from two different ways in which we may perceive and analyze a fictional world: as a world, ruled by its internal laws, and as a work of fiction, ruled by laws of art. They are not opposites, and they are, in some cases, very similar - but they can also be extremely different.

An setting may be believable in a "scientific" sense. That does not mean it follows real world's science, but that it consistently follows its own laws, laws that can be discovered by someone who lives there. The laws may be strange, but they are there and they work. Books by Brandon Sanderson and Jacek Dukaj are great examples here. It's hard, if possible, to "overthink" such setting. A lot of fun comes from figuring out how it works and (in RPG) exploiting it. In this kind of logic, when one asks "If a portable hole placed in a bag of holding explodes, may I use it to make a bomb?" is "Definitely yes.".

A setting may also be ruled by laws of its genre; laws that treat it as a work of art. Indiana Jones, Star Wars or Pirates of Caribbean have very little "scientific" consistency, but are fun anyway. We don't ask how is something possible, or why a character acts as he does. We ask what is appropriate, interesting and fun in this kind of story. Trying to apply scientific analysis to this kind of setting is an exercise in futility. Applying literary analysis, on other hand, works. In this kind of logic, an answer to "Why can't I trip an opponent more than once an encounter?" is "Because it would be boring if you did it all the time.".

It is possible to "internalize" a genre, by explaining and rationalizing the tropes in-setting. This gives a game the "scientific" believability without losing genre coherence, thus allowing for more kinds of exploration. Exalted and Earthdawn are both examples of such approach.

Many problems we encounter in RPGs come from confusing this kinds of settings and kinds of believability, by game designers or by players. If a game is written with genre consistency, but presented as if it had scientific consistency, it leads to frustration and abuses. That's a problem that plagues most editions of D&D. A game that has scientific consistency and is treated as if it had genre consistency won't create interesting story, as it won't guide the play as the players expect it to.

There is no direct relation between the type of consistency and the game being rules-light or rules-heavy. Rules-heavy "scientific" games have rules that may be treated as (an approximation of) their "laws of physics". Rules-heavy "genre" games have strong metagame rules that enforce appropriate tropes. Rules-light games make sure that players know how the world works (in "scientific" ones) or how the genre works (in genre games) and use this knowledge in making their decisions and rulings.


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## FireLance (Jul 29, 2010)

steenan said:


> An setting may be believable in a "scientific" sense.
> 
> ...
> 
> A setting may also be ruled by laws of its genre.



And then there are worlds, such as Terry Pratchett's Discworld, where Narrative Causality *is* a natural law, and last, desperate, million to one chances come up nine times out of ten.


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## Bluenose (Jul 29, 2010)

radmod said:


> As a fan of 'realism' in RPGs, I found this discussion fascinating and well thought out.
> For myself, I see no real difference between the two words; they are synonymous. However, in my experience when people talk about realism in RPGs they are talking primarily about game mechanics and, for lack of a better word, storyline. Often these are chaotic, hack and slash types who want to be able to do anything and look for anyway they can to get around the rules.
> For storyline, I offer the following situations.
> I put the party in a world where the local pasha had total power. One player, an anti-authoritarian insulted the pasha to the point that the PC was thrown in the salt mines for 10 years (essentially player death). That is realism and my rule #1: YOU are responsible for your own actions.




Amusingly, a historical Pasha simply didn't have total power. They were appointed under someone else's authority and answerable to them. All this proves is that different people know different things, and find different things realistic/unrealistic according to that knowledge.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 29, 2010)

steenan said:


> An setting may be believable in a "scientific" sense. That does not mean it follows real world's science, but that it consistently follows its own laws, laws that can be discovered by someone who lives there.
> <snip>
> A setting may also be ruled by laws of its genre; laws that treat it as a work of art. Indiana Jones, Star Wars or Pirates of Caribbean have very little "scientific" consistency, but are fun anyway. We don't ask how is something possible, or why a character acts as he does. We ask what is appropriate, interesting and fun in this kind of story.




Perhaps I've misunderstood or perhaps I don't know how to apply it, but I don't quite agree with the way this was worded.

I'll use the example of the recent Transformers movies. The law that alien machines can transform is an internal "scientific" law. The law that two fighting robots will utter one-liners like "Now you die, Optimus Prime" is a genre law. Neither of these bother me; I'm OK with that.

But if you were to imply that most other bits of silliness in the Transformers movies are also excused by genre laws; this is where I'd disagree. Bad plots and inconsistent character behavior is not a genre thing per se, but just lazy writing.

Then there's The Matrix. I don't question the "scientific" law that those who've taken Red Pill can escape the Matrix through a land-line telephone booth. I can accept the genre law that people can frequently outrace machine gun fire. Everything is just so well-written and well-thought-out that I am totally immersed in the experience.

I think that a "bad" unbelievable RPG game is like Transformers: entertaining but dumb and silly.

A "good" believable RPG game is like The Matrix: entertaining, well-written, clever and consistent in its internal logic.



> Trying to apply scientific analysis to this kind of setting is an exercise in futility. Applying literary analysis, on other hand, works. In this kind of logic, an answer to "Why can't I trip an opponent more than once an encounter?" is "Because it would be boring if you did it all the time."




In that specific example, I think the real answer is not that it's boring to trip opponents all the time, any more than it's boring to use any at-will power over and over again. I think the answer is that the developers don't care if anyone asks the question "Why can't I trip an opponent more than once an encounter". If they did care about that, they'd either change the tripping rules (not, not to make it more complex, just different) OR offer some fluff to justify the rule (DM: "Your opponent doesn't fall for the same trick twice in a row and learns to evade your 2nd trip attempt").

As for the large picture of un/believability stemming from game rules, I'd use this analogy. In Transformers, they bring the All-Spark into the middle of a populated city and the climactic battle endangers the lives of its citizens and causes billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure. The decision to bring the All Spark to Mission City was utterly reckless and ridiculous. The internal logic is neither defensible nor relevant, really. The REASON they brought the All Spark into the city is because the writers wanted an explosive-y battle in the middle of a city, and they couldn't think of a better plot device. The question of internal logic is irrelevant because the ultimate decision was external to the fiction.

Equivalently, many metagame rules ruin the believability of the in-game experience when the metagame priorities are so high as to override the internal logic of the setting.


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## pemerton (Jul 29, 2010)

Mallus said:


> Sometimes, in these discussions, I get the feeling like I'm reading literary criticism written by engineers.



Can't posrep you at this time, but truer words never were spoken!


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## NoWayJose (Jul 29, 2010)

Bluenose said:


> Amusingly, a historical Pasha simply didn't have total power. They were appointed under someone else's authority and answerable to them. All this proves is that different people know different things, and find different things realistic/unrealistic according to that knowledge.



He never said ALL local pashas have total power. Amusingly, the only point that has been proven is that misunderstandings and nitpicking are making this thread more complicated than it need to be.


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## Argyle King (Jul 29, 2010)

Internal consistency is important; it's one of the reasons why there was a point in time where I was leaning toward becoming a D&D 4E Hater.  Because of the vast difference of numbers generated by and for monsters versus numbers generated by and for PCs, the game world would at times interact very differently with the two groups.  For example, a PC could easily blast through a door or a wall with even just an at-will power in many cases; however, the big bad dragon solo who was supposed to be the scourge of the land would have trouble doing so.

I've since come to realize that I was just trying to make the system do something it wasn't intended to though.  4E PCs are (I think) supposed to be the John McClains and Chuck Norrises of their world.  Generally speaking, I've found that trying to mix realism into 4E doesn't turn out very well.

However, realism in a fantasy game does not have to be a bad thing.  Yes, there are dragons, elves, and magic, but that doesn't mean you can't still have your fantasy grounded in realism.  You can have realism in fantasy by having a fireball spell act just like any other fire once it hits; likewise, casting a lightning spell while standing in a pool of water might be a bad idea.  In The Hobbit, the dragon Smaug was able to reliably fight an army - this is a level of realism injected into the setting.  It seems plausible that a gigantic fire breathing monster would be hard to kill or require knowing about a specific weakness to exploit. 

Action movies are a pretty good example of how fantasy can be created by exaggerating realism.  As a whole, the world is realistic; the hero tends to have abilities which are exaggerated, but still seem plausible and not too world shattering.  In many cases we know the hero is going to win at the end, but the story and the percieved realism of the world still manages to trick us into believing he might lose.  The Punisher is a pretty good example of this; his only 'super power' is that he's good at killing.  While his abilities are somewhat over the top in some cases, he generally tends to be fairly well grounded in reality; he feels pain; he has flaws; etc; etc.  Conan is a very good example too; while he is easily above and beyond the ordinary swordsman, and he can reliably fight multiple opponents, he still has his limits.

 Likewise -and to give another movie based example, I highly enjoyed the first Transporter movie.  It had many fantastic elements, but they were interwoven with enough reality to allow my mind to accept the plausibility of things which probably couldn't happen under ordinary circumstances.  However, I found Transporter 2 to be too unbelievable and too forced for me to enjoy it.  In one scene, the driver simultaneously ramps the car, has it do a barrel roll in mid air, and uses a crane to remove a bomb from the bottom of his car.  To me, the style of Transporter 2 was too much of a departure from the level of realism set in the first movie for me to enjoy it.  I went into it expecting a certain amount of realism, and it moved too far beyond what I went into it expecting.  

Expectations versus delivery is something very important to consider.  I feel that part of running a successful game and keeping the players engaged involves the group deciding upon a collectively accepted level of (or lack of) realism in their game.  This goes both ways.  

In a super hero game that I'm currently involved in, one player went into the game expecting a power and realism level akin to something like The Watchmen; everybody else went into the game expecting a power and realism level more akin to Dragon Ball Z.  As you might expect, the player who was expecting a more realistic style of game made a character who seems out of place, and he often feels underpowered compared to everyone else.

On the other end of the spectrum, I ran a fairly gritty dungeon crawl a while back.  I had thought everyone was on board with what I had prepared, but one guy created a character who dumped all of his points into fighting abilities.  Unfortunately for him, his character had no skills at all when it came to surviving the wild; finding food; etc.  While he was totally awesome at combat, the other characters had to pretty much baby sit him when it came to doing anything other than fighting.  His character actually ended up dying due to having a different idea about realism in the game than everyone else in the group had via trying to make a running jump across an immense canyon and splatting into the ground.

