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Quote from: John Kim
Most traditional as well as most narration-based mechanics would be plausible but not realistic. There is no particular effort at simulation. The game designer/GM/player may make up modifiers and results, but they are based on feeling rather than real-world knowledge. So, for example, you can just tell the players to make up something that fits and it is fairly easy to be plausible.

Realism is distinct in that it requires research. i.e. Mechanics with are both plausible and realistic go beyond common sense and preconceptions. For example, games like FVLMINATA or Sengoku incorporate historical research into character generation. Games like Traveller have science in their starship and star system mechanics. Games like Millenium's End have research in their gun damage. These are uncommon but not non-existant.

Accepting as a given for the sake of this discussion that there is such a thing as a knowable objective reality...

...I actually disagree with this on a fairly fundamental level.  I don't think you can make the distinction between plausible and realistic in an RPG (or in any simulation for that matter, but lets stick to RPGs).  

Plausibility is entirely based on individual knowledge.  Based on what you* know of the way X works, did the outcome seem reasonable?  If yes, then its plausible...if not than its not.

But there is always someone who knows more about a given topic than the game's designer.  The outcome that seemed reasonable to you seems highly unlikely to the expert.  And the outcome that seems reasonable to the expert seems less so to the expert who knows even more than the first one.  

Thus, the rules for Fvlminata or Sengoku cannot be said to be "realistic".  They can only be said to appear more plausible to a wider range of people.  The research that John speaks of above doesn't make these games "realistic", it just sets the bar a little higher with regards to the level of knowledge you'd need to have in order to see the holes.  Someone with a doctorate in Japanese studies who's written treatises on the Sengoku period can almost certainly find areas of the rules that if implemented in a game would lead to a result he'd find much less plausible than the average roleplayer.

So in my opinion "realistic" as a term can never have any objective meaning for an RPG.  Any game that I find plausible is going to seem "more realistic" to me than one that I don't find plausible.  But that same game is going to seem "unrealistic" to someone who knows more than I do.


In the thread the above came from, the example being bandied about was how to use attributes and skills in a way to realistically output jumping distances.  The assumption was that games such as GURPs get it wrong, and their jumping distances are implausible, therefor there must be a better objective way of fashioning the rules to be more realistic.  Only actual measureable factors were judged to make good attributes and
variables such as leg strength and leg length were identified as being key to jumping distance.

So lets assume that someone designs a game where leg strength and leg length are attributes (being measurable in the real world and thus suitable as attributes under this premise).  The rules then rovide some formula by which jumping distances are calculated and the designer proclaims the game to have rules for "realistic jumping distances" as a selling feature.

Then someone comes along who is an olympic level track and field athletic trainer and physician who plays the game.  He knows that tendon tautness and elasticity are crucial factors in generating explosive long jump distances.  He knows that injuries can reduce elasticity as well as age.  Part of his research has been to graph the age based atrophy of tendon elasticity and its effects on a long jumper's career.

The doctor plays a character who over his career has suffered several leg injuries and is now pushing 40.  However, the game rules don't account for the loss of elasticity that comes from injuries and age and the negative impact on his jumping is not modeled.  The doctor finds that to be entirely implausible and declares the rules unrealistic. [note *I* am not an expert in olympic long jumping and just made all of this last part up].


By this time it should be clear that "realism"...even in a universe with an objective knowable reality...is always going to be in the eyes of the beholder because no one can know enough about every topic to design a simulation that all of the world' experts would declare "realistic".  You'd have to have a seperate rule for everything and hire leading experts in each field to write the algorithm for it.  Maybe then the game would produce plausible results for 99.9% of humanity and thus be declarable as "realistic" (and likely entirely unplayable).

But barring that,"realistic" only means...CAN only mean..."it seems plausible to me based on what I know about the topic."



So given that "realistic" can not be actually achieved with game rules, where does that leave game designers who seek to design games that are "realistic"?  

