Plausibility, Realism and game design goals [an essay]

[Callan S.]

Can you ensure an art piece is beutiful to a user? How? Will it force them to think it's beutiful, or did you look at what certain people like in art and used that?

Obviously not; theres not accounting for taste.  That what makes realism eaiser and more accessible - reality doesn't care about your taste,m it merely is, and thus we are likely to have common experiences of its workings.

Well, that's where the rub is.

What reality also doesn't care about is what you experience. It doesn't come up and tap you on the shoulder when you've looked at things wrong. It doesn't police everyone so they have all had a 'common' experience and are seeing things the right way.

You seem to have an impression that because reality is out there, in front of us, it's policing us so we all have some common and shared experience of it. Rubbish! It is not helping all these imperfect humans to all understand the same way. It doesn't help at all. Only people help other people to do that...and the scientists who investigate reality do their best to study reality, without reality actually giving a shit about that. You can only trust they are doing their best, not that reality just handed them a vanilla folder of 'how it really is'.

When the scientist figures how something works, reality doesn't tap him on the shoulder if he's wrong. Other scientists might, but they didn't do so because reality tapped them on the shoulder either. Reality is in front of them, and mere is what it is. And everyone is entirely on their own in exploring it, unless they trust others findings, even though those other people are entirely on their own in just the same way.

Look, just take the red pill, dammit!! ;)

Basically, when your making an RPG, you look to what people/customers trust in, and put that in the game. Okay, that might be sort of arse backwards for you. How about instead of the goal of realism, you put into the RPG what you trust in (or the findings of others, that you put trust into), leaving it up to the discerning customer to find your RPG's qualities (rather than you pursuing that customers perhaps mistaken beliefs).

I think that's a valid goal, though it might be hard on you financially IMO.

[contracycle]

You seem to have an impression that because reality is out there, in front of us, it's policing us so we all have some common and shared experience of it. Rubbish!

I'm afraid that is an over-extension to an illogical extreme.  Nothing in my argument suggests or requires that the real world pushes itself into our conssiousness - that is not necessary becuase our brains are specifically a machine built to interact with and examine that real world.

My argument is as trivial as saying "a carrot tastes like a carrot regardless of where in the world you eat it.  A carrot tastes like a carrot to both Joe and Bob regardless of their preconceptions."

When the scientist figures how something works, reality doesn't tap him on the shoulder if he's wrong. Other scientists might, but they didn't do so because reality tapped them on the shoulder either.

Then they are performing bad science.  You check your work by performing ann experiment that confirms or refutes your hypothesis - merely "thinking something" is not adequate.  If the scientist is wrong, the experiment will fail - and will probably fail in an interesting and informative way, if the experiment has been constructed intelligently.

Reality is in front of them, and mere is what it is. And everyone is entirely on their own in exploring it, unless they trust others findings, even though those other people are entirely on their own in just the same way.

No, I'm afraid thats absurd - your whole life is surrounded by artifacts and processes that you probably do not understand personally but upon which your life depends - the engineering of the differential in your car, say.  We are most certainly NOT on our own - we have vasty reams of data and analytical thought all dependant on the implacable NON-subjectivity of the material universe - and we can, and often do, investigate these thoughts in order to learn about our world.

Basically, when your making an RPG, you look to what people/customers trust in, and put that in the game. Okay, that might be sort of arse backwards for you.

It is.  I have never seen this process produce any worthy product.

But you still seem to be missing the central point in your last paragraph.  If I produce a work of any type that accords with the soundest, most research view of a topic, then I can be reasonably confident that the end user will either be familiar with the same materials, or at least will not be familiar with contradictory materials.  Thats becuase reality is NOT subjective - if I go to the library and find argument X, it is likely that any customer doing that research will also encounter argument X.

So it is still the case that by going with the highest quality of research and realism available, I am MOST likely to produce something that accords with the customers expectations or understandings.  And the few nutters with a grossly delusional or ideological objection to the facts are frankly no concern of mine.