Take some time to sit down with your group and figure out what kind of players you have.  Does Bob enjoy roleplaying?  Does Dan like hack and slash?  Does Ed like traps and puzzles?  Does the group as a whole like certain things more than other things?  This helps solve a lot of problems before they start.  

If you are a player, figure out what kind of game your DM intends to run.  Don't be afraid to ask questions.  This usually helps you to know if something like the linguist feat will be virtually worthless or very valuable.  Too often -especially in D&D- we focus on what's in the books; don't forget who's at the table.


edit: Looking back across this, I think I was rambling a little, and I drifted, but I still think there's some merit to the idea of deciding as a group what kind of game you want.  Coming together and compromising as a group and reaching a level of mutually wanted realism -in my opinion- leads to more fun for everyone.


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## DragonLancer (Jul 29, 2010)

Realism is accepting that something is doable in the real world by real people. For the most part this works fine in D&D and similar games.

Believability is accepting something improbable as real, such as dragons being able to fly and breathe fire, or magic. As long as there isn't anything too out there I think most people can accept such things in their games.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 29, 2010)

I think many aspects of the D&D world presented in the game texts are regarded by most readers as intended to be realistic, in the sense of operating the same way they do in our world, or our world's history.

There's air and earth and water, plants and animals and men, time, gravity, weather, human psychology, civilization, politics, cities, warfare, castles, knights, ships. All of these seem to operate the same in D&D world as they do in ours. The laws of physics are the same, until magic comes into it, which it rarely does. Although the PCs do encounter magic all the time, the world itself seems to mostly get along as if magic were not present*.

But are the laws of physics the same? Problems arise when the rules contradict this, when they tell us that a man who has acquired lots of wealth thereby gains the ability to survive a fall from a great height. When a feeble octagenarian is as quick as the most able twenty-year old, and has better eyesight and hearing.

One solution to this inconsistency is to regard the rules as taking precedence. By this interpretation the rules are the correct laws of this world, and they are different than our own, even when magic isn't involved. Another way to resolve this is to say that the rules aren't intended to simulate a whole world, just to provide playable rules for a limited game of squad level monster bashing that touches briefly on a few other areas such as travel and human interaction.

Extraordinary abilities in 3e - a troll's regeneration, a dragon's flight, a high level barbarian's damage reduction - are regarded as non-magical but only possible because the D&D world has different physics. It could be said that this supports the former view of rules but I think I'd regard them as being on the same level as magic, even tho technically they are not. Like magic, extraordinary abilities are of a fairly limited nature, possessed only by unusual (or even extraordinary) beings.

*This in itself is a whole 'nother consistency issue, dependent upon how common magic is.


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## Scribble (Jul 29, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> Well, for starters, I disagree with your opinion that "a game's level of realism/believability is determined primarily by things outside the rules". Or more specifically, I disagree with the possible implication that
> unbelievable rules + believable fluff = believable in-game play.
> 
> I'd love to provide specifics, but I have to sleep soon (being honest, humor over).




Personally I think it's dependent on the personal preference of the player (or group of players.) 

To boil it down to exaggerations I have noticed that:

Some people like the game world to be defined by the rules . If a thing is a thing in the game world it should have rules to describe it.  (This group cannot have a Goblin Sharpshooter without also having rules to describe what a Goblin is, and what a Sharpshooter is. They want all elements of the rules in play to be fully defined before put into play.)

Others like to define their world first and see the rules more as a definition of a particular instance of something in the game world. (This group can have a Goblin Sharpshooter without rules to define what a Goblin is or what a Sharpshooter is. They only want what they need at the moment to be fully defined.)

It seems the latter group tends to have less of an issue with rules the former group usually call "unbelievable."

In reality though I'd say most people are a mix of the two, but tend to swing in one direction or the other.


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## lutecius (Jul 29, 2010)

Barastrondo said:


> Personally, I don't agree with the premise that "it is impossible to overthink fantasy." […] That said, the point at which it becomes "thinking _too_ hard" is really, really difficult to pin down, and varies by person.



precisely. even discussing D&D is nerdy and "thinking too hard" for some people. so posting just to dismiss the OP's points as nerd concerns isn't helpful.



> I think there are actually two metrics of "believability": there's the pseudoscientific version in which you try to explain how a medusa's gaze works with Newtonian physics, and there's the mythic version where the gut check is "Does this sound like a logical extrapolation of a mythical or literary precedent?" These two things clash all the time.



I don't think many gamers care about the former in a fantasy setting and the latter is mostly a matter of preference and aesthetics (for example, I think fire-and-forget spell-casting is counterintuitive and unlike the magic depicted in most fiction, but I have no problem "believing" it)
believability issues are usually related to internal consistency or non-magical elements with real-world equivalents, like healing and fighting.



NoWayJose said:


> I just find the 'nerd' label belittling and I think there are better alternatives, like "You're thinking too hard". On the other hard, I don't think the "nerds" (I put it in quotation marks, so that's OK) are thinking too hard in this case. Anyone who reads or watches fantasy can have strong feelings about versimilitude, but only the "nerds" (again, quotation marks) spend extra time voicing their opinions about it on Enworld.



that was my point. I think.



> Furthermore, it is wise and prudent for posts like the OP to be written in such an anal retentive manner. Otherwise, THEY (ie., Those Who Nitpick) will come out from dark places to attack you on semantics and derail you with devil's details. Thus the long carefully written expositions. The "nitpickers" have effectively forced the "nerds" into thinking too hard, which leads to accusations of "nerd" and "you're thinking too hard".



oh. THEM


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## Bluenose (Jul 29, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> He never said ALL local pashas have total power. Amusingly, the only point that has been proven is that misunderstandings and nitpicking are making this thread more complicated than it need to be.




Since there are perfectly good words which mean what Pasha is being misused to mean, one of those would certainly be preferable if you're going to be dealing with people who might now the difference. Unless of course your argument is that accept meanings of terms don't matter as long as people know what they mean in this context. This of course is why nobody would consider objecting to the term Warlord when speaking of 4e.


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## Scribble (Jul 29, 2010)

Bluenose said:


> Since there are perfectly good words which mean what Pasha is being misused to mean, one of those would certainly be preferable if you're going to be dealing with people who might now the difference. Unless of course your argument is that accept meanings of terms don't matter as long as people know what they mean in this context. This of course is why nobody would consider objecting to the term Warlord when speaking of 4e.




I do not think he thinks it means what you think he thinks it means?

His statement was basically: The local guy in charge (who also happened to be a Pasha) had total control.

It was two descriptions of the same person.  1. He's a Pasha 2. He has total control.

It didn't seem to imply he got this total control by being a Pasha.


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## lutecius (Jul 29, 2010)

Bluenose said:


> Unless of course your argument is that accept meanings of terms don't matter as long as people know what they mean in this context. This of course is why nobody would consider objecting to the term Warlord when speaking of 4e.



oh. THEM.

I don't think objections to the term Warlord had anything to do with believability. the warlord's mechanics, though, are another story.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 29, 2010)

Scribble said:


> His statement was basically: The local guy in charge (who also happened to be a Pasha) had total control.
> 
> It was two descriptions of the same person. 1. He's a Pasha 2. He has total control.
> 
> It didn't seem to imply he got this total control by being a Pasha.



This. Bluenose misunderstood Radmod's statement. Too much antagonism can lead to a bit of knee jerk reaction. Now we have several off-topic posts trying to clean up the mess.


lutecius said:


> > Furthermore, it is wise and prudent for posts like the OP to be written in such an anal retentive manner. Otherwise, THEY (ie., Those Who Nitpick) will come out from dark places to attack you on semantics and derail you with devil's details. Thus the long carefully written expositions. The "nitpickers" have effectively forced the "nerds" into thinking too hard, which leads to accusations of "nerd" and "you're thinking too hard".
> 
> 
> 
> oh. THEM



Yes. Hey. Pssss... [whispering] Bluenose.... he's one of THEM.


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## Mallus (Jul 29, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> Believibility is created by the DM and players in game.



This can't be stressed enough. Do the characters (PC & NPC) act in believable ways, or at least in genre-appropriate ways. Are the situations believable in the way they play out, even though they might involve impossible creatures and dubious battlefield geometry? What I've observed over the years is believability stems from the fiction, not the physics (or the biology, physical chemistry, economics, etc.) 

Personally, I find an evening of D&D to be believable if the Beholder crime lord is well-characterized, with personality, even, believable motivations, and a reasonable plan for rubbing out his competitors. And reasonable _reactions_ to my meddling PC's attempts to stop him. 

I'm much less concerned about the general plausibility of levitating, ray-shooting ocular octopi, their ascent to positions of underworld power, or the fact our characters fought their lackeys in a room where the hypotenuse of a right triangle was equal to the length of either leg... 

(I'm not _completely_ unconcerned w/those questions... they're fun to answer, a chance to be creative. They just won't have logical answers...).


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 29, 2010)

Mallus, I think you make some very cogent points. Particularly resonant for me is the idea that what believability, or realism, there is in rpgs is not to be found in the rules, which I've seen you express a few times recently. It's a strongly anti-sim position, and I think I agree with it.

Often critics of fantastic genre fiction will focus on what, to me, are really minor, piddling details like what firearm the hero is carrying, how many shots did he fire, or inconsistencies in some huge Marvel-esque type of world which no sane writer could be expected to fully grasp. A large gulf in viewpoint between fan and creator is apparent. Often I get the feeling that the fans are very different sorts of people than the writers. They aren't looking for a gripping, compelling story that speaks to the human condition. They want facts, and lots of them. Above all they read to learn about the world. I get the impression they prefer quantity over quality.

This was what I was thinking about when I said nerds value consistency too highly.


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## Shazman (Jul 29, 2010)

Equivalently, many metagame rules ruin the believability of the in-game experience when the metagame priorities are so high as to override the internal logic of the setting.[/QUOTE]

That is a very good description of 4E.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 29, 2010)

Realism can be a spectrum as well as an end point. One can say that X is more or less realistic than Y without either being perfectly realistic. It used to be said of Babylon 5 that it was realistic, which is laughable if one means completely realistic, but makes sense if what one means is that it's more realistic than other sci-fi shows, such as Star Trek. Though one could say that being more realistic than Star Trek isn't exactly setting the bar high.