Well, if that is their only defined goal: "I want to design a realistic game" translates to "I want to design a game that I find plausible" which since plausibility is based entirely on personal knowledge and judgement boils down to "I want to design a game that I like based on my own personal preferences".

While I'm a big believer in designing games that you yourself like, ones personal preferences are hardly an objective measure.  And without an objective measure how can the game be marketed to people who don't share identical preferences?  How do you sell it to them?  

If you sell it to them as "Realistic" then you're basically misleading them (because what you really mean is "plausible to me").  Some gamer is bound to know more about a particular topic than you, find some aspect implausible, and declare your game "crap", "broken", or "poorly researched".  It doesn't matter how much research you actually did...because no matter how much you've done...someone will know more than you and proclaim it not enough...and therefor "not realistic".

So, if you market the game as "realistic", you're pretty much guarenteed that someone out there will quite accurately proclaim it to be "unrealistic"...then you've failed.  Your design is a failure because it failed to obtain its goal of being realistic.  That's when the fans of the game start writing house rules for it, and the next generation of designers embarks on a quest to "fix" the holes in your game with an even MORE "realistic" design...ad infinitum ad nauseum.


So what should a plausibility minded game designer do?  After all there's nothing wrong with wanting plausibility or crunchy rules, and I love designers who do their home work to research a game that I can both find plausible and learn from...so go ahead and set out to write a highly crunchy highly plausible rules set.

BUT...be sure to define your goals for the game much narrower and more precise than "realistic".  "realism" as a goal is a guarenteed failure.  Set goals that you can actually achieve.  That way when the inevitable know it all points out that your rules for X aren't realistic you can respond with certainty that "the rules for X achieve the specific design goal and thus are the correct rule for the game".  Realism (aka plausibility) becomes a technique for achieving the goal, and you only have to be as realistic as it takes to get there.  Now your design is not a failure.  Now your design is a success because it actually achieves what you set out to do.

Some have tried to equate "what does your game do", or "what is the purpose of your game" or "what are your design goals" as being Narrativist questions.  Lev Lafayette went so far as to write in the above linked thread:  "In other words, for the purposes of sim, yes the rules reflect realism"

Hopefully I've demonstrated that this is a provably false statement, and one doomed to failure as a design goal.  The design goal can not be to reflect realism because realism can never actually be achieved...its simply individual plausibility and personal preference couched in the terminology of "realism" in order to justify adopting those preferences as the "right way".

Rather, instead, any game INCLUDING sim facilitating games must start from a specific objective.  In design.  Form follows function.  The rules are the form, and the design goals and objectives are the function.  Without defining those goals you have no objective measure of success.  You have nothing to evaluate the form against...you have a bad design...by definition.

So design your more plausible mechanics for jumping distances, do your extensive research into ancient rome and feudal Japan, get your crunch on...but do it for a reason. KNOW what that reason is, and pursue it with single minded determination.

Remember:
Including rules for things you need is good design.
NOT including rules for things you don't need is ALSO good design
Your design goals are there to tell you which is which.


*"you" as in the generic example person.

I have to absolutely agree with Ralph here. When people say "Realistic" they basically mean "Plausible with regard to my personal model of the real world". Thus realism is just a specific subset of plausibility where the reference frame is one's personal model of reality.

And I would like to add one thing: People do not necessarily need to know more to find some game rule "unrealistic" (implausible that is). they could just as well know less and find something implausible that is absolutely plausible for an expert.
Take for example a hypothetical game about (space) travel that includes relativity effects. A person from the 19th century would very probably shake his head at the idea that time slows down when you move faster. I can almost hear them say: "What the ...? So when I run, my watch goes slower?!? This is totally unrealistic! This game sucks!!" So basically everything that does not fit ones personal model of reality is viewed as unrealistic. And this just means that it is perceived as implausible when judged by what one believes about reality.

Ralph,

As you can tell from my posts in that linked thread, I completely concur.

