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tedthehunter
2013-03-03, 04:51 PM
So I have a question that has come to me through my gaming group's ongoing Pathfinder game, though the question is non-game specific.

As the main DM for my group, most of the group comes to me with questions and asking for advice. Currently I'm on hiatus and a friend is DMing our game with a homebrewed setting. I guess I didn't really notice it until one of the players brought it to my attention, but his world isn't really all that fleshed out. I am totally fine with this, as I understand the amount of work that is necessary for creating a full world, but some of the other players are starting to notice some holes in the world's logic. I am always willing to suspend my disbelief for the sake of the game, but some of our newer players are asking the DM questions that he doesn't know how to respond to, which usually leads to the whole, "Stop poking holes in my story" argument.

What does the playground think about this situation. Less of a problem to be solved than a discussion point really. How much of the world do you think is the DM's responsibility, and to what degree should the players be expected to accept the world as it's told.

TLDR: How realistic do you want your fantasy to be?

enderlord99
2013-03-03, 05:45 PM
Look at Mark Hall's signature. He'll probably post in this thread at some point.

Grinner
2013-03-03, 06:34 PM
Fantasy is, by definition, unrealistic. Reality, insofar as I'm concerned, is dull and tedious. Astounding things do happen, but they don't happen to me. Why would I want to carry that into a game hinged upon the suspension of disbelief? No, what I want in fantasy is not realism, but consistency.

If the game's vampires historically burst into flame upon contact with sunlight, *every* vampire should do so or have a *very* good reason as to why he doesn't. If the vampires start walking through daylight without repercussion and if this change was not established through foreshadowing or some other plot device, then the suspension of disbelief will be shattered.

Rhynn
2013-03-03, 06:41 PM
Your question doesn't seem to be about realism, but coherence (or verisimilitude; or consistency, like Grinner says). Generally, with some exceptions, coherence is absolutely vital. I want to create worlds, settings, and characters that feel real and living. I want to adventure in such worlds, and I know my players prefer them too. You can have an unrealistic game, world, and campaign that isn't made up of cardboard cutouts.

Hiro Protagonest
2013-03-03, 06:41 PM
You're using the wrong word. You should be saying verisimilitude, or consistent/consistency.

Dr.Epic
2013-03-03, 06:45 PM
TLDR: How realistic do you want your fantasy to be?

This:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/37/Adventure_Time_-_Title_card.png

JusticeZero
2013-03-03, 06:46 PM
This is about the point where I would quit grumping about the holes and start asking for suggestions and things to fill in the problems. People are clever.

Slipperychicken
2013-03-03, 07:59 PM
"You don't know. It's an enigma which has plagued scholars for centuries. The common explanation is that one of the primal epic wizards enchanted it to be so while magic was still young in the world. Others say the Gods made it so, or that magic works by different rules on a large scale, or strange beings from beyond the stars came down to do it. If it was a wizard's doing, he is speculated to have been insane."

Tl;Dr version: A wizard did it. And he used magic.

BRC
2013-03-03, 08:01 PM
define "Holes"

Do you mean "Holes" as in things unexplained, like "Who was the previous king of this kingdom".
Or Holes as in things that make no sense like "If the land has been at peace for 500 years, where do all these grizzled veterans and experienced soldiers come from"

Arbane
2013-03-03, 09:30 PM
define "Holes"

Do you mean "Holes" as in things unexplained, like "Who was the previous king of this kingdom".
Or Holes as in things that make no sense like "If the land has been at peace for 500 years, where do all these grizzled veterans and experienced soldiers come from"

Or more mundane things like "where does this enormous city in the middle of the desert get its food & water from?"

BRC
2013-03-03, 09:44 PM
Or more mundane things like "where does this enormous city in the middle of the desert get its food & water from?"


I would say

A worldbuilder has an Obligation to make their setting internally consistent. That is to say, if the Elves and Dwarves have a longstanding hatred that frequently breaks out into war, you should not pepper your history with talk of repeated Elf-Dwarf Coalitions.

A Worldbuilder Should Try to answer big questions. If there is an enormous city in the middle of the desert, where does it get it's water and food? They don't Need to unless it's central to a story being told in the setting, but it's good form.

A Worldbuilder Does Not Need To fill out every minor detail, like the exact names and reigns of all the kings going back two centuries.

Ninjadeadbeard
2013-03-03, 10:06 PM
A Worldbuilder Does Not Need To fill out every minor detail, like the exact names and reigns of all the kings going back two centuries.

Unless the only way the PCs can save the world is by an impromptu poetry smash based on said kings and their reign. :smallwink:

Ozfer
2013-03-03, 10:31 PM
Basically, what BRC said. I nominate him as thread winner.

tedthehunter
2013-03-04, 01:23 AM
So firstly, the word real was a bad choice. I did indeed mean consistent, thank you all for reminding me of that word.

Secondly, the word holes was used by the DM, I personally think they aren't so much holes in the story as gaps in the setting, because this sort of comes up mostly just from us asking questions about the setting that he can't answer, presumably because he hasn't made it up yet.