It's like that with D&D. It contains elves and dragons and wizards and so forth so it can never be 'kitchen sink' realism but one can speak of degrees of realism in other aspects of the game world. It's not necessary to say that, because it contains non-naturalistic elements, that we cannot use the term realism and must resort to believability, plausibility or verisimilitude.

Even the non-naturalistic elements might have many aspects that conform to the way things work in our world. The elven body for example is probably made of flesh and blood, has a brain, nerves, organs etc. It's not constructed of magical material, like the physical form of an angel or demon.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 29, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Often I get the feeling that the fans are very different sorts of people than the writers. They aren't looking for a gripping, compelling story that speaks to the human condition. They want facts, and lots of them.



Hmm, I'm honestly not sure why or how you get that impression? I mean, I can imagine a believable hard sci-fi story full of science fiction facts, but I can't recall anyone discussing that here. I think a gripping, compelling story that speaks to the human condition is inherently a believable story (ie., take your pick of The Matrix, Dark Knight, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars IV to V, etc.). A loud, dumb, silly, unbelievable story (ie., Transformers, Pirates of the Carribean) can be fun, but I wouldn't use the words gripping or compelling or speaking to the human condition. I don't understand how facts come into play.

Edit: I think I get it, you're referring to trivia and factual errors, like movie continuity errors, anachronisms, etc.? If so, those are just accidental or unintentional mistakes in believability. Like with The Hurt Locker, some military people were poking holes in the story (incorrect miilitary terminology, tactics, etc.). But the writers were trying very, very hard to be realistic, and that's different than being sloppy or not caring at all. (Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with RPGs, I am not stating that fantasy must be anything remotely as realistic as the Hurt Locker.)


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Jul 29, 2010)

Although in some cases a distinction has to be made between not caring for laziness and deciding that you wish to do things "wrong" for the style value.

I do think being more concrete about realism vs. believable might be a good idea.  I mean there are tropes common in fantasy fiction/roleplaying that certainly aren't realistic but are possibly believable, but I wonder if some people who ask for them not to be included aren't making that distinction.  Personal preference I totally support, but that's what should be said, not calling out whether something's not "believable" when that's what they don't mean.


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## Scribble (Jul 29, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> Edit: I think I get it, you're referring to trivia and factual errors, like movie continuity errors, anachronisms, etc.?




Nah- (forgive me if I'm wrong Doug) what he seems to mean by facts is like, ideas and descriptions about the fictional world.

Say, a comic mentions that Spiderman made his suits underpants out of a specific type of nylon... A35G because it's both breathable and heat resistant.

Some people wont even notice or won't remember this tidbit within a few minutes of reading it.

Some people will collect that as a "fact" about the larger universe Spiderman exists in. For them, in that world A35g is forever a breathable heat resistant nylon.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 29, 2010)

Scribble said:


> Some people will collect that as a "fact" about the larger universe Spiderman exists in. For them, in that world A35g is forever a breathable heat resistant nylon.



Oh. Well, I can't remember anyone arguing about that kind of detail.


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## Scribble (Jul 29, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> Oh. Well, I can't remember anyone arguing about that kind of detail.




Dunno- just saying how I read his post.


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## Ed_Laprade (Jul 29, 2010)

Ok, I think I've got it all figured out. Realism, believability, suspension of disbelief, &etc., all mean the same thing. Namely: whatever the person saying "that's unrealistic" is unwilling to accept. Simple, really.


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## Scribble (Jul 29, 2010)

Ed_Laprade said:


> Ok, I think I've got it all figured out. Realism, believability, suspension of disbelief, &etc., all mean the same thing. Namely: whatever the person saying "that's unrealistic" is unwilling to accept. Simple, really.




I'm not sure I find that believable... Although it does seem realistic.


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## lutecius (Jul 29, 2010)

Scribble said:


> To boil it down to exaggerations I have noticed that:
> 
> Some people like the game world to be defined by the rules . If a thing is a thing in the game world it should have rules to describe it.  (This group cannot have a Goblin Sharpshooter without also having rules to describe what a Goblin is, and what a Sharpshooter is. They want all elements of the rules in play to be fully defined before put into play.)



I don't see a lot of that. I do see people expecting consistent rules, though. for example, some don't like having different builds for minions, regular monsters and PCs when they're supposed to be the same creature, story-wise.



Mallus said:


> I'm much less concerned about the general plausibility of levitating, ray-shooting ocular octopi, their ascent to positions of underworld power ...



again, I don't see many people who are, as far as fantasy goes.



Doug McCrae said:


> Mallus, I think you make some very cogent points. Particularly resonant for me is the idea that what believability, or realism, there is in rpgs is not to be found in the rules, which I've seen you express a few times recently. It's a strongly anti-sim position, and I think I agree with it.
> 
> Often critics of fantastic genre fiction will focus on what, to me, are really minor, piddling details like what firearm the hero is carrying, how many shots did he fire, or inconsistencies in some huge Marvel-esque type of world which no sane writer could be expected to fully grasp. A large gulf in viewpoint between fan and creator is apparent. Often I get the feeling that the fans are very different sorts of people than the writers. They aren't looking for a gripping, compelling story that speaks to the human condition. They want facts, and lots of them. Above all they read to learn about the world. I get the impression they prefer quantity over quality.



certainly a great amount of detail can add depth and believability to a story but I don't think the fans just want lots of facts. I believe most of them want flavorful details and facts _that make sense_ to them. ultimately, they expect a compelling story AND internal consistency. these are not competing goals, they are complementary.

likewise, I don't think many simulationists expect rules for everything or rely solely on them for exciting "believable" games (obviously it's the dm and players' job too). they just don't want metagame and counterintuitive rules that _get in the way_ of believability and immersion (and that's heavily system dependant)


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 30, 2010)

lutecius said:


> I don't see a lot of that. I do see people expecting consistent rules, though. for example, some don't like having different builds for minions, regular monsters and PCs when they're supposed to be the same creature, story-wise.



That is your problem and the problem of others like you who share your prespective. It is not a problem to me, my players and others like me.
I find it a valuable tool in now I have a mechanism to do things that before required DM fiat like the taking out the sentries with one shot.

In other words I do not see the existance of minion and other classes of creature as an inconsistiency in the rules.



lutecius said:


> snip stuff we do not disagree on....
> 
> they just don't want metagame and counterintuitive rules that _get in the way_ of believability and immersion (and that's heavily system dependant)



That all very well, different strokes for different folks but all it boils down to is that people will prefer different systems. So prefer Runequest or RoleMaster or D&D of a specific edition or vintage.


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## pemerton (Jul 30, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Mallus, I think you make some very cogent points.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Often critics of fantastic genre fiction will focus on what, to me, are really minor, piddling details like what firearm the hero is carrying, how many shots did he fire, or inconsistencies in some huge Marvel-esque type of world which no sane writer could be expected to fully grasp. A large gulf in viewpoint between fan and creator is apparent. Often I get the feeling that the fans are very different sorts of people than the writers. They aren't looking for a gripping, compelling story that speaks to the human condition. They want facts, and lots of them. Above all they read to learn about the world. I get the impression they prefer quantity over quality.



Fully, fully agreed. And it seems to come throug in so many ways - the arguments about departures from gameworld canon, for example, or the view that alignment disputes can be resolved by setting up ever-more elaborate tables of "good" and "evil" actions.



Doug McCrae said:


> This was what I was thinking about when I said nerds value consistency too highly.



Also known as "literary criticism written by engineers".



NoWayJose said:


> I think a gripping, compelling story that speaks to the human condition is inherently a believable story.



By way of disagreement - I mostly read nonfiction, but two pieces of literature I've read/seen recently are "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle" and "Waiting for Godot". Both are gripping, compelling stories that speak to the human condition. Neither is inherently believable.

At least as I read them, the point that Doug and Mallus are making is that the quality of a story doesn't turn primarily on the accuracy of the geography, or the plausibility (considered in and of itself) of the ecology, or even of the sociology (can someone please explain Middle Earth's economy to me? how does the Shire have such a high standard of living when it is essentially an autarky?). What it _does_ turn on is, of course, a bit tricky to specify and a matter of contention - but both Doug and Mallus seem to be favouring some sort of humanistic aesthetic. I certainly think that makes sense for an RPG, which is about the deeds of human (even if in elven guise) protagonists.



Doug McCrae said:


> Particularly resonant for me is the idea that what believability, or realism, there is in rpgs is not to be found in the rules, which I've seen you express a few times recently. It's a strongly anti-sim position, and I think I agree with it.





ardoughter said:


> So prefer Runequest or RoleMaster or D&D of a specific edition or vintage.



As a Rolemaster grognard I arc up a bit at this! I don't think it's such a strongly anti-sim position. You can play a purist-for-system sim game, like Rolemaster, in a way that focuses on important story elements rather than gameworld/canon minutiae. In a game like RM (and RQ) the purist-for-system elements are confined very much to the personal level - PCs/NPCs/monsters, rules for interpersonal interactions (whether talking or fighting), jumping over ditches etc. The economics, geography and sociology are left outside the scope of the build and resolution rules - but these are the things that are at stake in the believability/ fan vs creator question, I think.

Having calmed down a bit, and conceding a bit more that it is a position with elements of anti-sim: it's certainly anti-Traveller, which (via world creation, animal creation etc) does try to incorproate geography etc into its purist-for-system mechanics. And it's anti a type of "gamist" sim which emphasises operational detail like tracking ammunition, setting maximum gp limits on purchases in various settlements, etc (the sort of stuff that often comes up in discussions of a game's "economy").


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## NoWayJose (Jul 30, 2010)

pemerton said:


> And it seems to come throug in so many ways - the arguments about departures from gameworld canon, for example...



There will always be comic book fans, Trekkies, etc. who analyze this sort of thing. These are people who point out that the tie was blue in scene 1 but then the tie is red in the next scene, that writer 1 made the Hulk stronger than writer 2, an issue that's external to the believability of the fiction.