JMendez wrote:

I agree that reality exists in and of itself, but when devoid of interpretation, reality has no meaning, i.e., it has no "workings".

Lets see you make that argument with a hyena chewing on your pancreas.

[John Kim]

Basically, when your making an RPG, you look to what people/customers trust in, and put that in the game. Okay, that might be sort of arse backwards for you. How about instead of the goal of realism, you put into the RPG what you trust in (or the findings of others, that you put trust into), leaving it up to the discerning customer to find your RPG's qualities (rather than you pursuing that customers perhaps mistaken beliefs).

I think that's a valid goal, though it might be hard on you financially IMO.

OK, as long as you see it as a valid goal, I think we may be moving towards agreement modulo semantics about the word "realism".  These are two different methods, right: i.e.
1) trying to come up with whatever you think the customer will swallow; or
2) researching for yourself and trying to put in what you believe to be real.  

As long as you agree these are different and that they are both valuable goals, then I think hopefully we can end this.  I would call #2 the pursuit of realism, and hopefully you can translate that to whatever words you would prefer.  

To my mind, obviously if I pursue the goal of "realism", I will be pursuing what I think of as reality.  The same applies for any other goal.  i.e. If I am pursuing the goal of fair challenge, I'm not magically approaching the cosmic truth of challenge -- I'm only really pursuing what I trust in to be fair challenge, i.e. what I think is fair challenge.

[Domhnall]

This is a thick topic, and one which tends to have people either bumping heads or just slipping past each other.  For those who don't know, this is (or has become) a topic concerning "Realism vs. Anti-Realism" which is either an ontological argument, or a linguistic one, depending on which side of the fence you're on.  

I'm just going to paste a few links here.  My friend, Dr D. Anderson, is a Harvard PhD, and is working on a book on the subject called Semantic Dualism, but I can't get any juicy passages till the book is published.  
I encourage vast amounts of patience for those who wish to dive into this debate.  Good Luck!

http://members.aol.com/lshauser/mts.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-sem-challenge/
http://pioneer.netserv.chula.ac.th/~hsoraj/web/CT.html

[James Holloway]

So yes, I think its the topics that RPG uses that are problematic rather than the principle of realism per se.  And its also true that the term "realism" is often used to conceal some oither agenda , or at least can be so used.  I understand why people shy away from the question, but I don;t think it should be given up on.

I think that the idea that there's no such thing as realism overstates the case, but I could be talked round to the idea that realism as commonly practiced in RPG design is not a helpful or useful design goal.

It also helps to define what we mean when we say "realism." Among historical wargamers (who spend a lot of time complaining about realism), the answer I hear most often and that I like best is "historical input matches historical output." If I do what Alexander did, then I should have a reasonably good chance of accomplishing what Alexander accomplished. But it's that "reasonably good chance" where things break down, because no one can agree on whether Alexander's conquests were spectacularly unlikely or not -- which comes back to the thing of reality not always matching people's expectations of it.

This is a much broader concept than, say, "getting the physics right," but most of what's important about getting the physics right falls under it. Jump off the cliff? You're badly hurt. Climb the chain-link fence? Easy-peasy. In a certain type of game, it's nice to know that your actions will result in predictable outcomes.

Almost all of the "realism" arguments I've had in RPGs have stemmed not from the usual stuff, like weapon damage, but from NPC behavior.

[Callan S.]

You seem to have an impression that because reality is out there, in front of us, it's policing us so we all have some common and shared experience of it. Rubbish!

I'm afraid that is an over-extension to an illogical extreme.  Nothing in my argument suggests or requires that the real world pushes itself into our conssiousness - that is not necessary becuase our brains are specifically a machine built to interact with and examine that real world.

An imperfect machine.

Simple logic, it doesn't matter if ten million imperfect machines all analyse the same thing and come to the same conclusion, it is not a perfect understanding.