Let me also point out that I have realized, through that thread, that this problem is entirely linked to task resolution systems. Focusing on plausible results means almost necessarily a focus on individual actions and what specific effects they produce. When you replace task resolution with conflict resolution mechanics that simply allow you to resolve stakes, *each group of players* can determine by themselves what the plausible task-level interpretation of the conflict outcome is. It takes away from the mechanical detail of a scene, but the players can flesh those details out as much as they want based on their own understanding of what's going on.

So. My point is, if you're very concerned with plausibility, maybe a solution is the completely counter-intuitive path of switching to conflict resolution and leaving the details to the players' imagination. It won't work for everybody, of course, but it's worth contemplating.

Hi Ralph,

I diagree with you, so let me paraphrase your argument to see if I've got the gist of it: No one can write a realistic game because you can always find someone who can add more relevant detail.

This much is not true. When you build any model, you build it with an eye towards achieving a certain level of accuracy and precision. At any given level, you really, honestly, truly can nail  all of the factors that matter -- all other factors will be at the level of noise. Then, when someone says, "But you didn't account for X", you can say, "My game models events with a precision of 1.0, and X can only shift the answer by .01. So it should not be in the model," and that's the end of that.

But I do agree with you on the larger point that the choice of how much detail to pursue is a very significant design choice that the designer should not ignore. I don't think your argument supports it, though -- it just falls out from the obvious fact that a model can't tell you what it should be modelling.

If I have it correctly John's example was in contrast to GURPS and Hero where weight-lifters are the best long-jumpers. This means that a game which distinguishes the "big strong weight-lifter guy" from "the guy with strong legs" is going to operate at a lower-level of abstraction than the game which just has "a strong character."

The term realism, in this context, I think refers to the level of abstraction modeled (i.e. John's example models body-type but not age as in your example). I think that in contrast it is possible for one game to be "more realistic" than another in that respect.

I mean, it's true that becoming closer to real is a journey that has no end and it's true that a game mechanic which doesn't allow every possible result is going to be 'unrealistic somewhere'--but I think we can still distinguish between games which present and use very high-level abstractions (which may create more implausibilities in their mechanics) than games which use lower-level abstractions (which may produce fewer).

I'm reminded of Morrorw Project's wound and hit location tables (taken from battlefield wound data). If I got shot in the head with a 9mm and lived in that game I wouldn't declare it "unrealistic" because I can see just how damn unlikely that really is given their system (i.e. it's about as likely as it is judging from real wound data: not very).*

On the other hand, if I play Hero and roll 1d+1 RKA for the handgun and deem a head shot to be 2x Body (I don't recall the actual modifer) I can see that my normal guy will take about 9 BODY from an average shot. A slighly lower than average shot (a roll of a 2) does 6 BOD. That, you know, isn't "all that deadly" and if I had to make a real life decision based on facing down a 9mm to the face I'd think that Morrow Project more 'realisitcaly' represented my odds of survival than Hero.

It's all about the contrast to something else, IMO.

-Marco
* Note that there is a credibility issue here (which is what John also touches on with the research bit). A game which clearly has done its research may seem more credible to me than one which hasn't. This doesn't necessiarily make it "more real" in an objective sense, I would say. But I think it's related to a sense of objective reality when what we assume or might believe at first glance is shown not to be true (or not necessiarily true).

Neel,

I think you and Ralph are mostly disagreeing due to differing definitions of 'realistic'.  Your definition from you post is pretty much what Ralph is calling 'plausible within the design goals'.  He seems (this is my interpretation) to be defining 'realistic' as 'absolutely faithful to real-world phenomena to the Nth degree of detail'.  Given that,  I believe he is correct in say that designing a realistic game is doomed to failure.  No one knows that much about the real world.  However, setting solid design parameters and then making the mechanics plausible within the parameters is very doable.