> ...or the view that alignment disputes can be resolved by setting up ever-more elaborate tables of "good" and "evil" actions.



This is someone obsessed with adjucating the rules of the game. As above, this has nothing to do with in-game or in-fiction believability.

If you want, you can divide everyone into 2 camps (Anti-D&D-the-way-it-is-now and Pro-D&D-the-way-it-is-now) and lump ALL types of complaints into some sort of caricature of a nerd engineer who complains about every detail and laugh at him for being an angsty obsessive nerd so that you don't have to take the time and effort to actually read what he's writing, but it's not honest.



> I mostly read nonfiction, but two pieces of literature I've read/seen recently are "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle" and "Waiting for Godot". Both are gripping, compelling stories that speak to the human condition. Neither is inherently believable.



I just imagined roleplaying in an absurdist fiction setting, and it came out funny at first and then a complete mess. Haven't actually read those books so nothing further to add.



> At least as I read them, the point that Doug and Mallus are making is that the quality of a story doesn't turn primarily on the accuracy of the geography, or the plausibility (considered in and of itself) of the ecology, or even of the sociology (can someone please explain Middle Earth's economy to me? how does the Shire have such a high standard of living when it is essentially an autarky?).



The furious emphasis that believability requires numerous factual fantasy details mystifies me. Yes, every nice compelling detail helps to flesh out the believability of the world (ie., Dune, Hyperion, etc.) Yes, details have their time and place and it's up to the writer or developer to decide how much to include. No, readers and players in general do not consciously demand a certain level of details simply to ensure believability.

P.S. I would point out the Draconomicon DOES go into biological details of dragon anatomy, and that Forgotten Realms is dense with geography and history. Not that I need it personally, but it's there.

There's also a strong subjective personal element. I can imagine a U.S. soldier stationed in Iraq who enjoys a dumb action movie as much as anyone else. Then he sees the Hurt Locker and complains that the uniforms are wrong or that 'they would have never done it like that'. I wouldn't share his concerns, but I don't call him an obsessive nerd either as I could empathize how that might the throw off the immersion for him.

For everyone else, RPGs don't need to be plausible down to every little detail. The ideal RPG, however, sets the bar a little higher. Is this a revolutionary incomprehensible concept to you? If people were happy with the status quo, we'd be watching fun but dumb movies like True Lies all the time and never have gotten The Matrix. So what's the problem with expecting a little more?


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## pemerton (Jul 30, 2010)

NoWayJose, obviously I can't speak for Doug or Mallus, but for my own part I'm not trying to set up a contrast between old and new D&D, or pro- and anti- D&D as it then/now was. To try to give weight to that point - I see fans of 4e calling for more detail on the PoL setting, for example, and it frustrates me about 4e just as much as it frustrates me in relation to other games and systems. (This is why I like the Plane Above better than the Plane Below, and why I like the domain bits of the Plane Above better than the island bits of the Plane Above - the discussions of the gods and the domains give me the most amount of thematically powerful stuff to incorporate into my game, whereas the islands - and a lot of the Plane Below - tend just to give me locations where the potential thematic issues have already been resolved.)

That's also why I disagree (at least to some extent, I think) with Doug about the "sim" issue. I think the old vs new D&D has a strong "sim" vs "gamist/narrativst" element to it, but this issue is (in my view) not quite the same as that issue.

I agree the image of the nerd engineer is a caricature. But the contrast that Doug draws between attitudes or orientations towards the aesthetic experience isn't, at least in my experience, _mere_ caricature. I feel there is a real difference, and it's one that I bump into from time to time (not all the time) when reading these boards. 

And even if the engineer is a caricature, I think that at least some of it might turn on where people are coming from as far as their familiarity with various literary and social ideas is concerned.

Any examples are likely to be at least a bit controversial, so before I offer up two I want to stress that I'm not trying to provoke. This is an attempt to communicate a type of experience I've had in posting and reading on these boards about FRPGing.

Example 1: Is D&D racist in the way it treats PCs races, "monster" humanoid races like orcs, etc? This question comes up from time to time. One of the most common responses I see is that "No, it isn't, because orcs don't really exist and so there is nothing racist about them being objectively worthy of condemnation within the gameworld. And in any event they're a different species, not a different race, from humans." Notice that this response assumes that the framework for answering the question about racism is the framework _of the gameworld fiction_. Whereas for me, and (I assume) for others who take the worry about racism seriously, the framework for answering the question is the real world, with the gameworld fiction understood as a cultural artefact in the real world. And so the question (for me) is really: is there something problematic about a cultural artefact which appears to promulgate or legitimate tropes of a racist variety? Now the answer to that question may be yes or no - see the Spike Lee film "Bamboozled" for one take on it, though not in the context of RPGing - but it seems to me to make a huge difference to one's take on that question how one approaches the gameworld fiction. At least as I read them, Doug and Mallus are saying it needs to be thought of as a cultural artefact, not a world to be evaluated, imagined and explored on its own terms.

Example 2: Love for the Planescape setting. This is often articulated by reference to the setting's detail, and the way that detail (cunning yugoloths, blood war, factions, layers shifting from Nirvana to Arcadia - or vice versa, I can't remember - etc) exemplifies the principle that belief shapes the planes. But nothing in that setting, at least as I've read its materials, is about the beliefs of the _players_ - who are, in this context, the audience for the experience - shaping the planes. Or to put it in a way that steps a bit more outside the language of the setting - Planescape seems to me to be a setting which involves the players spectating on someone else's intricate and even byzantine morality story, rather than actually engaging themselves in the creation of _their own_ morality story. And so discussions tend to focus on questions about (for example) which plane a certain NPC or PC's soul is most closely attuned to, or what the ingame rationale is for the celestials not trying to wipe out all the fiends in Sigil, rather than on questions about what it would _mean_ for someone's soul to be condemned to the abyss (beyond becoming a manes!) or what it tells us about celestials that they are perfectly happy with shopping in Sigil side by side with all those fiends.

I could have put example number 2 more generally in terms of contrasting attitudes towards "exploring the gameworld as if it were a real place", but I think Planescape really makes clear the contrast that I'm trying to draw. "Exploring the gameworld" in the abstract can be all things to all people - the most thematically heavy game of Gloranthan HeroWars still involves exploring the gameworld. It's just that the exploration is a means to a thematic end rather than an end in itself. The thing about Planescape is that in many ways the gameworld is _nothing but_ thematic content, and yet Planescape (or, at least, the feel for it that I get from the books, and the approach to it that I most commonly see on these boards) isn't about thematically engaging play at all, but about exploring the minutiae of a world where all the thematic issues have already been resolved by the setting authors.

I'm also now getting a better sense of why Doug is probably right that there's a type of "sim" vs "anti-sim" dimension to this. It's not a purist-for-system sim sensibility that's at issue (wheras this is what's at issue in the objections to 4e's "gamism"). It's an exploring-the-gameworld sim sensibility that's at issue. Is the gameworld an end in itself, or a tool for some other purpose?


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## NoWayJose (Jul 30, 2010)

Pemerton, ooh, two wonderful examples, I love them.



pemerton said:


> Example 1: Is D&D racist in the way it treats PCs races, "monster" humanoid races like orcs, etc? This question comes up from time to time. One of the most common responses I see is that "No, it isn't, because orcs don't really exist and so there is nothing racist about them being objectively worthy of condemnation within the gameworld. And in any event they're a different species, not a different race, from humans." Notice that this response assumes that the framework for answering the question about racism is the framework _of the gameworld fiction_. Whereas for me, and (I assume) for others who take the worry about racism seriously, the framework for answering the question is the real world, with the gameworld fiction understood as a cultural artefact in the real world.



I think it's totally and absolutely believable that humans would be racist towards orcs in-game. In fact, if humans were politically correct towards orcs, I would find it completely unbelievable and upsetting (assuming that orcs are usually antagonistic, unlike Eberron's orcs if I understood it correctly). If the players thought that correct roleplaying included lynching of orcs and other Klu-Klux-like behavior, well, that's a loaded debate beyond the scope of this thread.



> Example 2: Love for the Planescape setting. This is often articulated by reference to the setting's detail, and the way that detail (cunning yugoloths, blood war, factions, layers shifting from Nirvana to Arcadia - or vice versa, I can't remember - etc) exemplifies the principle that belief shapes the planes.



Another big topic. I hated the belief conceit in Planescape. I mean, the idea was cool, but it was never carried through in any meaningful way.

It's like the Holodeck in Star Trek. You had this awesome technology, and it was only used for the occasional play-acting. How about Holodeck porn, Holodeck escapism, Holodeck addiction, Holodeck simulation for R&D, etc. Sure, there was one episode of a guy who was addicted to the Holodeck. But, for everyone else, the Holodeck was of little significance. And that's unbelievable. I don't care so much how the Holodeck is scientifically possible, but I do care if characters act towards the Holodeck in a way that I think is plausible.

Same with the belief trope in Planescape. It was there as a vague concept, it was supposed to be really important, but it never had a systemic significance for PCs. (That's what you were referring to, right?)

I think the above is the kind of failure of imagination (and/or caring and/or time and effort) that leads to unbelievability in fantasy.


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## pemerton (Jul 30, 2010)

NoWayJose, thanks for the reply, and I'm glad you like the examples.



NoWayJose said:


> Same with the belief trope in Planescape. It was there as a vague concept, it was supposed to be really important, but it never had a systemic significance for PCs. (That's what you were referring to, right?)



Not quite. I was referring to its signficance for the players.

I started another thread related to this a while ago - not long after The Plane Above came out - about the "Gloranthification of D&D". In Planescape, it's not just that the belief conceit doesn't itself incorporate the PCs. Rather, there's no expectation that the _players _are meant to respond to it or make use of it in playing the game. Whereas in The Plane Above, and its discussion of changing "mythic history", or in The Underdark and it's discussion of the relationship between Lolth and Tharizdun, it's pretty clear that this is not just about the PCs doing something, but about the _players_ making choices like "Is it OK to kill Lolth, if this creates a risk of Tharizdun breaking free?" or "Should I go back in time and stop Bane killing Tuern in order to help me end this present-day tyranny, even though this runs the risk of having the gods lose the Dawn War?"