To comment on BRC's post, I would say that the setting is mostly internally consistent, but very few of our big, general questions are answered.

Kitten Champion
2013-03-04, 06:13 AM
I don't care if the world-building is completely thought out and logically consistent. It's somewhat believable characters that matter to me. Ya'know, people with motivations the make sense and whose actions are consistent with those motives, which is the same for all storytelling.

Some people like fantasy treated as hard SF, and I can understand that, but frankly that takes a lot of painful effort on the GM's part and is generally tedious for playing. So long as the rules of the game aren't changed it really doesn't matter to me.

awa
2013-03-04, 12:03 PM
it depends on the focus of the game. if the game is about a war the major nations need to be though out. if its about political intrigue then the nobles should be well though out but other nations are only important in how they interact with the political intrigue. If it's a gritty detective story then the king and nobles are just sorta there while the criminal under world is where it's at.
And if the game is about going into dungeons killing a bunch of orcs and taking their stuff then the entire world can just be vaguely midevil with no more thought into it.

now of course this is just the minimum there's nothing stopping you from figuring out every thing although be careful about handing players giant packets of campaign notes. One problem in my games which i have to actively resist is giving out to much information. if the game is about an expedition to a far off land but you have written 10 pages of back story about the local nations players may very well either become intimidated by the raw amount of info or be unable to find the important stuff under all the fluff.

Harlan Vold
2013-03-04, 12:18 PM
What JusticeZero said.

If there's gaps in the setting, why not get the players involved in the filling of those gaps? When players take an active role in fleshing out the game world, they will naturally become much more invested in it.

In fact, I often create settings where there is room for player input, as it's something my players enjoy doing, and the fresh perspectives and suggestions on what could make the setting more coherent or interesting always improve it in my experience.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-04, 02:44 PM
TLDR: How realistic do you want your fantasy to be?

The issue might not be realism at all. Most fantastic settings, indeed, most roleplaying games are explicitly unrealistic. Try to pin down the specific nature of the problem, and check if it matches to the following categories:

Lack of knowledge: The GM doesn't know how or why something is like it is. This is usually not a problem - no-one of us are omniscient. It only becomes a problem if A) the players should know, or B) the players can find out.

Ie., it doesn't matter who murdered Prince of Wales, if that knowledge will not influence the game, and the players have no means of finding out. It does matter if the plot of the game is finding the murderer, or if one of the game characters is an expert forensic scientist with the means to solve the mystery.

The best solution for this is for the GM to tell the players to shut it (if the knowledge is not important and can't be found out), tell them that it's an interesting question and that he'll research the answer for the next session (if the knowledge is important) or maybe allow the player who asked to make up the solution (if the knowledge is not important, but can be found out.)

Lack of believability: This is perhaps the trickiest part, as it deals with the players' perception of reality (=verisimilitude). The problem is that a player might have completely wrong perception of actual reality. (="reality is unrealistic")

Best example of this are people who complain about how it is unrealistic for a person to survive multiple bullet-wounds or fall from terminal velocity, when there are in fact real people who've done so.

The only solution for this is to demonstrate how, or why, a phenomenom is plausible.

Mismatching game rules: The rules of the game, as presented, don't allow for the setting to exist as presented. Two ways a GM can counter this: A) the rules are incomplete representation, and there are additional factors not modeled by the rules that cause the situation as observed, or B) You are the first people in the setting to think of this rule exploit. Ergo, there's nothing actively preventing the status quo from changing, it just hasn't happened yet.

A) is usually not a problem, expect when it also doubles as lack of knowledge (see above).

B) is usually not a problem, if you can accept that it's essentially a carte blanche for the players to break your setting.

The ultimate solution is to switch to a ruleset that better models the phenomenom.

Lack of logic / Contradictory explanations: The GM has accidentally given poorly-thought-out and mutually exclusive setting information. This leads to paradoxes that, unless solved, lead to the players (and sometimes the GM) being unable to make informed decisions.

If the paradoxical piece of information stemmed from an in-universe source, it is easy to say that the source was faulty. The GM still needs to decide what the truth of the matter is, however.

If the paradoxical information stems directly from the GM, the setting needs are retcon. Depending on the severity of the contradiction, it might be easier to start a new game.

In any case, the GM must go back to drawing board, see what he did wrong, fix the paradox, and then promise not to do it again.

Accidental unrealism: This is the inverse of lack of believability - rather than the players, it is the GM who has faulty picture of reality. This leads to situations where the GM intends for something to be realistic, but accidentally ends up breaking stuff because of his idiocy.

This is not a problem as long as the players are equally uninformed or willing to play along. It becomes a problem if any of the players knows better and calls the GM out.

There are two solutions: either the GM listens to and goes by the most knowledgeable player, or the GM goes back to school. :smalltongue:

The players are being trolls: Seriously. Just like a kid can ask "why?" long after it's ceased to be reasonable, some players have perverse fascination with irrelevant setting minutiae and/or watching the GM squirm uncomfortably when presented with a question he can't answer.