Now throw in how you can read different statistics. An extreme example example is that 100% who have breathed, will eventually die. Okay, clearly absurd. How about more subtle versions...if you were perfect, you'd see through them no matter how subtle. Are you? Is anyone?

One of the most impressive things about science to me, that put it ahead of many other belief structures in my estimate, is how it embraces the lack of true knowledge. When I heard that it was accepted that no matter how many times a hypothesis is confirmed and still wasn't treated as absolute truth, it was stunning. Because I think by grasping that and practicing it, they had grasped the only one true piece of knowledge.

They hadn't fallen to the fear of the unknown, where they would just reassure themselves that they really know this and nothing's hidden, always. Finally in humanities history, without bullshitting up mythology so were weren't so scared we couldn't move, we could move forward into the unknown.

Back down to earth here, RPG design could do with the same embrace.

[M. J. Young]

I'm a bit uncertain as to whether my last post is lost in the hack or merely buried in the thread; but let me attempt to recall what I wrote some time ago and repeat it.

For the moment, let's forget about whether realism is "possible" in any sense of that word. The point of the thread is whether it can serve as the basis for role playing game design decisions.

That is, we often hear people say that they used rule B instead of rule A because B was more realistic, and that realism was their one goal in all their design decisions.

What Ralph and I contend is that "realism" is not and cannot be the only goal in design. There is no way for that sort of design objective to be met without infinite complexity. The only ways for the goal of "realism" to be met is in one of these two senses:[list=1][*]Realistic enough to achieve X, where X is the real design goal for which realism is merely the means.[*]Realistic within the bounds of Y, where Y is a measurable competing design objective that constrains the pursuit of X. An example of this would be as realistic as possible within the constraint that the text must be comprehensible to a fifth grader or as realistic as possible to achieve in a time scale of not greater than five minutes of play time to achieve one minute of action for one character.[/list:o]If you say that the only design objective is to be as realistic as possible, then you have inherently said that there is no measure by which the game can be "realistic enough" and that there is no countering constraint that says the cost of realism is too high for the return on the investment. Therefore, a game whose only goal is to be fully realistic would have to be unplayable, because by definition playability cannot be a limitation on the pursuit of realism, which here is valued soley for its own sake.

Now, I don't understand why this argument has continued so long. I particularly don't understand why those who have been arguing that realism is a possible objective in game design have not answered my points on this. What has been unclear?

--M. J. Young

[John Kim]

Now, I don't understand why this argument has continued so long. I particularly don't understand why those who have been arguing that realism is a possible objective in game design have not answered my points on this. What has been unclear?

I think both your post and my reply to it were lost in the hack.  

First of all, you equate realism with complexity -- which I don't agree with.  Piling on more rules and more detail does not linearly make a game more realistic, in the sense of better matching reality.  In fact, I would say the opposite is often true: less detail and complexity often makes for more realism.  You can see this in many over-complicated systems which fell out of favor in the 80's, which by specifying more often lead to even more outrageous failure cases as well as missing the forest for the trees.  By making results more granular and more abstract, it can be easier to be consistent and match reality.  

That said, obviously you still have to put limits on the pursuit of realism.  Even if realism isn't achieved by just shoveling on complexity, it is still an open-ended goal.  You can work for years on making your system more realistic, doing more research, tweaking parts, and so forth.  But the same rule of perfectionism applies to any other part of the game.  If you want to promote fair challenge, you can be a perfectionist spending endless time trying to exactly balance player options.  If you want good stories, then maybe it would be better to learn more writer techniques and use only those.    

The fact that you have to set limits doesn't make the goals pursued any less valid.

[contracycle]

An imperfect machine.

Simple logic, it doesn't matter if ten million imperfect machines all analyse the same thing and come to the same conclusion, it is not a perfect understanding.