Without wanting to lapse too much back into caricature, I'd say that if you look at the second of these questions - going back into mythic history to kill Bane in the cause of liberation - and the most pressing issues that occur to you involves time-travel paradoxes - then you've got the sort of attitude towards the gameworld that I (and I think Doug and Mallus) are trying to move away from.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 30, 2010)

pemerton;5263926

As a Rolemaster grognard I arc up a bit at this! I don't think it's such a strongly anti-sim position. You can play a purist-for-system sim game said:


> I think you read a lot more in to that line than I intended, it happens a lot on the interwebs.
> I did not intend to have people consider RoleMaster and Runequest as the same thing. I know they are not, played quite a bit of MERP and some RoleMaster back in the day. Even a little bit of Runequest.
> However, My point was that its a spectrum not a polarity, and it is not the same for everyone.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 30, 2010)

pemerton said:


> "Should I go back in time and stop Bane killing Tuern in order to help me end this present-day tyranny, even though this runs the risk of having the gods lose the Dawn War?"
> 
> Without wanting to lapse too much back into caricature, I'd say that if you look at the second of these questions - going back into mythic history to kill Bane in the cause of liberation - and the most pressing issues that occur to you involves time-travel paradoxes - then you've got the sort of attitude towards the gameworld that I (and I think Doug and Mallus) are trying to move away from.



Oh boy, first racism, then time travel.. I think that ever since Back to the Future, engineers and non-engineers alike know of time travel paradoxes. If a DM is desperate to introduce time travel into an adventure, he should be cognizant that someone might be think of that. The PCs are probably barely able to comprehend time travel, much less paradoxes, but how do the players know if the author of the module did or did not include a time travel paradox element? That kind of second guessing happens all the time. In terms of believability, the important thing is that the fantasy author takes a moment to consider all the plausibility baggage that comes with time travel, rather than blame the readers or players for knowing what they know from Back to the Future and being unsure of whether or not to apply that genre law.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 30, 2010)

pemerton said:


> NoWayJose, thanks for the reply, and I'm glad you like the examples.
> 
> Not quite. I was referring to its signficance for the players.
> 
> ...



Don't know about Doug or Mallus but I have no problem with the time travel paradox as the primary concern. I have no difficulty with exploring a secondary creation on its own terms and not worring about its place in comtempory culture.
I do have issues with using an rpg engine action resolution system as a simulation engine or more specifically with getting pernickety about corner cases in one and not being so pernickety about the corner cases in the other when they are both pretty lousy simulations engines for any sort of belivable in world action, at least as I see it.

Now the funny thing is despite the fact that we are coming at this with very different concerns, i think that you and I (and Doug and Mallus) could game together quite happily more so that any of us could with those who are on the more "Once rule set to bind them all" side of the divide.


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## lutecius (Jul 30, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> That is your problem and the problem of others like you who share your prespective. It is not a problem to me, my players and others like me.
> [...]
> That all very well, different strokes for different folks but all it boils down to is that people will prefer different systems. So prefer Runequest or RoleMaster or D&D of a specific edition or vintage.



ok? of course it's a matter of preference.

I was just describing what I believe to be common believability issues and simulationist priorities as opposed to the marginal quibbles some posters seem to focus on.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 30, 2010)

lutecius said:


> ok? of course it's a matter of preference.
> 
> I was just describing what I believe to be common believability issues and simulationist priorities as opposed to the marginal quibbles some posters seem to focus on.




Fair enough so, but many poster make the same point as if it is a universally defined truth.
As to the original comment:


> I don't see a lot of that. I do see people expecting consistent rules,  though. for example, some don't like having different builds for  minions, regular monsters and PCs when they're supposed to be the same  creature, story-wise.



I would point out that the existance of minion build is not evidence of an inconsistency in the rules, the rules are quite consistent (you are allowed build them) but that the rules are not simulationist.

By the way, I like minion rules, since I can now allow my players to one shot a guard without resorting to DM fiat. So for me they contribute to believability


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## Scribble (Jul 30, 2010)

lutecius said:


> I don't see a lot of that. I do see people expecting consistent rules, though. for example, some don't like having different builds for minions, regular monsters and PCs when they're supposed to be the same creature, story-wise.




I'd say that kind of illustrates my point.

Some look at the rules to define a goblin.  Others define the goblin then look at the rules to define an instance of the goblin.

For the second type, having multiple builds for the same creature isn't really an issue.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 31, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> By the way, I like minion rules, since I can now allow my players to one shot a guard without resorting to DM fiat. So for me they contribute to believability




How about this aspect of minion rules, how does this contribute to believability?


> Stargazer's World » Blog Archive » Minions in D&D 4th Edition: Hit or Miss?
> 
> Generally I like the new rules for minions in D&D 4th Edition. They are several reasons why minions are fun: you can throw dozens of enemies at the players without killing them off instantly or being nothing more than a nuisance, there are no hitpoints for the DM to track. But there’s one rule that really bothers me: Minions never die when missed.
> 
> ...


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 31, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> How about this aspect of minion rules, how does this contribute to believability?



Personally I do not have a problem with it, you see for me the rules do not define the ingame reality. At least not in D&D, or most rpgs that I have played.
This is because if I consider the rules as the definition of the ingame reality then immesion breaks every time that rules produce a silly ingame result like the housecat slaying the level one mage or the thief getting the drop on the sentry and then needing 20 strokes of his dagger to kill him.
The rules are the levers that me and my players use to manipulate the in game reality.
Thus when a player uses Tide of Iron in game then the character has been granted an opportunity in the ingame reality to use such a manouver without over extending himself. The once per encounter aspect has no in the game reality meaning. It is purely a constraint on the player of the character for play balance purposes.
So in game there is no difference between a minion and an npc with full hit points except the minnion has no luck. When the pc get a solid shot on the minion he dies where as his non minion comrade has luck, perception and agility to avoid the killing blow.

Does that help you understand my prespective?


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## NoWayJose (Jul 31, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> Does that help you understand my prespective?



I'm not sure. I don't think so. The specific question I brought up was:


> [area effects that] do some serious damage against normal monsters even when they miss but minions are completely unharmed. And in some cases this makes no frakking sense.



I don't understand how one could reconciliate the above specific situation with what you described:


> When the pc get a solid shot on the minion he dies where as his non minion comrade has luck, perception and agility to avoid the killing blow.



Everyone on both sides of the divide have been very articulate about the larger perspective and generalizations, but some have claimed that game rules do not affect believability which I vehmently disagree with, so when the topic of minion rules came up, I thought to jump on that one specific example, and take it from there.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 31, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> I'm not sure. I don't think so. Everyone has been very articulate about the larger perspective, but when Mallus claimed that the minion rules are believable, I decided to jump on one specific example where they aren't:



Ok! on the specific instance of miss on an area effect. They are affected in the same way as any other creature in the area of effect that did not die.
Remember from my prespective hit points != physical wounds.
Hit points are plot protection, when you run out then you get wounded and/or die.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 31, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> Ok! on the specific instance of miss on an area effect. They are affected in the same way as any other creature in the area of effect that did not die.
> Remember from my prespective hit points != physical wounds.
> Hit points are plot protection, when you run out then you get wounded and/or die.



That still doesn't make sense in the context of that example. Minions don't have "plot protection" against a simple dagger. But when ANY area spell causes half damage ALL the minions suddenly have the equivalent of  'plot protection'. You can also read the original post and read all the comments on that page as most of the commentors on that page have understood the implausible situation it represents.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 31, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> That still doesn't make sense in the context of that example. Minions don't have "plot protection" against a simple dagger. But when ANY area spell causes half damage ALL the minions suddenly have the equivalent of  'plot protection'. You can also read the original post and read all the comments on that page as most of the commentors on that page have understood the implausible situation it represents.



I think that what bugs you (and most of the people on the comments to that post) is the one hit point.
If the rule was minions do not have hit points but only die on a hit would that make more sense?


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## NoWayJose (Jul 31, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> I think that what bugs you (and most of the people on the comments to that post) is the one hit point.
> If the rule was minions do not have hit points but only die on a hit would that make more sense?



The one hit point does not bug me per se. Are you going to answer the question or what? I am leech-like about this.


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## DragonLancer (Jul 31, 2010)

Perhaps to look at that example is that injuries have been caused or one guard in that "minion" has gone down, but not enough damage was caused in that round to affect the overall strength of the horde.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 31, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> The one hit point does not bug me per se. Are you going to answer the question or what? I am leech-like about this.



I thought I had answered it, in 3 separate posts. I do not have a problem with the scenario as presented. I have given my reasons why. Obviously you and others have a problem with this scenario. So what? nothing I say is going to convince you to believe otherwise and obviously you don't get my prespective on it. That is ok also, 'cause if you did it would not bother you.

So! do you play 4e? Do you use minions? Do you kill them on a miss area effect that does damage?

I could of course be missing your point completely but if not then I do not believe any more discussion between us is going to get us anywhere.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 31, 2010)

DragonLancer said:


> Perhaps to look at that example is that injuries have been caused or one guard in that "minion" has gone down, but not enough damage was caused in that round to affect the overall strength of the horde.



Man, I feel like I'm trying to pull out a tooth. It is clear as day to me that the above makes no sense. The horde isn't a liquidy swarm monster that is greater than the sum of its parts. Each minion is a discrete unit and must be treated as such. Each minion has NO karma and can die from a simple knife wound or punch to the head, but an area spell causing damage in the double digits, so utterly destructive that it OBLITERATES THE LEADER even at half damage, somehow leaves the minions completely unscathed. That massive conflageration, which utterly destroys the leader and lieutenant and other beasts, leaves the hapless unfortunate decrepit minions miraculously alive for no apparent reason. Meanwhile, another minion on the other side of the chamber, who was lucky enough to be outside the reach of the spell, is killed when a hero farts on him.

