Realism Mechanic?

[mjbauer]

I'm thinking about including some kind of realism reward in my game. If a player decides to inject some basic reality (running out of ammo, tripping, "whiffing", etc.) then they are awarded a benny for doing so. These would be available at any time but would maybe be given more liberally when used at times that are less convenient for the players, e.g. running out of ammo mid gunfight would be worth a benny while running out after might not be worth anything.

My thinking:
I want things to be boiled down and condensed as much as possible, but I think that in doing so I'm going to make things too fantastic, too superhero movie-ish. This would give back some of the details that might have been lost and make them interesting and could even become a part of a group or player strategy (e.g. "let's pile on the reality in this fight so we are loaded up when we get to the boss").

My hesitation:
Is including a Realism mechanic going to create dissonance itself? The fact that the game is so fantastic that it needs to be grounded with a Reality mechanic may just be pointing out the unrealistic nature of the game and encouraging players to become distracted. This could be solvable with something as easy as calling it something else (e.g. Difficulty points, Complication points, Color points).

Any thoughts?

[jp_miller]

Or...

Make a prerequisite before you play that the players should play their roles realistically. The GM will create realistic stories and the players will act realistically in them.

e.g. "let's pile on the reality in this fight so we are loaded up when we get to the boss").

You see, I think this is your problem. You are assuming the players are there to milk the system, so that they can 'win' all the time, rather than playing the game to simulate realistic stories.

If realism is important than somehow encourage the players to have their characters lose as well as win - and enjoy doing both.

What's so good about realism anyway?

[David C]

I know realism is in the title, but as a different line of thought, maybe MJ has a narr agenda.

"This would give back some of the details that might have been lost and make them interesting" 

So, a player might trip or reload at a crucial moment to add tension? 

could even become a part of a group or player strategy (e.g. "let's pile on the reality in this fight so we are loaded up when we get to the boss").

*This* is what makes me think it will interrupt immersion and lead to dissonance.  I think JP's suggestion is best, "encourage the players to have their characters lose as well as win - and enjoy doing both."  There's a game out there already that does this, but I don't know what it is, sorry. 

[Warrior Monk]

I have that problem with my group of players, they keep milking the system, searching for rules to bend and holes in the mechanic. It's just the way they like to play, but I found they also love challenges and respect the dice more than they respect me if your players go like that, well, you can give the benny whenever they apply reality to add tension, once to only one player every escene. And even then, they have to roll for it. The difficulty could be higher when their aren't risking anything. You can also take bennys from players when they fail if they still abuse this mechanic too much.

[JoyWriter]

What you are doing is pretty much a detail incentive mechanic, but one that works in a direction I had not normally considered; most detail mechanics work by having players take advantage of previously background features of the situation, in order to gain a bonus to their rolls. So they find out that the guard is not a nameless mook, but has a family, who they blackmail him with! Or they remember a relevant detail from before and put that in, or they even describe in detail the form of their character's martial art.

All of these focus on the awesome details, the things that can help you, that can be utilised for advantage. In contrast, your prospective system encourages people to think up details that will wreck their character, which I find interesting.

The real realism issue (or at least "internal logic issue") with such points is where the bonus comes from when it reappears. Is it an extra element of circumstance that pops into existence? If so you just recreated the fate system's aspects, but with the assumption that players can pile on as many aspects as they want, in order to boost the complexity of the world. The difference in the fate system is that the players are expected to provide a constant forwards pressure, with the GM creating the ups and downs via offering fate points for compels (I can't recall if he also offers fate points for minuses, but that would be a good addition too). In this version players would get more influence over the pacing, because they can trigger the minuses themselves, which is probably no bad thing, although the conflicting abilities to shift pace could be interesting. Now in such a situation there is the problem of "Oh no I failed my lottery tickets 17 times, at least my enemy got hit by a meteor!", where an unimportant problem is milked for bonuses for what they are really after. Perhaps an alternative is where the player offers up aspects for their equipment and various other things, showing the aspects they are interested in dealing with, and other players and the GM pay them to take an appropriate fall when they want it. So a gun might run out during shooting practice, or more likely during a raid that must succeed, but is accompanied by other unexpected good fortune.