Quote from: ValamirLev Lafayette went so far as to write in the above linked thread:  "In other words, for the purposes of sim, yes the rules reflect realism"

Hopefully I've demonstrated that this is a provably false statement, and one doomed to failure as a design goal.  The design goal can not be to reflect realism because realism can never actually be achieved...its simply individual plausibility and personal preference couched in the terminology of "realism" in order to justify adopting those preferences as the "right way".

I have to agree with Neel.  Your argument, in short, is "Well, a model can't be 100% perfectly realistic -- therefore realism doesn't exist."  I think this is self-evident nonsense.  Models exist and are used for real tasks from building bridges to saving lives, even though they are not 100% accurate.  

My deep-down fundamental objection is that you are equating matching player preconceptions/misconceptions with realism, and are therefore writing off the possibility of education through RPGs.  i.e. Suppose some kids are playing a game about medieval Japan.  The first game they play is by an author who freely makes up stuff based on old comic books and half-remembered movies.  The second game is by an author who researches the period and provides real information.  According to you, both of these are equally plausible since the kids playing don't know any better.  And since realism doesn't exist, that is the only thing you can say about these.  

I cannot object more strongly to this.  There is a very real and very important difference between these two.  I attended a panel at Knutepunkt 2005 which had several teachers in it who were using RPGs with their classes, and many more who wanted to know about how to do so.  In order to talk at all about education, you need to be able to differentiate between plausibility (i.e. what sounds good on the surface) with realism (i.e. content to be taught).

Hi guys,

While the logical construction of Ralph's argument may not hold for you, I agree with the idea behind it.  

For the purposes of designing games to be functionally used by humans- there are limitations to how well we can model actual reality.  So, for actual play, designers need to juggle what things to model more or less accurately, and what levels of that creates plausibility in their game world.

Arguing that something is more "realistic" can only be claimed with a couple of extra riders to it:
-Realistic in these particular areas(firearms, horseriding, whatever)
-Realistic according to these particular sources (personal experience, masters of the field, research)

With all these riders- complete or overall realism is not a plausible, functional goal.  Plausibility in relation to realism, within certain boundaries and areas of simulation is something that people CAN aim for, and achieve.

Chris

Nicholas:  Absolutely true.  You don't even have to bring different time periods into it.  Just create a game based on realistic firearms based on real military and police data and give it to a bunch of typical gamers to see how much reality conflict with their idea of plausible.

Christian:  Conflict resolution is absolute *a* solution (along with the Fortune in the middle mechanics that often accompany it).  It works because the rules stop being about giving a plausible result and just give a high level outcome and leave it to the play group to fit a plausible result into that outcome...thereby ensuring for any given group the result will seem plausible.  One down side to that is that you rely on the players to have sufficient knowledge to fill in the blanks.  Sometimes there is a desire to not have any idea how it will work and allow the game system to show you the answer.  Conflict resolution isn't so good for that.

Personally, that's where I see the role of Task Resolution being.  That game or portion of a game that you want to educate the players on how something works.  The best way to do that is often to break the complex event (like tactical combat) down into maneageable chunks and let the players experiment with assembling those chunks in an effective manner and thus "learn" a bit about tactics (as envisioned by the designer) in the process.  Riddle of Steel's Combat system does this admirably IMO.


Neel:  Let me change the paraphrase for you.  "No one can deny a realistic game so one first must recognize that what you're calling realistic is just your personal judgement on plausibility.  Once you realize that "realistic" is thus not some actual goal with its own intrinsic value you can realize that all of the time you thought you were pursuing this holy grail of realism you were really doing nothing more than pursuing your own personal judgment.  Thus all of the dogma that crops up surrounding realism can be discarded because while applying that dogma to the illusory "realism" might sound good...applying it to joes-personal-judgement is just foolish.  Recognizing that allows designers to break away from the slavish pursuit of something that can't be achieved and instead put their energies into what can...designing a game to meet a specific goal or ideal.

