What is the most realistic RPG?

[Emily Care]

So the original question is completely unanswerable except on an individual basis.

I think that was exactly Johannes' intent.  

So I want you to just answer the topic question from your personal PoV and then tell us how it is realistic.

My answer:

What rpg is most realistic?Description based gaming relying on individual knowledge and intense research on real-world physics, cultural practices appropriate to historical period, and attempts to be consistent with historical events.  Kind of like what hard-core recreationists or Society for Creative Anachronism folks would do with time and resources.  

Why? I don't have trust in any sytem I've seen to emulate reality.  I think, generally, mechanics simulate the outcome of mechanics.  There is probably some wargaming that rigourously applies laws of physics to artillery shelling etc.  That would fall under the same category.  

So what is my definition of realistic? An impossible dream.  We have to make do with coming to concensus about what results are most consistent with real world outcomes.  A completely different application of the term that I would find useful too is "realism".  This would be analogous to Hollywood realism in films--actions not necessarily having outcomes likely in a real-world situation, but having the feeling of truth.  

How did I feel about this thread off the bat? pretty darn irritated, until I read the initial post.  I think the original goal of airing a cross-section of what realistic means is a good one.  

Regards,
Emily Care

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Emily, your post is the only reason I'm replying, because you clarified Johannes' intent of getting at individualized responses. That said, I want to stress all of Ralph's points too - everything in his post is what anyone who plays the "realism" card in RPG discussions needs to read.

Johannes, for me, "realism" is about decision-making. For play to be satisfying for me, characters' decisions need to carry emotional identification for me as a participant. That is not to say that I personally agree with the decision being made, but rather that I can see its value, weight, or underlying conflict.

The best example is actually the topic of my soon-to-be-released supplement for Sorcerer, called Sex & Sorcery. I loathe playing in games in which characters of different genders are all ... the same. Just Kens and Barbies, with no gender-reflective weight to them at all. Two male characters (A and B) may be very different from one another, but how they are male matters - to me, to you, to everyone at the table, and to everyone who might encounter this particular story in any way.

Two female characters (C and D) might be played in the same group, and let's say female character C has a lot in common with male character A, in terms of how they deal with things, and what they think is right or wrong, to a very great extent differently from character B or D. That doesn't negate the fact that how C and D are female matters, as such, and as a real issue of play.

This is only one of many ways in which much role-playing negates the characters' decisions as relevant to anything outside their own box, or even negates the box itself as anything conceivably interesting to a human being. When the characters become only an expression of a set of consistent but irrelevant fictional constraints - such as pure strategy-machines, or pure "let's all get along" constructs, or pure "blue fuzzy aliens that are nothing like humans," or for that matter, conventional stereotypes - then realism has vanished for me.

In my view, the term really has nothing whatsoever to do with the "reality" of the imagined world, constraints of time or space, or plausibility, or anything similar.

Best,
ron

[lumpley]

Nicotine Girls is the most realistic RPG.  That's because a) it can be set in CDGA Sr Academy, the Eastview mall, and a Model UN convention in 1989-90; b) it can feature Connie, Stacy, Stacy and Deb; c) it can have a supporting cast of me, Gary, Joe, Clark, Porter, Matt, and Karston the German exchange student; and d) it's likely that none of Connie, Stacy, Stacy and Deb's dreams will come true.

-Vincent

[Thingmaker]

I suggest an alternative to the term "realism." Try this on for size: "degree of willing suspension of disbelief." The term "willing suspension of disbelief" comes from literary analysis. Tolkien's characters from The Hobbit are not realistic, but they are certainly considered believable by most people. Piers Anthony's characters from the Xanth novels are even less realistic, but are still believable to persons willing to further extend their suspension of disbelief.

I suspect strongly that discussing the degree of willing suspension of disbelief will result in less confusion and greater utility for both narrativists and simulationists.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Thingmaker,

And welcome to the Forge!

With respect, I disagree with you on several counts.

#1 concerns my post above, specifically. I am actually citing something which is the very opposite of "suspension of disbelief" - the utterly unswerving, unforgiving, and demanding expectations that people bring regarding characters' behavior in fictional situations. I don't consider this to have any fantastical or speculative elements at all. Of course, the post only concerns my own outlook, and so is not especially important at the higher levels of debate, but I do think it represents a single falsifying point.