[mjbauer]

The real realism issue (or at least "internal logic issue") with such points is where the bonus comes from when it reappears. Is it an extra element of circumstance that pops into existence?

This is something that I hadn't considered. Having a player add realistic details in one area and in return it inexplicably effects some unrelated area doesn't make any sense. So it's really not serving the purpose I intended, because for every realistic element that it adds to the game it will effectively add another element that is cognitively unrealistic. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's not worth considering for another purpose.

I definitely like the idea of giving players incentive to create their own adversity. I'm just not sure exactly how to implement it yet. 

[Callan S.]

Wha? It's supposed to bring in realistic elements in the short term, isn't it? What's all this examination of what happens to the benny latter? Your not supposed to draw a story connection between it and the latter benny use. Crikey, if you start drawing connections between all bits of mechanics in any game, all realism goes to hell - so you don't do it? I mean...bennies....it's not exactly a 'the rules are the physics of the universe' kind of game to begin with, eh?

[mjbauer]

You see, I think this is your problem. You are assuming the players are there to milk the system, so that they can 'win' all the time, rather than playing the game to simulate realistic stories.

The game I'm working on is a competitive game (I probably should have mentioned that), and winning is the goal.

If realism is important than somehow encourage the players to have their characters lose as well as win - and enjoy doing both.

What's so good about realism anyway?

Realism is only important to me if it helps the players stay inside the game. What I really want is believability, and I'm not sure that this is the way to accomplish it.

[mjbauer]

Wha? It's supposed to bring in realistic elements in the short term, isn't it? What's all this examination of what happens to the benny latter? Your not supposed to draw a story connection between it and the latter benny use. Crikey, if you start drawing connections between all bits of mechanics in any game, all realism goes to hell - so you don't do it? I mean...bennies....it's not exactly a 'the rules are the physics of the universe' kind of game to begin with, eh?

A really good point Callan. I tend to lean towards ideas that make sense to me though. If I can somehow justify why this effects that then I feel much better about a mechanic. But the truth is that some of the best mechanics I've seen have no 1:1 relationship at all, they just work because it's a game and it encourages good play.

[Callan S.]

Something murmers to me to have a second bonus or something, for players who explain (ie, invent) a connection themselves.

Generally what's important is not so much that the rules make sense causally, but that the players themselves try and mesh together/invent some way in which everything comes together. It's easy to start forgetting that in the heat of gamist battle, but not so easy to forget when bonuses/your winning edge comes from remembering to fit it all together.

[jp_miller]

The game I'm working on is a competitive game (I probably should have mentioned that), and winning is the goal.

O.K. Well to add another idea: Instead of having a mechanic for realism, how about making the competition frickin nasty? Let's face it, in most RPG's the competition is scaled back a little to let our protagonists shine, and when they don't - let's be honest folks - the GM will fudge somewhat to keep them alive at least.

If you make the challenges/opponents tough as hell I think you will force a bit of realism from your players.

Just another idea for possibly adding to realism.

[JoyWriter]

I actually like the idea of extra elements of circumstance popping up, providing they do not contradict anything previously invented. If a player says "I'm in a bank, so I hit the emergency signals under the cashiers desk" by spending a fate point or whatever, then they have added an extra advantage by looking at the situation another way, and investing in the imaginary world you have created. That's a pretty good thing in my book.

It just means that "bennies" must be spent adding helpful details to the world, and are bought by adding detrimental details to the world. They are a sort of luck equilibrium! In terms of internal causality, it would be required that these details could have been unnoticed in the background as part of "all the other things happening in the world". This mechanic would be used to pull details from the background into the foreground, while also shifting them from undefined to defined. Like in those portraits where the background is misty, except for those things that the subject is interacting with.

Now is this realistic? Well that word covers so many positions it's not true! For example, realism can mean respecting the GM's world by restricting events to what could happen there in it's pre-established rules, or trying to model scientifically proved or at least consensus reality within game by dice rolls or adjudications, except when the world causes deviations. It can also be about building up the levels of detail and verisimilitude, in terms of the number of moving parts in the story, while still sticking to the GM's concept of the world or the players concept of their character (basically stuff players have primary responsibility for in more troupe based or participative games).