Your point on precision is well taken, but not really implementable in a game environment.  You can talk about significant digits and tolerance and degrees of precision when you have something mathematically measurable in the controlled conditions of a lab, but in the outside of the lab that precision (being based on assumptions of conditions that no longer exist) doesn't hold.  That's while real world tank engagements rarely play out in a manner that sophisticated military ballistic simulations would suggest.

They can calculate all they want about angle of attack, kinetic energy, and mm of armor with given properties...but once tanks start shooting at each other it never works so cleanly.

But that's somewhat besides the point, because this "really, honestly, truly can nail all of the factors that matter -- all other factors will be at the level of noise" is only true IF the designer of the game is an expert in that field.  And not just that field...but every field that will be represented in the game.  If he's not (and that clearly is the standard assumption) then he can't nail down all of the factors that matter because he doesn't have enough knowledge to.  He can't estimate the degree of precision that he does nail down because he doesn't know enough about what he doesn't know to determine that.  

That's what usually happens in such games.  You'll get some piece of it that hyper "realistic"...such as ballistics rules that take into account muzzle velocity and recoil etc.  Because THAT's the piece the designer researched enough to know about to be able to do what you suggest.  But the rest of the game...say the computer hacking rules, or the security systems rules, or the vehicle rules...are just back to the realm of designer's personal plausibility.  And as I noted...the game that achieves maximum precision for all of its rules for every aspect of the game...probably isn't playable.


Marco:  With regards to "More realistic", sure...I said as much.  I wrote "Any game that I find plausible is going to seem "more realistic" to me than one that I don't find plausible. But that same game is going to seem "unrealistic" to someone who knows more than I do. "  But just because Morrow is "more realistic" than GURPs doesn't make Morrow "realistic".

"More realistic" simply means that more people will find Morrow's ballistic outcomes to be plausible than will find Hero's outcomes to be plausible.  But there again "More people" has to be defined to a particular demographic...which people...more tribesmen in Cameron?  More CSI ballistics experts?  

Also, I'll just not here (though it would make a good thread) that degree of abstraction is only tangentally related to degree of plausbility.  You can have a high degree of plausibility with a very abstract set of rules.  The only thing low abstraction does is allow people who are less expert to get more plausble results.  Experts can get quite plausible results with very abstract rules.


John:  You're not disagreeing with me at all, because I agree completely with the phenemenon you're outlining.  I merely disagreed with you using "realism" to define the distinction.  But note here what you're doing when you say "therefore writing off the possibility of education through RPGs. "  That's pure design goal.

If the designer doesn't give a fig about educating children about feudal Japan but his design goal is to achieve a fun play experience...then yes it makes no difference.  Goal accomplished.  If the designers goal is to educate children and wants to use the game as a teaching device, that's great too.  That's the sort of design goal I'm talking about.

With regards to using it as a teaching tool, perhaps you judge Sengoku to have enough factual information to be useful as a teaching tool to children.  Great, I love the idea.  But that doesn't make it "realistic".  That simply makes it accurate enough for your purpose.  Game A might be plausible to the children and implausible to you and thus you judge it not suitable as a teaching tool.  But just because you judge Game B as being suitable as a teaching tool does not make it realistic.  It just means its plausible both to the children and to you.  Someone else may come along and say "holy cow, how could you fill the children's mind with such rubbish...Game B is totally unrealistic"...because its not plausible to them.

I'm only objecting to taking an arbitrary degree of plausibility (i.e. what's plausible to you) and labeling it realistic.   Your concept I completely agree with.  But Realistic is not an appropriate word to use to define it.

Quote from: Valamir
Marco:  With regards to "More realistic", sure...I said as much.  I wrote "Any game that I find plausible is going to seem "more realistic" to me than one that I don't find plausible. But that same game is going to seem "unrealistic" to someone who knows more than I do. "  But just because Morrow is "more realistic" than GURPs doesn't make Morrow "realistic".

