The Real Game

[Froley]

This idea just came to me what about a game that takes place on the earth. No special powers, no monsters, no nothing. You could go all across the world and try to survive in this crazy place. You could live a life of crime or become a respectable business man. There enough craziness in this world to make it intresting, there would be robberies you could even join the army if you wanted to. how's it sound?

[C.W.Richeson]

I think you'd need a strongly unified theme to bring it together, but sure.  Super powers are fun, I like them, but their abscense is fun too.

[Nev the Deranged]

Personally I play games to get AWAY from real life, not to simulate it. What kind of a system would you want to use for a game like this, I wonder?

[Moreno R.]

This idea just came to me what about a game that takes place on the earth. No special powers, no monsters, no nothing. You could go all across the world and try to survive in this crazy place. You could live a life of crime or become a respectable business man. There enough craziness in this world to make it intresting, there would be robberies you could even join the army if you wanted to. how's it sound?

There is already a lot of games that play "in the real world". From "Best Friends" to "Nicotine Girls", from It was a Mutual Decision to "Breaking the Ice", from "Carry" to "Contenders", and you can totally play a generic game like GURPS like this ("GURPS Cops").

So the problem I see in your proposal isn't that is too unheard of. It's that it's too generic. Telling me that you want to play in the real word tell me nothing. "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City" are both "in the real world". What you REALLY want to game about, in the real world?

[Call Me Curly]

The main thing which a game 'set in the real world' would require
is a way to determine the boundaries of the real world.

Perhaps any player could veto anything depicted in the game, if they feel it's 'unrealistic'.

Or perhaps just one player is empowered as Reality Judge.

Or majority rule,

Or a finite economy of un-hero points, usable to zap anything objectionable (until you run out).

Or, you could handle it the way games like Scrabble or Boggle do: anything you find a real-world
non-fiction published citation-for, can't be struck-down as unreal. 

Do any other methods of negotiating 'what's real' come to mind?

[Moreno R.]

The main thing which a game 'set in the real world' would require
is a way to determine the boundaries of the real world.

I see this as no different in any way from what happen when you play in a fantasy world. You still require a way to determine the boundaries of the game world. And you can use the same methods used for every game world (that you already listed)

[Call Me Curly]

Which methods are best-suited to the explicit mandate of enforcing realism?

[Moreno R.]

Which methods are best-suited to the explicit mandate of enforcing realism?

I didn't see this mandate in Froley's posts.  "playing in the real world" is very different from "playing in a realistic world".

In general, I don't see "enforcing realism" as something that the system has to do at all.  If the players want realism, it's THEM who have to play "realistically" (it's the only way to match what they call "realistic" with what they would get from the game. A game author would have a different idea of "realism". There aren't two person in the world with the same idea of "realism")

[Monkeys]

It'd be interesting to have a game set in our world, as it'd be imagined by people in a role-playing game.

Like maybe the adventure is that you're behind in your rent, so you have to either enter the landlord's lair and slay him, or get a job as a bike courier. To get the job as a courier, you must cross the crocodile-infested Central Business District, and find an amulet, which astonishingly has no magical powers whatsoever.

[Call Me Curly]

[/quote]

 "playing in the real world" is very different from "playing in a realistic world".

[/quote]

I don't understand the distinction you're expressing.

[Moreno R.]

"playing in the real world" is very different from "playing in a realistic world".

I don't understand the distinction you're expressing.

Let's see if I can explain it better.

Fist, about "realistic": this word, used in a rpg context, doesn't have a fixed meaning. In general, it's a "baseline" position to contrast with some more "spiced" alternative.

For example:

"realistic" versus "a lot of improbable events".  ("nicotine girls" against a rpg version of "pretty woman" or some other hollywood romance)
"realistic" against "fantasy"  (like "pretty woman" against "the lord of the rings")
"realistic" against "unbelievable" (like "the lord of the rings" against some crappy fantasy story full of holes)
"realistic" against "cinematic"  (the gdr of the crappy fantasy novel, full of "crunchy bits", against Wushu.)
"realistic" against "crappy rules that destroy my suspension of disbelief" ("wushu" against some famous rpg that I am not naming to avoid polemics)

Did you notice as the example of "non-realistic" in one case become the example of "realistic" in the following one?

I think you can come up with at last another dozen alternatives between something called "realistic" and some other things. And what is "non realistic" in one couple of alternative is "realistic".

So, "realistic" really tell us nothing. It has to be paired with his alternative.

Now, to the second point, "the real world". The real world is a setting. And as every setting, it can be treated in a "realistic" or "non realistic" way, in most of the meaning above.

For example, I am going to assume (for semplicity) that you meant "realistic" against "full of non-real-world elements"

So we have:

real world with "realistic":   example: the movies from the "Italian neo-realism" like Ladri di Biciclette or Umberto D
real world with "full of non-real-world-elements":  example: "fear and loathing in Las Vegas"
non-real world with "realistic":

[Moreno R.]

Sorry, I posted the partial message by mistake. Let's continue with the examples.

non-real world with "realistic":  "the man in the high castle" by Philip Dick or any other alternate history novel
non-real world with ""full of non-real-world-elements":  "The Lord of the rings"

You can do the same with "cinematic" or with "improbable". The result is always the same. "realism" has nothing to do with "playing in the real world" (after all, "the real world" is the setting for a lot of fantasy and sf novels...)

[Ron Edwards]

Hey.

Curly - you have jacked this thread, big-time.Please cease posting to it. Moreno, he tricked you into engaging with him. I think you will do better to respond to and work with Froley instead.

Best, Ron