For the record, I would never defend the plausibility of 3E mechanics that clearly make no sense. I would just admit: I admit it's not believable and/or I don't care. But I wouldn't BS that it was believable when it clearly isn't.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 31, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> Man, I feel like I'm trying to pull out a tooth. It is clear as day to me that the above makes no sense. The horde isn't a liquidy swarm monster that is greater than the sum of its parts. Each minion is a discrete unit and must be treated as such. Each minion has NO karma and can die from a simple knife wound or punch to the head, but an area spell causing damage in the double digits, so utterly destructive that it OBLITERATES THE LEADER even at half damage, somehow leaves the minions completely unscathed. That massive conflageration, which utterly destroys the leader and lieutenant and other beasts, leaves the hapless unfortunate decrepit minions miraculously alive for no apparent reason. Meanwhile, another minion on the other side of the chamber, who was lucky enough to be outside the reach of the spell, is killed when a hero farts on him.
> 
> For the record, I would never defend the plausibility of 3E mechanics that clearly make no sense. I would just admit: I admit it's not believable and/or I don't care. But I wouldn't BS that it was believable when it clearly isn't.



So your calling me a liar now, that I am taking a position that I do not believe for the purpose of being obtuse.
Well I am not, it does not bother me. Hit points are not real in game things, so damage to hit points is not a real in game thing. It is a useful construct to allow me and other to play the damn game.
I do not believe we have anything more to discuss.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 31, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> So your calling me a liar now, that I am taking a position that I do not believe for the purpose of being obtuse.
> Well I am not, it does not bother me. Hit points are not real in game things, so damage to hit points is not a real in game thing. It is a useful construct to allow me and other to play the damn game.



I'm not calling you a liar. I believe you that it doesn't bother you.

If a battle was as simple as "roll 2 dice, higher roll wins" then that would be boring and flavorless, but it is so abstract as to imply nothing, leaving the player to decide what happened in-game, and I'd have nothing to quarrel with you about.

But, in this case, the mechanics are specific enough to imply a certain in-game reality. And that in-game reality is implausible. To ignore that implication is anyone's right, but the implication is definitely there.

Over on the 4E Essentials Knight thread, Mike Mearls goes to considerable length to reconciliate a Knight class power with the in-game/fluff explanation:


> http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/284695-essential-knight-8.html#post5256688
> 
> Really, though, the mechanic is meant to capture the flavor of an alert, experienced warrior. While the rogue inspects a locked door and the wizard tries to translate the runes scribed above it, the fighter keeps his eyes open for trouble, his sword at hand, shifting his feet to stay ready to move. An experienced warrior would look at the three and immediately note that the fighter is a highly trained combatant.
> 
> Even outside of combat, you can see it playing out like this. A thief creeps up behind the fighter standing at the bar. As he slides up to the fighter to pick his pocket, the fighter whirls around, grabs the thief by the hand, and slams him into the bar. It's almost a Conan-style thing, the really skilled, warrior driven by training that has transformed into instinct.



But how can it be that Mike Mearls is defining one 4E mechanic as an in-game reality, and the 1 hp minion mechanic defines an in-game reality of enemies with no karma, and yet the minion miss-no-damage mechanic is a meaningless construct? Isn't this a little too convenient? And one person insists that 4E game rules are separate from believability. Another person accusing the other side of being obsessive-compulsive nerds. Sounds like trying to have cake and eating it too.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 31, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> I'm not calling you a liar. I believe you that it doesn't bother you.



OK, I'll accept that 'cause I was beginning to wonder.



NoWayJose said:


> If a battle was as simple as "roll 2 dice, higher roll wins" then that would be boring and flavorless, but it is so abstract as to imply nothing, leaving the player to decide what happened in-game, and I'd have nothing to quarrel with you about.



Fair enough



NoWayJose said:


> But, in this case, the mechanics are specific enough to imply a certain in-game reality. And that in-game reality is implausible. To ignore that implication is anyone's right, but the implication is definitely there.



I do not demand rigour - If I am correct you are viewing hit points and game mechanics with a simulationist bias and if so I do understand what you are getting at because I once did the same.
However, if you demand rigour from the simulation then all sorts of corner cases arise that cause difficulty like the 1 hit point minion surviving a miss effect that causes more than one hit point of damage. The high level fighter falling off the cliff and walking away. The very concept that a housecat can kill a grown adult in the prime of their life and health.

If you want the miss effect to take out minions then fair enough. 
To be honest I find the very idea of anyone in a room surviing a fireball to be somewhat implausible but its a D&D genre convention and I'll go along with it. 


NoWayJose said:


> Over on the 4E Essentials Knight thread, Mike Mearls goes to considerable length to reconciliate a Knight class power with the in-game/fluff explanation:
> But how can it be that Mike Mearls is defining one 4E mechanic as an in-game reality, and the 1 hp minion mechanic defines an in-game reality of enemies with no karma, and yet the minion miss-no-damage mechanic is a meaningless construct? Isn't this a little too convenient? And one person insists that 4E game rules are separate from believability.



While I accept that there is a correspondence between mechanics and in game narrative I do not accept that the relationship is constant.

Let me give you an example. Wild Bill Hickok, Hickok was shot and killed instantly in Deadwood and in that fight Wild Bill was a minion in the other fights he was not. As regard to the explosion, the way I see the narrative there is no fundamental difference between a minion in game compared to any other creature. The minion status only matters if a PC actually hits them.
I would be perfectly happy if they had no listed hit points. Hit points are a convience for the use of the players and the DM to track who is winning and who is loosing.
Any system is going to have corner cases but it is only a problem of consistency if you insist that the rules somehow model the world.
If the two of us where somehow transported to downtown Waterdeep tomorrow morning as our player characters I would consider it very dangerous to rely too strongly on our knowledge of the game mechanics as a guide to how 4e Forgotten Realms actually works.



NoWayJose said:


> Another person accusing the other side of being obsessive-compulsive nerds.



We are obsessive compulsive nerds  We have been at this like a dog with a bone. 

I do not by the way say that the rules are separate from believability but that they are not a simulation of the in game reality. They are levers to allow the player and DM to manipulate the ingame narrative and resolve conflicts that arise in game. And you are making me thing to hard about fantasy and sober to boot.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 31, 2010)

ardoughter said:


> However, if you demand rigour from the simulation then all sorts of corner cases arise that cause difficulty like the 1 hit point minion surviving a miss effect that causes more than one hit point of damage. The high level fighter falling off the cliff and walking away. The very concept that a housecat can kill a grown adult in the prime of their life and health.




The fighter surviving an improbable fall is an issue of realism vs believability, and has been well-covered in the first few pages of this thread. It is a "genre law" that is plausible under any system (simulationist or gamist) and I don't see it relating to this discussion.

The housecat killing a PC IS a great example, but it's a poor excuse to give up on RPG simulation. "Corner cases" have been around since 1st edition, and I accept them as a problem inherent, but they can easily be adjucated by the DM and are solvable -- anyway, when is the last time that a DM allowed a PC to be killed by a housecat?

I would strongly distinguish between corner cases (a side-effect of two separate rule mechanics coinciding and ACCIDENTALLY causing implausible situations in-game) vs gamist mechanics (core rules that DIRECTLY cause implausible situations in-game). The former is a simple accident, generally rare, and not a big deal in my experience. The latter is purposeful, systemic to the game, cannot be house-ruled away as easily without repercussions to other facets of gameplay, and is a big deal for many interested in immersion and simulation.


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## NoWayJose (Jul 31, 2010)

> If the two of us where somehow transported to downtown Waterdeep tomorrow morning as our player characters I would consider it very dangerous to rely too strongly on our knowledge of the game mechanics as a guide to how 4e Forgotten Realms actually works.



Tweaking your concept, if 3E PCs and 4E PCs were translated _sans_ players into some version of Waterdeep, I think the 3E PCs would fare better. The 3E fighters would simply and efficiently hack anything to death and the 3E spellcasters would hang back and obliterate others. The 4E PCs would try their usual academically clever tactics, but how could they pull it off without their corresponding players to manage an omnipotent bird's eye view of the battlefield? The warlord would shout commands that nobody could hear amidst the noise and cries, and he would be shocked (shocked!!!) that his comrades have lost their perfect hearing and the time and inclination to listen to him every second. All the careful positioning and pushing and shifting and controlling in furious real-time battle would fail spectacularly, everyone moving too quickly, bumping into each other and into opponents, not at all the way they planned it out. The 4E PCs would fall under the chaos of battle, a little bit different from their ivory tower tactical planning.

It's a silly thought experiment, but I like the way it pokes fun at some of 4E's conceits and implausibilities as I see it.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jul 31, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> snip .....
> and is a big deal for many interested in immersion and simulation.



This is the kernel of the issue and it is due to a simulationist view of the rules which 4e does not support in my view and was poorly supported in other editions of the game (IMHO).
The housecat is not the only issue I could bring up but I have given up on simulation in the context of D&D. I do not have a problem with that.
If I wanted to play a simulationist game I'd try GURPS or RoleMaster. It is not a priority of mine, I accept it is a priority of your and we are now talking across each other. 
I do see and understand the point you are making but it is not relevant to my enjoyment of the game.
I see no point in further exchanges, let us agree to differ and move on.


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## TarionzCousin (Jul 31, 2010)

> The Difference Between Realism vs. Believability



You can "disbelieve," but you can't "dis-real."


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## Ariosto (Jul 31, 2010)

Sometimes the "believability" factor has to do with baggage of assumptions.

Someone complains that an admittedly fantastic game-world is nonetheless notably "unrealistic" because it looks more like 1410 than like 2010. Said complainer proceeds to propose a pile of things based on assumptions that simply do not hold true. The alleged ease of working a particular magic, for instance, is not in fact in accordance with the rules of the game.

Is the complainer an expert in real spells of illumination, clairvoyance, apportation, or whatever? Whatever the case may be, the real issue at hand is *internal consistency*.

We want the people in the imagined world to behave in ways that we can believe _they_ believe make sense. "Human nature" is helpfully presumed to be the same, even though circumstances are different. Given situation _X_, what can we believe people would do?

Just what support one needs to suspend disbelief varies from one individual to another.


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## Ariosto (Aug 1, 2010)

ardoughter said:
			
		

> However, if you demand rigour from the simulation then all sorts of corner cases arise that cause difficulty like the 1 hit point minion surviving a miss effect that causes more than one hit point of damage. The high level fighter falling off the cliff and walking away. The very concept that a housecat can kill a grown adult in the prime of their life and health.