"More realistic" simply means that more people will find Morrow's ballistic outcomes to be plausible than will find Hero's outcomes to be plausible.  But there again "More people" has to be defined to a particular demographic...which people...more tribesmen in Cameron?  More CSI ballistics experts?  

Also, I'll just not here (though it would make a good thread) that degree of abstraction is only tangentally related to degree of plausbility.  You can have a high degree of plausibility with a very abstract set of rules.  The only thing low abstraction does is allow people who are less expert to get more plausble results.  Experts can get quite plausible results with very abstract rules.

I pretty much agree with this: nothing in an RPG will ever be either "completely realistic" nor (and therefore will never) meet some arbitrary standard of realism.

I think John's point was that researching how something you are modeling "actually might work" (or actually does/did work) gives the game a quality that simply making stuff up doesn't (he termed that 'realism').

It's true that we may not always be able to tell (I can't say with dead certainty if Bushido! is a good representation of feudal japan and their views on, say, sword fighting or a very poor one). Morrow Project has laser weapons--clearly not realisitc (so do I judge their excellent section on "drop a nuclear weapon on a place you know" to be "realistic" or "simply fictional?").

However, I tend to think that that quality--the quality of having simulational or presentational mechanics informed by research is extant and, since that research derrives from the real world (as much as we can know it) there might be some merrit in calling it 'realism.'

But, yeah, if you wanted to challenge that on the basis that it'll never "really be real" I wouldn't strongly argue that either. It won't be and "realism" could be taken in a misleading way given that context.

-Marco
[ I think the utterly unrealistic C-13 world book we did benefited *greatly* from the research we did in this manner. Can I say it's "realistic" because of that research-basis? Hmmm ... no, I wouldn't put it that way. I might say that  the extrapolations for our 'alternate history' were more "realistic" than guesses we'd have made without it--but even that's iffy. I could definitely say that the material is, IMO, more informative in an educational sense because of it--although I doubt anyone will be educated by the Thirteen Colonies world book ... ]

Edited to note: Cross-posted with Marco, whom I pretty much agree with, and may have expressed it better than I did.

Quote from: ValamirNicholas:  Absolutely true.  You don't even have to bring different time periods into it.  Just create a game based on realistic firearms based on real military and police data and give it to a bunch of typical gamers to see how much reality conflict with their idea of plausible.

Well, here you're citing that reality is different than what typical gamers find plausible.  That's exactly my point!!!  Reality can be different than what the players find plausible.  I find it a bit nonsensical that you say that the term "realistic" shouldn't be used, but also cite "realistic" firearms and how what they find plausible conflicts with "reality".  

Quote from: ValamirJohn:  You're not disagreeing with me at all, because I agree completely with the phenemenon you're outlining.  I merely disagreed with you using "realism" to define the distinction.  But note here what you're doing when you say "therefore writing off the possibility of education through RPGs. "  That's pure design goal.

If the designer doesn't give a fig about educating children about feudal Japan but his design goal is to achieve a fun play experience...then yes it makes no difference.  Goal accomplished.  If the designers goal is to educate children and wants to use the game as a teaching device, that's great too.  That's the sort of design goal I'm talking about.

I'm a bit stuck.  How can I express the distinction between the made-up Japan game and the real Japan game?  As I see it, they're both plausible, but they differ in realism.  

Quote from: ValamirI'm only objecting to taking an arbitrary degree of plausibility (i.e. what's plausible to you) and labeling it realistic.   Your concept I completely agree with.  But Realistic is not an appropriate word to use to define it.

The problem here is that you're trying to make "realism" into a binary distinction.  i.e. Something is either 100% realistic (as no model is), or it isn't.  But that's silly usage.  Look at your own reply to Nicolas.  Do you see how it was useful for you to use the term "realistic"?  That's exactly what I feel is useful in discussion.  Avoiding it will only hamper discussion, IMO.