Yes, an imperfect machine, but so what?  commonality of experience does not require universal perfection - it only requires "good enough".

Furthermore, if you do acknowledge the stance that science adopts, and see that it purposefully accomodates the imperfect machine, why would you then reject the output that science produces?

Back down to earth here, RPG design could do with the same embrace.

I couldn't agree more.  Thats exactly why we must not retreat to nostalgic beating of our chests about the imperfectness of the machine, and instead deploy the tools we have developed.

[Walt Freitag]

That is, we often hear people say that they used rule B instead of rule A because B was more realistic, and that realism was their one goal in all their design decisions.

I think it's necessary to split apart those two statements.

1. "We used rule B instead of rule A because B was more realistic."

2. "Realism was our one goal in all our design decisions."

The first statement is reasonable. Within the context of an individual rule decision, realism is as good a reason as any for choosing B over A.

The second statement is not reasonable, for all the reasons M. J. and Ralph have put forth.

However, the utterance of the first statement does not automatically imply the second! To intepret it as though it does is uncharitable reading.

This is what I was trying to get at with my "cool the soup" analogy earlier. Design decisions are always made in the context of other goals. The failure to explicitly state those other goals is a matter of convenience and focus on the issue at hand, not an assertion that other goals don't exist.

"Why did you use lightweight composite materials in the engine mount?"

"To reduce the car's weight."

"Then why didn't you omit the engine entirely? That would reduce the weight a lot more!"

Of course there are other goals motivating the stated goals! There always are! And of course sometimes those underlying goals might be questioned. ("Are you sure reducing the weight is important in this particular car? It's a high price luxury car, so customers likely to buy it might not care about fuel economy." ... or ... "But the composite material is so expensive, it will raise the price of the car and make it less attractive to our economy-minded buyers.") But might it be assumed that sometimes, when one automotive engineer or game designer is talking to another, that they understand these underlying issues in context, that they know what they're talking about, so that "to reduce weight" or "to increase realism" can be sufficient explanation for a design decision?

If every time realism is discussed as a goal, some underlying goal such as "playability" must be explicitly acknowledged, then why should we accept "playability" as a valid ultimate design goal either? The toddler's game of "why?" keeps going from there. Surely most designers wouldn't include a feature that would cause the game to cost $100 a copy to print, even though it improved playability. Surely most of us wouldn't advise designers to keep tweaking their games perpetually and never publish because improvements in playability are always possible. That means that in most cases there must be more fundamental goals than "playability" in effect too. Those might, among other possibilities, be dissemanability or profitability. But you probably wouldn't be willing to chop off your right arm even if doing so would make your game widespread or profitable, so those can't be ultimate goals either...

In the end, that realism isn't an all-consuming ultimate goal in game design goes without saying. Hardly any goal in any endeavor ever is an all-consuming ultimate goal. We constantly talk of intermediate-level goals in a common-sense context without implying that they're in any way "ultimate." Certainly we can err by pursuing an intermediate-level goal to the point where it becomes counterproductive to a higher-order goal (like, saving weight in a car by omitting the engine). Those errors can be pointed out and addressed when they occur.

To never speak of intermediate-level goals at all looks to me like a remedy far worse than the disease. To single out "realism" as the only intermediate-level goal that is not appropriate to mention without its higher-order goals seems more like the exercising of a pet peeve than a useful principle of discourse.

[Valamir]

I'll contend with a few of your statement's Walt.

I think it's necessary to split apart those two statements.

1. "We used rule B instead of rule A because B was more realistic."

2. "Realism was our one goal in all our design decisions."

The first statement is reasonable. Within the context of an individual rule decision, realism is as good a reason as any for choosing B over A.

The second statement is not reasonable, for all the reasons M. J. and Ralph have put forth.

However, the utterance of the first statement does not automatically imply the second! To intepret it as though it does is uncharitable reading.