#2 is more general, based on the observation, which is the basis of Johannes' post, that "realism" is frequently cited in gaming texts and debates, as a thing-in-itself (however wrongly). He's interested in that thing, or the illusion of that thing. Even if there is a better word for it, "realism" is the term under discussion because it's part of the cultural landscape of the hobby.

#3 is most general, and I hope it doesn't spawn a string of outrage like the last one I posted about this topic - which is that "suspension of disbelief" may be itself controversial as a term, perhaps even more so than realism when examined critically.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Wow, lots going on here.

First, Jonathan, I agree with Ralph in all particulars. But I'd have pointed this out, first. What would you have said, if the other people had said that their reason for wanting to keep the rule the same was, "Because it's more fun that way." You'd have promptly asked them why. And then they'd have said, "Because it's more realistic." So, they were just skipping a silly step. And you should have known that. Think about it. What if the situation had been reversed, and you'd said, "Because it's more fun that way."? They'd have then asked you why. And what would you have answered? Something about how it makes the card more effective, and therefore a more rewarding event when played. Or something to that effect, no?

That's a better answer than realistic? Just a preference.

The fact that the rewarding nature of realism surprises you makes me think that you're joking. Or do you really find it that hard to believe that realism can provide fun for people like me. Yes, I'm a "realist" of a sort. In fact, I've been known to say that if a game is abstracted enough so that the mechanics cannot uniquely be identified with the "setting" for a game, that I don't like playing such games. Because it's at that point that you can't test real world derived hypotheses in-game. Without that, why play with any setting at all? Realism may not be your thing, but for some people it's crucial.

Ron,

Traveller has touted it's "egalitarian" treatment of females as both a step forward in Feminism, and a realistic result of a futuristic world. Is the "box reduction" made manifest in that game a pro or a con? I'm pretty sure that you'll say it's a bad thing. While setting realists like myself would argue the opposite. Just another case of what were talking about here of differing opinions. Could we call these two schools Narrativist Realism and Sim Realism? Tempting, but likely problematic.


Mike

[quozl]

The fact that the rewarding nature of realism surprises you makes me think that you're joking. Or do you really find it that hard to believe that realism can provide fun for people like me.

Mike

Mike, we must be on opposite ends of the realism preference spectrum.  I have been wargaming for about 24 years now.  I know there are lots of realism fanatics.  

I guess I never understood why realism was so important to so many people, since I always played in the abstract.  Even in roleplaying games, the setting is nothing to me unless it affects the situation.  What I find surprising is that in RPGs, I'm in the minority.  I think that everywhere else (including wargames -- just look at chess), I'm in the majority.  Do you think that is an accuate assessment?

[Paganini]

This will be difficult to say without confusing GNS terms. Note the use of the word (small 's') simulation. :)

I think a great deal of dichotomy between "realism fanciers" and "realism indifferents" stems from different approaches to enjoyment. Saying "I enjoy realism" or "I dislike realism," and drawing a line between them as simple matters of preference is somewhat over-generalising.

The crucial question is: Does one derive enjoyment from the actual mechanics of the RPG? Are they fun to use? Or does one derive enjoyment from the simulation of a reality, the mechanics of the RPG being important only insofar as they affect that simulation?

Let's take Go for example. Is it "realistic?" Well that's hard to say. Realistic compared to what? There's really no frame of reference. Go is its own universe. It's fun for the sake of its own abstract mechanics.

An RPG analogy is The Questing Beast. The mechanics are fun to use, because . . .  they're fun to use. In a game design sense, TQB is fun for its own sake as an abstract game, just as Go is.

People who are looking for this sort of enjoyment do not care at all about how well the mechanics simulate anything.

Alternatively, if your enjoyment is in correctly simulating an environement (I.e., realism, in whatever shape or form) then the mechanics of TQB will not help you at all.

[Walt Freitag]

I associate realism primarily with the human or human-equivalent characters of a game setting. I don't care if rivers flow uphill or a warrior can take six arrows without slowing down. But realism to me requires that the people in the game world exhibit human nature, collectively as well as individually.

If the people don't exploit available economic opportunities, cut corners when they can get away with it, or form alliances when it's in their mutual interest to do so, they're not believable. If all virgins who are "of age" must enter a lottery to determine who gets fed to the dragon, and there are any virgins who are "of age," they're not believable. If power vacuums go chronically unfilled, they're not believable. If readily usable magical spells could clearly obviate the need for all agriculture, and agriculture is still practiced, they're not believable. If extensive criminal classes exist, and yet some completely feasible and extremely advantageous technology is not practiced because it's been outlawed, they're not believable.

