Defining "realistic" setting & mechanics

[Christoffer Lernö]

I feel I'm lacking some well defined terms to describe consistency in setting and mechanics. Even the term consistency seems to be unclear. In an attempt to contribute a little to the Forge vocab, I thought I'm gonna write a little on the subject.

What I want to define is what I myself would refer to as "realism". However that word can be interpreted in a multitude of way so it's not really appropriate.

I'm applying it to several different areas, so let's just pick one at random to start with.

Realistic Setting

With this I'm not thinking about whether the setting is set in a strict historical setting or a present-day one. Instead, I'm concerned with internal consistency.

It doesn't matter if it has magic or spaceships that make sounds as they wooosh through space, it's about whether the consequences of such things are taken into account or not.

Let's say a setting introduces the possibility of A. A in turn implies B would occur. In a "realistic" game (in my very loose terminology) B is included.

Maybe a better expression would be "consistent setting".

AD&D's settings are generally good examples of inconsistent settings. An example of A-but-not-B is the presence of resurrection spells. These should virtually eliminate chances of assassinations (=B), but that is not taken into account in drawing up the world. There are about a million of these examples in AD&D.

Naturally there are degrees of inconsistencies. AD&D just happens one of the worst offenders.

Anyway, I'd like to define "setting consistency" (SC) as how internally consistent the setting is. The more consistent, the less of A's who don't have their B's present.

True-to-the-genre

It's not always that a strictly consistent setting is desired. Let's look at games simulating inconsistent things like video games. If I make a game which is to feel like video fighting game, it's not as important to make a consistent setting as being true to the genre.

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but often they come at odds. I mention it because it might sound like I mean that CS is always good and IS is always bad. As long as IS is introduced to produce True-to-the-genre (TTG) feeling, trying to seek more CS might be a bad thing.

Anyway, that pretty much sums up the setting characteristics. How SC is it? Is TTG more important than SC?

Mechanics-To-Setting-Realism

It's not only the setting that can produce inconsistencies. The mechanics can also introduce behaviour which should effect the Setting but might not. For example if my mechanics have a magical system which allows for earth shattering spells and any character can have it, yet the setting is a fairly standard medival society, with the presence of magic having no major effect on society, then this is an inconstistency in the mechanics-to-setting bridge. Let's call this Mechanics/Setting consistency (MSC). Another big thing is making the characters almost unable to do things without a lot of experience (hello Rolemaster) and still have unexperienced people actually doing these regularly with no problem in the setting.

The other way around can also occur. For example the setting might declare that everyone knows how to read several languages but the characters created within the mechanic only knows one. This is Setting/Mechanics consistency (SMC).

Mechanics-consistency

This is maybe the most obvious. If one thing in the rule declares A and another rule dealing with the same situation declares it works like B, then there's obviously inconsistency. Let's call this MC for short.

Let's summarize:

SC - Internal setting consistency
TTC -  How true to the genre the setting is
MSC - Consistency from Mechanics to Setting
SMC - Consistency from Setting to Mechanics
MC - Internal Mechanics consistency

I usually refer SC when I talk about how "realistic" the setting is. And how realistic the mechanics is, is really about the MSC.

I hope I can refer to these parameters in later posts.

[Le Joueur]

Maybe a better expression would be "Verisimilitude."

Fang Langford

[M. J. Young]

It would be a quibble to say that I am not certain the very rare presence of the possibility of resurrection eliminates the viability of assassination. It certainly does complicate the situation (particularly in relation to high-level political assassinations, since if the prince can't be resurrected who can?). Besides, the point is well made.

Setting consistency is very difficult to quantify because it happens at several layers, as it were, and it's easy to miss the obvious. Quite a while back one of my Game Ideas Unlimited articles looked at the potential applications of transporter technology, and wondered why Star Trek didn't have many of these. If you can dematerialize someone, what's to prevent you from using that as a weapon, simply never installing the materialization side of the system? Why would you ever need plastic surgery to alter the appearance of someone in the crew, if you could just create a program that would change the physiognomy in seconds? Couldn't you repair injured organs, remove infecting organisms, filter foreign substances, even halt aging, merely by minor adjustments in the computer program that must control the system? No one notices that these things aren't there, because we don't think everything through to its ultimate conclusions. But thinking everything through to its ultimate conclusions is difficult even in reality; doing so in a fictional world in which several aspects have been changed which all interact with each other can be a very daunting task.

Why would anyone waste money on shuttle craft if transporters can get you where you want to go? O.K., rather than get rid of the useful (story-purpose) shuttle craft, they came up with reasons why the transporter doesn't always work. But there are a lot of things that they didn't think through. Does that mean they're inconsistent? No, it means they're consistent to a point. No one is truly thoroughly consistent; none of us are smart enough (I say as a mensan) even to work out all the inevitable conclusions of our own thoughts, beliefs, and choices. So the question isn't whether the scenario is fully consistent, but how deep you have to dig before you start finding the inconsistencies.

Even Isaac Newton missed the problem of where did the energy come from in a fire, if neither matter nor energy is either created or destroyed.

I don't know if this helps at all, but your thoughts suggested this.

--M. J. Young

[Christoffer Lernö]

I agree M.J, there inconsistencies can only be eliminated up to a point.

I think what I primarily wanted with this text was to create a definition of the measurement of inconsistencies. So that we can compare and say that one setting is less SC (setting consistency) than another. I think one can safely say that Middle Earth is more SC than Forgotten Realms for example.

Although there is no way to ensure perfect SC, it is often something to strive for.

As for MSC and MC, these are usually much easier to observe and are a whole less acceptable to have low MSC and MC than it is with SC as violating SC can often provide story opportunities as in the Star Trek case.

Naturally you'd still try to keep a high consistency or you might end up having a little too many people getting annoyed with the inconsistencies.

Shadowrun's grenade system is a good example of violating MSC, as is AD&D's hitpoints (if we consider stories where high-level people are assassinated with a single hit of an arrow or such)

Anyway, think of these measurements as tools, nothing more.