I don't agree with this at all.  As MJ pointed out above #1 SHOULD be "Realistic enough to achieve our design goal of X" not simply that it was "more realistic" period.

If there really is an X that the "realistic enough"  is being evaluated against then its important to state that goal (either up front or when asked) so that the success of rule B can be judged on its effectiveness at achieving goal X within the boundary of the desired level of "realism".

If someone asks whether rule B is a good one, or if its "realistic", its not uncharitable to ask what X is before judging.  I contend that judging B solely on its merits of "realistic" without accounting for the underlying goal of X is wrong, a disservice to the designer asking for help, and of little added value.

Therefor if there IS an underlying X, then your statement #1 above ("because it was more realistic") is NOT reasonable.  Its flat out wrong.

If there ISN'T an underlying X, then, in fact, statement #1 does automatically imply #2 and its not uncharitable to point that out.

Of course there are other goals motivating the stated goals! There always are! And of course sometimes those underlying goals might be questioned. ("Are you sure reducing the weight is important in this particular car? It's a high price luxury car, so customers likely to buy it might not care about fuel economy." ... or ... "But the composite material is so expensive, it will raise the price of the car and make it less attractive to our economy-minded buyers.") But might it be assumed that sometimes, when one automotive engineer or game designer is talking to another, that they understand these underlying issues in context, that they know what they're talking about, so that "to reduce weight" or "to increase realism" can be sufficient explanation for a design decision?

If you amended this to say "of course there SHOULD BE other goals motivating the stated goals" I'd be 100% in agreement.  I'd also agree with the idea that "there always are" as long as that's amended to "ultimately there always are even if the party in question won't admit to them or hasn't thought deeply enough about it to identify them".  

One has to look no farther than the thread which spawned this one to see an example of one person (me) repeatedly asking what those other goals are and repeatedly being told that there aren't any...that realism alone was the goal of the rules inquiry.

That's the attitude that this thread addresses and criticises.  *I* know that there are other goals underlying the desire for an accurate depiction of jumping distances in the game.  Goals that have to do with personal play style, or preferences, or a desire to educate others on biomechanics, or what have you.  But hiding those goals under a basket while insisting "realism" is the only goal at hand is not only wrong, it can never lead to a solution.

Because if I come to the table with my underlying X hidden under a basket, and you come to the table with your underlying X hidden under a basket and we both insist that we're interested only in realism and we set about trying to make the rule "more realistic"...we can sit there and argue about it till the cows come home...make zero progress...and neither of us will wind up with a rule that the other will acknowledge is, in fact, "more realistic".  Because the REAL source of our disagreement (once you get passed all of the dick waving comparisons on who knows more about physics etc) is under those baskets.

Discussing how to make a rule "more realistic" without knowing what the X under the basket is, is fundamentally stupid and a totally pointless conversation.  

John Kim's argued against my points in this thread more vehemently then anyone, but ultimately he's revealed the X under his basket that's the underlying goal for him.  He's not REALLY arguing about "realism as a goal".  He's really argueing about RPGs as educational tools (his X, or more precisely, one of them)...realism is just a factor in pursueing that goal.

If every time realism is discussed as a goal, some underlying goal such as "playability" must be explicitly acknowledged, then why should we accept "playability" as a valid ultimate design goal either?  

I believe (without going back to double check) that earlier in this thread I dismissed "playability" as a goal no better and no more useful than "realism".

[JMendes]

Ahey, :)

Walt, I think you put your finger on the wound, here. :)

But might it be assumed that sometimes, when one <...> game designer is talking to another, that they understand these underlying issues in context, that they know what they're talking about<...>?

Simply put, no.

To expand:

If you show me a game and ask, "is this playable", I will probably be able to make an informed decision and give you my opinion, probably based on my personal taste, but still, possibly given to extrapolation of the RPG crowd at large. I could probably point out why those that won't find it playable will object, and what those that will find it playable will like.