When the people aren't believable, it reflects on the people, not on the background details that create the contradiction. My brain isn't wired to understand dragons; it's pretty neutral on the question of whether or not it makes any sense that a dragon would consume only female virgins. But it's very prejudiced about human nature, and so it rejects the idea that any family would allow a girl to be in a condition causing such a high risk of fatality, unless there are strong reasons (such as even more dire consequences) for acting otherwise.

(And that last paragaph stands as my answer to the cliche realism-in-RPGs claim: "You have a world where dragons can fly, you can't complain that [some particular thing] is unrealistic." Yes I can, and I do, if that thing contradicts human nature.)

One likely result, therefore, of this kind of unrealism is ultimately that it makes the people seem dense. For instance, I believe that it's commonly perceived, but rarely mentioned, that the people (and other sentient creatures) inhabiting "standard fantasy" settings are a little on the dim side. Parody almost always brings this out. For instance, the story "Horse Sense" from XXXenophie no. 6 includes this delightful bit of dialog:

Uriah: "Ever since we got sucked here from Earth, we met dragons, elves, monsters, giants, wizards, and who knows what else, right? And what did they all have in common?"

Sybil: "Um... They've all been pretty stupid."

Uriah: "Exactly!"

That's not to say that characters and even whole populations can't have cultures, religions, mental illnesses, environments, histories, hatreds, or even (to a limited extent) biological differences that make their behaviors alien to my own thinking. This is not only possible, it's usually expected. But once those influences are understood, the behavior has to be understandable in that context.

Which means I've worked my way around to very clsoe to Ron's point, I think. In any case, the meaning of realism I'm talking about can perhaps be boiled down to: realism is the possibility of exploration of character. (And situation, insofar as the situation arises from the actions of characters).

- Walt

[Valamir]

Interesting discussion:

Jon: I can't imagine you (i.e. the view you expressed in your last post) placing you in anything but the extreme minority in wargaming.  Not that that's a bad thing.  But I would say there are PLENTY of wargamers who would support Design for Effect over Design for Cause, or be satisfied with abstraction at a higher level than others (me for one)...but they're still completely concerned with Realism...just (as I pointed out) have different ways of getting to a level of realism they concider worth while.  The idea of a wargamer being unconcerned at all with realism...you would be the first and only such person I've ever met to say that.  I wonder if what you label as a wargame is different from what I would.  

Panzer Blitz is a wargame.  Squad Leader is a wargame.  Europa is a wargame.  Older (pre wizard-thing and Victory) Columbia Block games were war games.  We The People (with some HIGHLY design for effect elements that I love but other grognards hate) is a wargame.  Age of Renaissance is not a wargame (one of my favorites...but not a wargame).  There are wargames, and then there are games with war in them.


Nathan:  Yup


Walt:  Couldn't agree more...while unlike you I wouldn't make that the primary distinction between real unreal, its definitely a factor.  I remember at the young age of...hmmm...call it 10 or 12 reading the 1ed AD&D DMs guide (which as a young whippersnapper I read cover to cover multiple times like a favorite novel) and encountering one of my first moments that you describe.  It occured in the section on building a castle.  Wait a minute says I.  A magic user can cast Wall of Stone at 9th level which is permanent and Dig at 7th level.  Who in the world would be building a castle...

[quozl]

Interesting discussion:

Jon: I can't imagine you (i.e. the view you expressed in your last post) placing you in anything but the extreme minority in wargaming.  Not that that's a bad thing.  

That would be because we're defining wargames differently.  I think Chess and Go are wargames (and not just because they deal with war).  I think that discussion is definitely off-topic but I'd be glad to discuss this more if you like in PMs or email.

Back to the topic of realism, realistic thoughts and emotions are way more important to me than realistic bullet trajectories.  That is what drives the story and gives it meaning so that is what I care about.  To me, if it doesn't impact the story, it is only meaningless detail.

[Le Joueur]

I've been struggling with an answer for this one because I kept thinking I'd read what sounded like the whole axis which 'realistic games' slid up and down.  I felt I'd finally seen the 'how and why' that people try to achieve 'more realism' in game design, but I'll be damned if I had much luck finding it...