I'd say that this kind of mechanic fits to the latter, providing players with primary responsibility can veto uses by giving alternative details, keeping the detail level increasing.

[JoyWriter]

I just listened to that podcast you linked to, so as another way to explain it, imagine that you are giving each player a "thematic battery" which is tied to your world. Not exactly the same obviously, but it means that exploration of world is being emphasised over exploration of character, although presumably you have other mechanics heading in that direction?

[David Berg]

M.J.,
Re: your initial proposal:
Does a "benny" help me win more than a narrated rifle-jam prevents my winning?  If so, you can bet I'd be narrating colorful flubs until the GM or another player forced me to shut up.

In a competitive game, my inclination would be to have "earn a benny for colorful narration" be one of many strategic options -- more available and effective in some situations than others, and something players could plan for and incorporate into an overall gameplan.

Example brainstorm:
You progress faster toward winning if you don't impede yourself with rifle jams etc.  However, whoever has the most bennies at any moment can knock the winningest player back a significant amount.  So, when you have, say, the second-most bennies, and you have a chance to get the most, or a chance to move into second place, which do you go for?  Early in the game, you might want to wield the "most bennies" clout, and late in the game, you might want to be #2, assuming #1 will get knocked back soon, leaving you in position to win.  (I think there's some video racing game that works like this.)

Separately, are you trying to encourage contribution of just any detail?  Or only contributions of a certain aesthetic (presumably "non-superhero")?  The rules on what qualifies you for a "benny" ought to be clear on that.

[mjbauer]

Does a "benny" help me win more than a narrated rifle-jam prevents my winning?  If so, you can bet I'd be narrating colorful flubs until the GM or another player forced me to shut up.

Yes. Bennies can help more than the "realisms" can potentially hurt. So that's a good point. Maybe I need to limit the number you can get per scene, and maybe there is a way that I could make adding realism a bigger risk. That could be really fun. Maybe you aren't guaranteed a benny for adding realism, instead maybe your chance of getting a benny increases depending on how intrusive or difficult the realism is.

For example: If you run out of ammo during a gunfight with the henchmen you roll a d6 and if you get a 5 or 6 you get a benny. If your gun jams before you take the final shot on a boss you roll a d6 and get a benny for the result of anything but 1.

That's obviously just a quick example (not well thought out yet), but the idea of gambling for future benefits seems interesting and potentially really fun.

In a competitive game, my inclination would be to have "earn a benny for colorful narration" be one of many strategic options -- more available and effective in some situations than others, and something players could plan for and incorporate into an overall gameplan.

It definitely wont be the only strategic or tactical option in the game, just a mechanic to create a little interest and interaction.

However, whoever has the most bennies at any moment can knock the winningest player back a significant amount.

It's competitive in the sense that the group is competing with the GM not each other. (Something else I probably should have mentioned in the original post).

Separately, are you trying to encourage contribution of just any detail?  Or only contributions of a certain aesthetic (presumably "non-superhero")?  The rules on what qualifies you for a "benny" ought to be clear on that.

My reasoning for adding this mechanic is to justify excluding some intrusive Simulationist mechanics like keeping track of ammo, making a statistical possibility of gun jams, etc. In working on this game (which is modern/near future) I've realized that gunfights are complicated to recreate without pages of stats and rules and tables and exceptions and variables so this is my way of addressing those things (which add color to gunfights) without making players have to do a lot of annoying (and tedious) bookkeeping and rules-checking. A gunfight is fast and adrenaline filled, rolling 3 times, adding, comparing, checking stats and flipping through charts is not. But, I need to have some hard rules since the game is competitive. If it were merely narrative, players could add the details as part of the story, but in a competitive game I need to encourage them to do so with a mechanic that will ultimately benefit them in the game (otherwise it wont get used).

Yeah, I really need to explain what qualifies for a benny better. I think that calling them "Complications" and giving plenty of examples may help in encouraging the right types of details. I should probably have some kind of boundaries about appropriate details too.