But if you ask me, "is this realistic", I simply won't know what to tell you.

The thing is, when the average person talks about realism, they're talking about a model, but the big thing about a model isn't realism (or "plausibility", for that matter). The big issue for a model is applicability. However, applicability is a transisitive quality, it's always applicability "to something". In other words, what are you trying to model? And then, the average person (sometimes) goes on to say, "I'm trying to model reality". What, the whole of it? That doesn't make any sense!

I'll further expand with an example at length:

The designer might say: "my game tries to accurately model gunfights". Well, fine, then. There may be a number of factors involved, one of which will probably be some sort of skill or attribute of each character. Right away, you're running into problems. A skill model very adequate to a police vs gangster firefight in an abbandoned house is probably going to fail completely when used in an infantry advance vs a fortified position war firefight.

And the designer might go: "ok, then, my game just tries to model firefights in general". Again, fine, then. So long as people have a half-decent chance of getting scared (not scarred) and/or hurt, I'd say you're in the ballpark. To which, the designer might reply: "and I want to be statistically accurate". To which I'd reply, those two aren't compatible design goals, as general statistics for general firefights are Not Available(tm).

Finally, the designer might say: "ok, this piece of system tries to accurately model urban sidearm firefights, whereas this other piece tries to accurately model automatic small arms battlefield firefights". I'd probably say, separately, each looks ok, but are you sure you want these two wildly different pieces of system in your design? And by the way, how are you going to handle sniping and being sniped at?

In other words, the original design goal of a "realistic firefight" simply holds no meaning until what the system tries to model is further specified.

Now, this isn't to say that statements like "use rule A instead of rule B because it is more realistic" don't have a point, in there. However, to be fully valid, such a statement is, IMHO, incomplete. The complete statement should be "use rule A instead of rule B, because it is more realistic in the context of what the game is trying to model".

Edit: Crossposted with Ralph, and would like to add that Ralph's "X under the basket" is quite similar to my "what are you trying to model".

Cheers,

J.

[John Kim]

If every time realism is discussed as a goal, some underlying goal such as "playability" must be explicitly acknowledged, then why should we accept "playability" as a valid ultimate design goal either?  

I believe (without going back to double check) that earlier in this thread I dismissed "playability" as a goal no better and no more useful than "realism".

OK, here's my challenge.  Please state a goal (preferably several) for game design which you consider to be valid.  Then we can analyze how realism compares to those goals.  Because as far as I can tell, realism is no different than any other goal such as theme, plausibility, genre faithfulness, and so forth.  You can always look for and find underlying goals to them.  A single goal pursued in a perfectionistic fashion is always impossible.  And you can always say that a single word for the goal is not sufficiently specific to guide design.

[Sean]

Walt asked us to compare:

1. "We used rule B instead of rule A because B was more realistic."

2. "Realism was our one goal in all our design decisions."

The first statement is reasonable. Within the context of an individual rule decision, realism is as good a reason as any for choosing B over A.

The second statement is not reasonable, for all the reasons M. J. and Ralph have put forth.

However, the utterance of the first statement does not automatically imply the second! To intepret it as though it does is uncharitable reading.

To which Ralph responded:

I don't agree with this at all. As MJ pointed out above #1 SHOULD be "Realistic enough to achieve our design goal of X" not simply that it was "more realistic" period.

If there really is an X that the "realistic enough" is being evaluated against then its important to state that goal (either up front or when asked) so that the success of rule B can be judged on its effectiveness at achieving goal X within the boundary of the desired level of "realism".

If someone asks whether rule B is a good one, or if its "realistic", its not uncharitable to ask what X is before judging. I contend that judging B solely on its merits of "realistic" without accounting for the underlying goal of X is wrong, a disservice to the designer asking for help, and of little added value.

Therefor if there IS an underlying X, then your statement #1 above ("because it was more realistic") is NOT reasonable. Its flat out wrong.