Until tonight.[/list:u]What do I think realism is analytically?  Well the most important part about it has to do with game design.  One of the things most designers, bent on 'realistic' design, really mess up in their minds is the difference between simulation and emulation.  In other realms of design, simulation is when you have 'the guts' of the process set up to follow the patterns that reality uses to generate results.  Emulation is when 'the guts' have no real bearing on 'what is real' and the results are crafted to be more and more

convincing.

What these misguided game designers seem to think is that they are somehow, in some twisted way, simulating reality.  I've yet to see any game mechanic that does more than just a miniscule amount of hand-waving while 'going deep' into emulation.  The more the designer 'attempts' simulating, the less 'realistic' the results are.

That brings us to Ralph's (Valamir's) point about "design for cause" or "design for effect."  This runs parallel to the whole 'simulation versus emulation' issue, but doesn't necessarily subscribe to the fallacy of true simulation (which absolves those designs).  Personally, I see no point in tabletop role-playing games to attempt any level of simulation, or "design for cause" for that matter, and take all of my designing the other way.

But it always puzzled me why people felt they could, or were, designing more and more 'realistically' (especially simulatively).  That question was finally answered by something Gareth (contracycle) posted a link to.

That web page deals with board games, but taken a different way, almost perfectly describes ways to approach role-playing game design.  While I'd call them 'the techniques of convergence,' the web page calls it The Two Rules of Congruence:[list=1][*]Whenever possible, the structures of the game should mirror the structures of the content.
[*]The structures of the game should never contradict the structures of the content.[/list:o]If you apply this again and again to your design, always trying to increase the 'congruence,' your game design will become more 'realistic.'

I suppose.[/list:u]I can see how some people could believe that such a cycling would result in an ever more 'realistic' game and that explains the 'realism urge' as it functions in game design that I have seen.  ...But doesn't do much to explain

why this would be a good thing.

I have to say that both Ron ("characters' decisions need to carry emotional identification for me as a participant") and Walt ("that the people in the game world exhibit human nature") begin to make deep scratches in the surface.  I mean to me the core elements of role-playing gaming are 'Thinking in Context' and interacting with other players.  Combining these both demonstrates the importance of Characters in the game.  I can't imagine behaviours of such, being worthwhile except for the emotional reactions they engender in the participants.  That means that there must be some degree of identification (Ron's point) and human nature (Walt's point) or else you've got boring characters acting in alien fashion, not terribly engaging except perhaps clinically.

What both these opinions miss is the 'larger context.'  It is the 'rest of the game' that lends both the evocative and human behaviours greater impact.  (I might go so far as to suggest this is why there are relatively few games that don't include 'epic' abilities far beyond those of reality; it lends to a bigger impact.)  This is where the "interacting" makes all the difference; it is also where the explicit structures (or implicit, in some games) come into play.  Designs attempt to 'converge with reality' so as to give credence to the humanity and emotional accessibility of the characters' actions.  Systems that are 'more realistic' not only support, but also defend, each participant's sensation of consistency and therefore theoretically to human behaviour that is more likely emotionally accessible to real humans.

So that is what I see 'realism' is both for and why it is attempted.  If we could set aside the illusion that 'twice the realism' will result in 'twice the accessibility,' and take a more epicurean approach to "design for effect," I think we could create games that are more appealing than their 'more realistic' cousins.

Oh, and for the record, to me Scattershot is the most realistic....

Fang Langford

[M. J. Young]

Ralph raises some excellent points; I hope I can add to them.

Ultimately, all role playing games are fantasy role playing games. We are imagining that we are other people in other places doing other things; the entire process is the realization of the unreal. It is essential to the concept that we have mentally stepped outside the bounds of reality.

The question seems to be, at what points have we done this?