I see the problem with it being _guaranteed_ that _every_ minion survives a blast that can take out an arbitrarily tougher target (it not really mattering to the rule whether the latter is a first-level fighter or an arch-devil).

An eighth-level "superhero" is a fantastic figure in the first place, so having a good chance of surviving a 120' fall -- with, perhaps, 2 h.p. left -- does not bother me. That an ordinary man has _no_ chance of surviving that fall, and such a high chance of getting killed by a fall of a mere 10', is startling.

I don't know why the housecat in MM2 gets 1-2 points per pair of paws. I can see it doing just 1 point, but that's still a lot if it's "actual" damage (as opposed to the pummeling sort recovered at 1 point per round). Fractional points, I gather, were considered too much bother. The system was set up to handle deadly clashes among men and monsters -- not trying to give puss a flea-bath!

My guess is that thoughts were more along the lines of a magic-user's familiar getting in some claw-raking action before getting eaten by an owlbear, or the like.

It can thus call for some thought before invoking a rule. Not every hug calls for a wrestling roll! If something is just plain deadly, then it might not be a matter of hit points at all (e.g., "save vs. poison or die").


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## UngainlyTitan (Aug 1, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> I see the problem with it being _guaranteed_ that _every_ minion survives a blast that can take out an arbitrarily tougher target (it not really mattering to the rule whether the latter is a first-level fighter or an arch-devil).



It is not guaranteed, if they are hit they die. The issues is that they do not die on a miss that has a damage effect.



Ariosto said:


> An eighth-level "superhero" is a fantastic figure in the first place, so having a good chance of surviving a 120' fall -- with, perhaps, 2 h.p. left -- does not bother me. That an ordinary man has _no_ chance of surviving that fall, and such a high chance of getting killed by a fall of a mere 10', is startling.



 Well it bothered me that I moved away from AD&D at the time because of stuff like that and tried other systems in search for "realism" then I realised that it was a mugs game and instead suspended my disbelief with stronger ropes


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## Doug McCrae (Aug 1, 2010)

Hit points and damage have always been both real and not real.

Real:
Long time to heal (pre-4e), bloodied, walls, elephants, poison delivery, many cure light wounds spells needed to heal a high hp char. 

Not real:
The textual explanation of hit points, high level fighters, no penalties for hp loss until you hit zero, fast healing (4e), a sergeant-major can cure you by shouting.

So I don't really see a major new problem with minions not losing hit points from X amount of damage while non-minions do. Hit points and damage don't represent a real measurable thing in the game world anyway. Except, ofc, when they do. But that isn't a new issue.


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## Doug McCrae (Aug 1, 2010)

A couple of aspects of d20 D&D combat feel quite real to me - flanking and opportunity attacks. It's a good tactic, particularly in 4e, to hug the walls or corners, to avoid being surrounded by foes. As I understand it, this is a 100% realistic tactic in a melee. Opportunity attacks are maybe a bit less realistic but they do quite a good job of showing why you can't move rapidly around or in between opponents in a melee. You have to go slowly, defensively ie shift.

This is not believability as the OP defines it, I don't think. It's not internal consistency in a fantastic world, but realism - correspondence to the way things are in our world.

Now, I admit there are huge amounts of nonsense of all kinds in the D&D combat system but there are some touches of realism too that I like.


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## Ariosto (Aug 1, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> So I don't really see a major new problem with minions not losing hit points from X amount of damage while non-minions do.



Minions _never_ lose hit points, because they do not have hit points to lose. They are either quick or "destroyed", and the issue is which they ought to be.



			
				Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> Hit points and damage don't represent a real measurable thing in the game world anyway.



Neither do hits and misses. Neither do many (most?) things in the game, in the sense that the discrete pieces do not directly and individually map to precisely isolated and quantified phenomena.

The game results do _in sum_ represent measurable things in the game world anyway! For example, either the minions are destroyed or they are not.

Now, it is the very essence of game design to have an opinion on the matter and then to make up rules to make it so. The opinion comes first. -- Rules do not write themselves!


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## AllisterH (Aug 1, 2010)

There's also the personal factor mentioned earlier.

If you grew up with Bleach, Naruto and DBZ, what you would consider believable/realistic would change I imagine


(Really, how the hell does Mayuri's Bankai make ANY sort of sense?  Seriously, a giant centipede with a face of baby that breathes a toxic cloud?"


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## UngainlyTitan (Aug 1, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> There's also the personal factor mentioned earlier.
> 
> If you grew up with Bleach, Naruto and DBZ, what you would consider believable/realistic would change I imagine
> 
> ...



I enjoy Bleach in spite of stuff like that. The underlying story is good enough to hold me in spite of that kind if sillyness Naruto could not though and DBZ I just could not stand may be though because I was introduced to the anime first. 5 minutes of them growling at each other and I was looking for something else to do. It might not have been so bad in the manga.


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## Shazman (Aug 2, 2010)

NoWayJose said:


> Man, I feel like I'm trying to pull out a tooth. It is clear as day to me that the above makes no sense. The horde isn't a liquidy swarm monster that is greater than the sum of its parts. Each minion is a discrete unit and must be treated as such. Each minion has NO karma and can die from a simple knife wound or punch to the head, but an area spell causing damage in the double digits, so utterly destructive that it OBLITERATES THE LEADER even at half damage, somehow leaves the minions completely unscathed. That massive conflageration, which utterly destroys the leader and lieutenant and other beasts, leaves the hapless unfortunate decrepit minions miraculously alive for no apparent reason. Meanwhile, another minion on the other side of the chamber, who was lucky enough to be outside the reach of the spell, is killed when a hero farts on him.
> 
> For the record, I would never defend the plausibility of 3E mechanics that clearly make no sense. I would just admit: I admit it's not believable and/or I don't care. But I wouldn't BS that it was believable when it clearly isn't.




Face it.  4E has completely divorced itself from any form of realism, simulation, versimulatude, believablity, etc.  That is the nature of the game because the designers put gamism, balance etc. above all else in importance.  It is a conscious design decision, and it's not going to change because a lot of us don't like it.  Some people that like 4E don't mind it and others try to rationalize it by saying that D&D has always been unrealistic.  I personally don't like the emphasis of metagaming concerns over believeability, so 4E is not number one on my list of RPG's to play.


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## Mallus (Aug 2, 2010)

Shazman said:


> Face it.  4E has completely divorced itself from any form of realism, simulation, versimulatude, believablity, etc.



When was D&D ever married to simulation, believability, or realism? 

I'm not trying to convince you 4e is good. Or even that you're wrong. Or pull teeth .

It's just that I've played D&D for 25+ years, starting with AD&D, and I just don't see how the rules ever supported simulation. They were always gamist.

From my perspective, some people around here are mistaking realism (and simulation) for _tradition_. It's not that 4e is any less _realistic_, it's that 4e is unrealistic in several _new_ ways, which they haven't spent the last 30 years getting used to. 

Once upon a time, as ardoughter mentioned, I too asked why (and how) a PC standing in a room without cover got a save vs. the Fireball erupting all around him. And why, if he made his save, was he in the same spot? Wasn't he diving out of the way?

I stopped asking these question. Roughly around the time I stopped thinking it was a good idea to extrapolate a setting's natural laws from the game rules. That way lies madness, not to mention the inevitable loss of realism, simulation, verisimilitude, believability, etc...


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## Doug McCrae (Aug 2, 2010)

I got a good one:

Forgotten Realms, and other high magic settings such as 3e's default and Eberron, are more believable than low magic settings.

The PCs, whether the setting is high or low magic, will always encounter tons of it. They will go to magic places and use magic items to kill magic monsters. Half or more of them can cast spells or posess other magic powers - wizard, cleric, magic races, etc. And they will do this again and again and again. The world the PCs inhabit is always high magic. If the wider world is high magic too than that's fine, no inconsistency. But if the wider world is low magic then we have an inconsistency, a credibility gap. And that has been defined as believability.

FR and the like are less realistic but more believable.

EDIT: When I talk about a low magic world, I mean the world as it is experienced by most of its inhabitants. The average person in such a world seldom, probably never, encounters magic. In a high magic world the average person encounters magic frequently. However PCs in a D&D game will always have a pretty similar experience no matter whether the world is high or low magic. Half of them will be casters, they'll have magic items, meet weird monsters and so forth. And this will happen not once, but repeatedly.

Middle-Earth in the time of LotR is a good example of a low magic world with high magic protagonists. The heroes seem to encounter just about every magic item, monster and magical being around at the time, save for Sauron. The average person in Middle-Earth wouldn't wield Sting and bear the One Ring and look into a palantir and meet Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, Tom frikkin Bombadil, Ringwraiths, the last balrog, Shelob, etc. Protagonists lead very interesting lives.


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## Ariosto (Aug 2, 2010)

Doug, just how is it that


> The PCs, whether the setting is high or low magic, will always encounter tons of it.



?
What is it, then, that makes the setting "low magic"? All that's really "unbelievable" here is your nomenclature!


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## AllisterH (Aug 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Doug, just how is it that
> ?
> What is it, then, that makes the setting "low magic"? All that's really "unbelievable" here is your nomenclature!




Before the thread progresses any further, a definition of terms is in order I suspect.

Low and High magic refer to how "common" magic is to the non-PCs/NPCs of the setting. If the common populace react in disbelief or have never seen magic in their own lives, that's a low magic setting.

Pretty much the only DnD setting that I would classify as LOW MAGIC would be Birthright. Darksun might be another if one doesn't consider psionics equivalent to magic.

Both Dresden and LotR are examples of low magic settings.

There's also low and high fantasy.

High fantasy is one where the adventure takes primarily in an "alternate" world that bears no resemblance to the real world or a "past" real world stage.

LotR is decidely High fantasy whereas Dresden is low fantasy. Pretty much ALL of D&D campaign worlds are high fantasy, with maybe Ravenloft's "masque of the red death" campaign setting being closest to low fantasy.

EDIT: There's also Heroic Fantasy vs Sword & Sorcery - the former being where the plots ar eprimarily about "saving the world - classic good vs evil" a.k.a. LotR.