If there ISN'T an underlying X, then, in fact, statement #1 does automatically imply #2 and its not uncharitable to point that out.

I agree with Walt.

If you're a game designer or even tweaker, you may decide, on the basis of your conception of reality - which itself is to some degree or another correct or incorrect, based on how close to reality that conception is - that you prefer one rule to another solely for that reason. Is this always wrong? That seems farfetched, frankly.

At the rule-by-rule level, therefore, one can make a choice between two rules on the basis of increased realism. One can also make a choice for lesser realism. There doesn't need to be any other goal at the rule-by-rule level.

Ralph goes on to argue that if there is no such goal, #1 does imply #2. But this is an obvious fallacy. The fact that a relatively greater degree of realism was the basis for one design decision does not imply that greater realism, or realism tout court, was the 'one goal' in 'all our design decisions'. I bought a used Honda because it had the best gas mileage of any car I looked at, but it does not follow from that that I make all my life-decisions on the basis of gas mileage considerations.

[Valamir]

I can't buy that Sean.

Lets say you do have as one of your design goals the desire to be able to play out a 10 person firefight in under 45 minutes of real time.

Now you go to a "rule by rule" evaluation.

Rule option #1 is is to account for modifiers to to-hit accuracy based on wind conditions in a manner similar to the modifiers currently in the game for lighting conditions.

Rule option #2 is to skip accounting for wind.


Now your claim is that you can make the choice on a rule by rule level solely on the basis of whether #1 or #2 is more realistic without needing to account for any other goal at that level?  

I'd say that would be a world class mistake.

Clearly part of the decision as to whether to go with with #1 or #2 would have to take into account the other 45 minutes or less goal.  If rule #1 is more realistic but it also takes the time for a 10 man firefight from 30 minutes to 50...then making the decision solely on the basis of realism is flat out wrong.  The real issue is whether or not the rule is realistic enough given the goal of speedy game play (one of the underlying Xs).

If there is such an underlying goal than it must be taken into consideration before deciding on Rule #1 or Rule #2 and before any outside party can judge whether or not Rule #1 is a good rule.

Ralph goes on to argue that if there is no such goal, #1 does imply #2. But this is an obvious fallacy. The fact that a relatively greater degree of realism was the basis for one design decision does not imply that greater realism, or realism tout court, was the 'one goal' in 'all our design decisions'

So maybe what you're saying is that if there is an underlying goal that applies to a given rule you take it into account, but if there isn't than you can just go by realism...

Lets analyse that for a second.

You're saying that just because there's no underlying design goal behind a given rule decision doesn't automatically imply that there isn't any underlying design goal behind any decision.

Which means you're saying its possible to have design goals for the game, but then write a rule that has no bearing whatsoever on those design goals.

You're then saying that under that narrow set of circumstances 1) I have goals, 2) they don't apply to THIS particular rule...that its then ok to judge that particular rule solely on the basis of whether one option is more realistic than another?


At which I have to just stand in amazement with an eyebrow cocked.

You're talking about writing rules...that will be included into your game...that take up space in the book...that will increase the cost of the printing...that increase the time to learn the rules...that have some non zero impact on gameplay...

...and that are absolutely, totally, unrelated to any of your design goals?

WTF are you writing a dumb ass rule like that for?  A rule that doesn't relate to your design goals is a rule wasted.

I mean you're essentially saying "If I have some dumb ass pointless rule in my game that has no bearing on anything I'm trying to accomplish its okay to judge that rule on how realistic it is."

To which I can only reply...no.  Its just a dumb ass pointless rule that should never have made it into the final version of the game to begin with.

Which I will caveat by pointing out what I also said above.  Chances are there *IS* a design goal underlying that rule, that it *ISN'T* pointless, and the designer simply hasn't thought about it enough to identify what it is.

At which point we're back to the first situation where there is an underlying goal that should be identified in order to judge the effectiveness of the rule.