I think we're in total agreement on this, Marco.

When you did C-13 I'd bet that you had certain goals in mind for what you wanted to accomplish with all that research.  You weren't doing it to make the game "more realistic" you were doing it because ... of X... I don't know if you vocalized X during the process, but I'd bet you had it in the back of your mind and it guided your decisions as to what to cull from the material you gathered.

That's the point of the essay after all.  Design goals are the key to good design, and "realism" is not a design goal...its a smoke screen that people use to conceal personal preference, or its a crutch they fall back on so they don't have to think about goals too much.

That doesn't invalidate concepts like those John has raised.  But I strongly believe that what he's talking about isn't "realism" at all.  That's just a convenient historical term to use...but one which has far too much baggage.

Quote from: Valamir
With regards to using it as a teaching tool, perhaps you judge Sengoku to have enough factual information to be useful as a teaching tool to children.  Great, I love the idea.  But that doesn't make it "realistic".  That simply makes it accurate enough for your purpose.  Game A might be plausible to the children and implausible to you and thus you judge it not suitable as a teaching tool.  But just because you judge Game B as being suitable as a teaching tool does not make it realistic.  It just means its plausible both to the children and to you.  Someone else may come along and say "holy cow, how could you fill the children's mind with such rubbish...Game B is totally unrealistic"...because its not plausible to them.

I'm only objecting to taking an arbitrary degree of plausibility (i.e. what's plausible to you) and labeling it realistic.   Your concept I completely agree with.  But Realistic is not an appropriate word to use to define it.

Sengoku: Chanbara Roleplaying in Feudal Japan (revised) states clearly that the main purpose of the game is to recreate the fictional Japan of action movies. There are sections on playing a more realistic game by ignoring parts of the book or a cartoon game by boosting the unreal elements.

People ignoring the stated intention to follow the movies often do fault the realism of the book. Sengoku is an example of people seeing detail and culture notes and assuming that is realism.

John

John Kim,

I hope this isn't off topic, but what if my goal is to educate people about the way that comics portrayed Japan?  Which game is more realistic?  I would say neither one, that they both seek to attain different goals.

Further, historians may disagree about what happened at a given point in history.  And they may all be right (or wrong) because it turns out that analyzing history is very very difficult.

Here's a real-world example: Did Apollo 11 land on the moon?  Far more people find this proposition plausible than the proposition that the US government faked the whole thing, but some people do find it "unrealistic" that such a thing occurred.

Now, obviously objectively it either happened or it didn't, but we can't actually know for sure.  More evidence seems to indicate "yes" than "no", and this is one of the reasons more people believe "yes" than "no", but that does not prove which one is more realistic.

I would suggest that whenever you use the term "realism", especially in terms of researched material, what you really mean is "more plausible to people who have studied this extensively".  Now, I'm perfectly willing to assume that those people who have studied whatever it is extensively are closer to understanding the "real" form of whatever it is, but that doesn't actually mean that they do...

Thomas

Quote from: ValamirI think we're in total agreement on this, Marco.

When you did C-13 I'd bet that you had certain goals in mind for what you wanted to accomplish with all that research.  You weren't doing it to make the game "more realistic" you were doing it because ... of X... I don't know if you vocalized X during the process, but I'd bet you had it in the back of your mind and it guided your decisions as to what to cull from the material you gathered.

That is very much true--and we are in agreement. We knew that the research would provide us with a meatier perspective ... a deeper look at the world we wanted to present (layered on top of one that kinda existed--the real colonial world). We knew research would give it ... depth.

But no, our goal wasn't to make it "realistic"--it was to capture the exictment and appeal that the colonial experiment held for the people involved in it and to sort of touch the grandeur that a lot of them may have felt they were participating in.

That's *grounded* in the 'real' issues of the time--but our portrayal and translation of those things to a modern-day magic game was certainly informed but not realisitic.

-Marco