Sword & Sorcery being more of a personal motif such as revenge, riches, and other mundane stuff...Conan being the best example but the Hobbit would also fall under this definition IMO.


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## Doug McCrae (Aug 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Doug, just how is it that
> ?
> What is it, then, that makes the setting "low magic"? All that's really "unbelievable" here is your nomenclature!



The setting could still be low magic because that's the experience of most of its inhabitants. The PCs lead very interesting lives and encounter magic frequently while the average person never (or very seldom) does. Or, what AllisterH said. I will clarify in the original post, it's not as clear as it should be.

High magic PCs in a low magic world is, imo, less believable than high magic PCs in a high magic world. The latter is more consistent.


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## Mallus (Aug 2, 2010)

Another observation... 

At the heart of several objections to 4e is the belief that an in-game objects must have a single, global-level descriptor, or else the game becomes less believable/realistic. 

An example of this is the dreaded "Army of Minions", whose poor soldiers die from tripping over stones or being stung by bees. Now it's pretty clear to me Minion is *not* meant to a global-scope descriptor. It's _local_ in scope, applying only to an _instance_ of combat. It's not meant to describe a creatures absolute state in the game world. It's a convenient abstraction, meant to do a specific, limited-in-scope, unit of work. 

Moreover, the idea a _single_ entity in the game world could be described in _several_ different ways is hardly new to 4e. Consider a lowly AD&D NPC... let's call him Smith the Smith...

When the PC's first encounter Smith, he's the smith of the Village of Hamlet. He's described as a burly and honest chap barely making at ends meet _(at this point, he's just a name and box text, no stats  -- the DM didn't think he was worth statting out)_.

Later, the PC's hire him and several other villagers to fill out their expedition to the nearby Caves of Consternation _(now he's described using a abrreviated stat block: AC, HP, to-hit, damage)_.

Smith survives, prospers, and becomes a loyal henchman _(now he's a 4th level fighter with a full, PC-like stat block)_.

Later still, Smith is put in charge of his master's castle, and he has to take charge of the defenses during a raid while this master's away _(at his point the DM hauls out the mass-combat rules and Smith is represented yet another way in mechanics, now being reduced to a series of modifiers to a military unit)_.

One character, represented four different ways, depending on the needs at the time. Simple, yes? No great harm done to the believability of the fiction of the game world.


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## Doug McCrae (Aug 2, 2010)

Excellent work Mallus, as usual!


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## Ariosto (Aug 2, 2010)

AllisterH said:
			
		

> Both Dresden and LotR are examples of low magic settings.



I don't recall anyone in LotR reacting in disbelief or apparently never having seen magic in his or her life. Nor does it seem to me at all unbelievable that the protagonists, who are seeking some magics and trying to avoid the far-reaching attentions of others, should encounter as much enchantment as they do.



			
				Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> The setting could still be low magic because that's the experience of most of its inhabitants.



Which means what, Doug? It means the PCs are "always" (to use your word) *not in* "the setting" they inhabit.

That may or may not be realistic or believable, but using word play to be purposefully misleading as to what we are talking about is not exactly a help in assessing it!

Mount Kilimanjaro is at 3°4' South latitude. It also rises 5882 m, to an elevation of 5895 m above sea level. As a consequence, a climb to the peak is like going from the equator to the Antarctic.

Now, if you leave out that information, and the fact that we're talking about someone who climbs the mountain a lot, and define the setting as "tropical Africa", then it might -- at least to someone who is too hasty in leaping to conclusions -- be "unbelievable" that an inhabitant of the setting happens to encounter a lot of arctic conditions.

Moreover, "arctic conditions" would not encompass the high-altitude reality of something like half the oxygen as at sea level.

Planet Earth, indeed, is a "setting" that encompasses tremendous variety in environments and life forms. See James Cameron's "Aliens of the Deep" documentary for some awesome examples of things beyond our usual experience.

Are these things 'unbelievable' to you?

I do not find the Land of Oz any more believable for having however many more books' worth of silliness packed into it. I do not find the world of Normalman more believable than that of Superman.

I do not find you unbelievable simply because most people are not Scots. I do not find it unbelievable that there are billionaires in a world of people with much less wealth, or that there are people manning submarines armed with nuclear-warhead missiles in a world in which most people have never seen any of those things except in pictures.

What I would find unbelievable is the rich on the whole giving up their riches, and the nations on the whole giving up their preparations for war, to buy the world a haggis and keep it company.

Now, if there were some rationale for it, then maybe I could _suspend my disbelief_!


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## radmod (Aug 4, 2010)

Mallus said:


> Once upon a time, as ardoughter mentioned, I too asked why (and how) a PC standing in a room without cover got a save vs. the Fireball erupting all around him. And why, if he made his save, was he in the same spot? Wasn't he diving out of the way?




Great example. I've always hated that one myself. Is this unrealistic or unbelievable?



Mallus said:


> Another observation...
> 
> At the heart of several objections to 4e is the belief that ...




I thought the heart of most objection to 4e was that it was "dumbed down" and "made for kids". (Sorry I cut off the rest of your well-thought post)


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## radmod (Aug 4, 2010)

I think for me the question is one of game mechanics.
If the rules say something can be done, then we accept it as believable (whether it is or not).
However, realism runs afoul of game mechanics.
Take standard initiative. Let's say there are ten PCs with 30' move. If one picks up a stick and double moves, he transports the stick 60'. Yet, if each of the ten were 30' from the other and they had delayed so the initiatives went from high to low, first to last respectively, then that same stick could be moved 300' in a single round (each takes a move + standard to pass the stick). 
That is unrealistic.

So, as a fan of realism, I run _simultaneous initiative._ Basically you tell me what you are doing, everything goes off at roughly the same time and initiative is rolled only when important (like who hit first).
I've found that it works and works well (speeds up encounters) and is more realistic.

Yet, if one tries to interject too much realism then the game breaks down (becomes harder and, perhaps, more boring to play). IIRC, GURPs is more realistic but doesn't play as well. I once ran the exact same encounter in GURPs as I did in D&D and it took something like four times as long.

That to my mind is why D&D has always been more popular. It's easier, and quicker AND unlike GURPs, where a low level can kill a high level with a single lucky roll, D&D allows you to go "Ouch, that hurt but I'm fine. Ouch. Ouch again. Um, guys, I might need some help. Ouch. Ouch, HELP! Ouch, thud!"


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## FireLance (Aug 4, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> Before the thread progresses any further, a definition of terms is in order I suspect.



Slight tangent, but it is precisely for this reason that I tend to prefer the terms "rare magic" and "common magic" myself when speaking of how regularly the average commoner encounters magical spells, objects and beings. I tend to use "low magic" and "high magic" to describe the quantity and power of the magic available to the PCs in a campaign. So, by my definition, LotR would be a high magic campaign in a rare magic world.


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## steenan (Aug 4, 2010)

radmod said:
			
		

> I think for me the question is one of game mechanics.
> If the rules say something can be done, then we accept it as believable (whether it is or not).
> However, realism runs afoul of game mechanics.
> Take standard initiative. Let's say there are ten PCs with 30' move. If one picks up a stick and double moves, he transports the stick 60'. Yet, if each of the ten were 30' from the other and they had delayed so the initiatives went from high to low, first to last respectively, then that same stick could be moved 300' in a single round (each takes a move + standard to pass the stick).
> That is unrealistic.




I don't accept everything what is possible in the game mechanics as believable and possible in the game world. The rules are not the laws that rule the setting - they are simplified to be usable at a game table. Like every simplification or abstraction, it creates some edge cases that are artifacts of the mechanics, not a part of the game world. In most games I played, the settings as described make no sense if it is expected to work exactly by mechanics - they are only believable if the system is treated as a simplification, not as whole truth.

On the other hand, having to think by the rules that don't corresponds to how the setting really works pulls me out of a character. For this reason, I prefer games that fall into one or more of three categories: 
- strongly simulationist, where the system keeps close enough to the setting not to cause problem
- rules light, so I don't have to think about the rules when I play
- abstract and focused on color, not immersion - where the system resolves conflicts but it's up to the players to describe it in-setting


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## Doug McCrae (Aug 4, 2010)

Mallus said:


> From my perspective, some people around here are mistaking realism (and simulation) for _tradition_. It's not that 4e is any less _realistic_, it's that 4e is unrealistic in several _new_ ways, which they haven't spent the last 30 years getting used to.



Yes, this is another very insightful observation imo.

I was thinking recently that there is a lot to be said for sticking with whatever game system you've been playing for years, no matter what it is. Everyone knows the rules, so things go smoothly. Solutions - house rules or social conventions - have been found for most of what gives the group problems.

You don't see this given very often as a reason for sticking with a game system, but it's probably the best. Ofc one doesn't see it cited very often because it means the older system isn't objectively better, just more familiar.


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## Doug McCrae (Aug 4, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Which means what, Doug? It means the PCs are "always" (to use your word) *not in* "the setting" they inhabit.



You have a point there. Setting could be taken to mean the wider world - a continent, planet, or multiverse - or it could refer only to the parts of that world the PCs interact with. I was thinking of the former, maybe I should've used the term world instead. If it's the latter then, yes, the setting will be the same as what the PCs experience, by definition. If the PCs are high magic then the setting will be, too.

Firelance's distinction between common and rare magic is also clearer than my terminology.


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## Ariosto (Aug 4, 2010)

radmod said:
			
		

> So, as a fan of realism, I run _simultaneous initiative._




I find that it keeps the game moving more briskly, too. I've been doing it in many games since the '70s. The  original D & D set referred one to the _Chainmail_ rules, which offered two turn sequences -- Move/Counter-move and Simultaneous Movement.

With the individual moves and other factors commonly used in modern D&D, we might have
(a) a minute's worth or more of actions taking place, although
(b) most figures are effectively "frozen" for
(c) most of the ten minutes or so the last to move gets to watch and plan for
(d) what supposedly represents a period of but six seconds.

Now, each way presents the possibility of too much happening before someone gets a chance to react (e.g., the "Panzerbush syndrome" some 'grognards' may recall). This may provide good examples of the utility of being mindful that


			
				steenan said:
			
		

> The rules are not the laws that rule the setting - they are simplified to be usable at a game table.


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