I happen to think there are a lot of very realistic aspects to Multiverser. To identify a few:

[*]Skill improvement comes from practice, not in any way influenced by "adventuring" time or experience; it is easier to improve a skill by sitting at home going over it than by relying on it in a crisis, although the latter can also help..[*]Potential damage from falling increases geometrically with distance, while actual damage is still randomized. Every once in a while someone does fall an incredible distance and manages to survive, usually because they landed the right way on the right surface, but the farther you fall the less likely this is.[*]It's easier for a person who understands later developments in technology to go back and fill in the gaps in his understanding of earlier ones than for someone with a strong grasp of primitive technologies to make the leap to more advanced ones; in the same way, it's easier for people who have mastered difficult body skills to master simpler ones than the other way around. It's easier to go from jet engines to steam engines than the other way.[/list:u]
On the other hand, the core premises of the game include:

[*]You died and awoke in another world, and from now on you'll never age but every time you die you'll awaken in another world.[*]Everything that anyone has ever imagined doing is possible, at least in some worlds.[*]Every world that anyone has ever imagined existing does exist.[/list:u]It's kind of difficult to claim that a game is "realistic" when those are the core premises. No one believes them, really. They make for a great game background.

Every game does this, to one degree or another: it mixes the fantastic elements with the more credible ones. As gamers, we accept the fantastic elements as the bases for what we're doing, and rely on the credible ones to provide the familiarity we need to know how to function within those worlds. In one game, we'll accept that wizards can throw fire from their fingers, as long as arrows behave properly. In another game, we'll accept that a skilled archer can be as deadly as a skilled rifleman, as long as the feeling of the old west is captured. Again, we'll accept that spaceships can travel interstellar distances in mere days or hours and that intelligent life forms interact throughout the galaxy and even perhaps interbreed, as long as heroes win fistfights and villains fall for clever bluffs and ruses (wait, was there a "real" part to that one?).

The point is that we mix reality and fantasy in every game. It's the whole point. So it isn't a matter of which game is most real, but of which game does the best job of accurately emulating those aspects of the real world which you think are necessary for it to seem real. If you have no problem with elves in your reality, or time machines, or telekinesis, then they don't detract from the "reality". The question isn't whether the game is real, but whether it's unreal in any way that bothers you personally.

--M. J. Young

[M. J. Young]

Somehow I managed to post after reading only the first page; I'll beg that I'm tired, and should have been asleep hours ago. There's a lot of good stuff on the second page, particularly Ron and Walt on believability of characters--but I think what I said does fit with that. I'm posting again to replay to

Traveller has touted it's "egalitarian" treatment of females as both a step forward in Feminism, and a realistic result of a futuristic world. Is the "box reduction" made manifest in that game a pro or a con? I'm pretty sure that you'll say it's a bad thing. While setting realists like myself would argue the opposite.

There's a tendency for people to believe that in the future the world will be the way the progressive thinkers of the present imagine it to be. This is almost always wrong. I've got an article over at The Learning Fountain (appropriately entitled http://www.learningfountain.com/future.htm">The Future where I discuss some of why this is, but I still find it annoying, particularly in science fiction.

The majority of science fiction seems to assume that in the future all gender differences will vanish. It's also tacitly accepted that religions (which have lasted thousands of years and outlasted many philosophies that were predicted to replace them) will vanish without trace. There are a number of other common themes that crop up, beliefs of the present projected into the future, which just don't hold up to scrutiny.

Even thirty years ago, people were writing stories in which the American/Soviet tension dominated interstellar space. Clarke's 2010 is a prime example of this, although at least in a credibly short term future from when it was written. Neither that tension nor the "inevitable ascendancy of socialism" seems to be present today.

Twenty years ago I had a list of eminent scholars and intellectuals who rejected the notion that men and women were psychologically identical. At the top of it was Sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, who argued that males and females evolved for different social functions and could not escape that. Below that was someone styling himself a Darwinian Anthropologist (the name David comes to mind, if anyone can help me out here), who demonstrated that males and females had markedly different "best strategies" for assuring the preservation of their genetic line. (Interestingly, he maintained that contrary to the claims of many feminists, marriage was the best female strategy. Males produced the greatest number of survivable offspring, according to this theory, by promiscuity, females by monopolizing the best possible mate, even if shared with other females. I don't know whether this is correct.) There were several others.

The suggestion that in the future men and women will be psychologically and socially identical may be solid feminism (of the 1960's variety, at least), but it hardly seems sound scientifically. In that sense, I don't think Traveler was at all realistic on that point.

--M. J. Young

[simon_hibbs]

The most relaistic game will be the game with which you and your
players are most comfortable playing. If you realy want a game to
be realistic, then you will make it realistic through the way you
behave and the choices you make during play.

It doesn't matter how realistic a setting or rules are, if they don't
suit your style of play and preferences in game mechanics. Any
disparity will simply result in frustration.


Simon Hibbs