The solution is to tell the players to grow up.

---

My overall opinion is that the GM has responsibility to:


Know everything important to the game scenario he is presenting
Know the rules of the game he is using
Know enough of reality so that players can use their real-world knowledge to make decisions
Be willing to research reality to better present a scenario if a break from reality is unexpected or undesired
Present and describe situations consistently and logically so players can make informed decisions.


These are in order of importance. Note nro. 2 especially. I find that realism has become needlessly spit upon among roleplayers. I'm going to paraphrase 1st Edition D&D here: "this is a game, not simulation of reality. However, this doesn't mean that where it enhances the game, attempt at maximum realism isn't made." The reason for this is simple: people are used to making decisions based on perceived reality, and the more a game scenario deviates from that frame of reference, the harder it becomes for people to visualize the scenario, and consequently it becomes harder to make informed decisions within the game! See my recent thread: "Roleplaying training wheels: playing as yourself" for a more in-depth explanation of this.

However, a GM has no responsibility to:


Know everything, even of the setting he is using.
Compromise or "fix" rules he is using during a session to better model reality. Game alterations are better reserved for time between sessions, so that rules alterations or arguments don't slow the game during a session.
Know more of reality than his education suggests, especially if it is not important for the game.
Present in-game reality so that it perfectly conforms to all expectations of his players.
Answer each player question honestly and completely, especially if presenting the answer through in-character viewpoint.

Talakeal
2013-03-04, 07:51 PM
I have found that a lot of people actually dislike both realism and verisimilitude in fantasy.

There have been numerous times when I have pointed out a gaping plot hole in a Sci Fi / Fantasy movie or book and been told something along the lines of "You have fire breathing dragons and wizards shooting lightning, why on Earth do you care about a consistent narrative?"

Also, in the endless "Melee can't have nice things" debates on this and other forums there seem to be a lot of people who want to remove "realism" from the game entirely and replace all mundane characters with high powered shonen martial artists or gishes.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-04, 08:05 PM
I have found that a lot of people actually dislike both realism and verisimilitude in fantasy.


Yay, I've made a similar observation. I'm not sure, but I have a feeling this attitude is mostly espoused by people who've been mired in fantasy and roleplaying games for a long, long time.

Trouble is, I think it is hostile to new players and lay persons looking into the hobby. Any attitude that essentially tells you "don't think about it too much" is poison to roleplaying as a skill, and prevents people from getting into it.

This is because roleplaying is primarily word-based. Movies and such can get away with much more simply because of the "Ooh! Shiny!" factor. But if a game relies on someone visualizing a situation based on word descriptions, and you are telling them to not pay attention, you are shooting yourself in the leg.

Rhynn
2013-03-04, 11:37 PM
Yay, I've made a similar observation. I'm not sure, but I have a feeling this attitude is mostly espoused by people who've been mired in fantasy and roleplaying games for a long, long time.

D&D in particular has become something of a serpent eating its tail. Instead of referencing sword & sorcery, fantasy, and sci-fi novels and stories (like the D&D of the 70s), modern D&D and D&D DMs/players reference things that reference D&D (including anime, etc.). It's why, when things finally do reference something external, they seem really "out there" and different ("low-fantasy" campaigns in the style of Conan's Hyboria and Fafhrd and Mouser's Lankhmar).


Trouble is, I think it is hostile to new players and lay persons looking into the hobby. Any attitude that essentially tells you "don't think about it too much" is poison to roleplaying as a skill, and prevents people from getting into it.

Yes. To me, role-playing games aren't about acting (you can act while playing the games), and certainly not about rolling dice to defeat monsters (but you can do a lot of that), but about making decisions to overcome or solve situations. That requires thinking, and that requires consistency/verisimilitude. The more familiar real-world assumptions you negate, the harder it gets to think and make useful decisions, especially for new players.

Arbane
2013-03-04, 11:53 PM
Also, in the endless "Melee can't have nice things" debates on this and other forums there seem to be a lot of people who want to remove "realism" from the game entirely and replace all mundane characters with high powered shonen martial artists or gishes.

"Realism" got defenestrated the first time a 10th level fighter took a bath in molten lava and waded to shore. I just want to make it official that at that point, even if you can't cast spells, you're _not_ "mundane" any more.

Talakeal
2013-03-04, 11:59 PM
"Realism" got defenestrated the first time a 10th level fighter took a bath in molten lava and waded to shore. I just want to make it official that at that point, even if you can't cast spells, you're _not_ "mundane" any more.

That's either a failure of narration on the DMs part or the specific implemantation of the rules rather than any indication of realism. Surviving a lava bath should be described as a heroic indivual narrowly escaping death with only severe burns due to some heroic act of agility or cleverness. If they just "sit there and bathe in it" then the DM should invoke the inescapable death rules.

And iirc, a bath in lava is impossible as it has the consistency of silly putty rather than water.

GolemsVoice
2013-03-05, 01:18 AM
This is because roleplaying is primarily word-based. Movies and such can get away with much more simply because of the "Ooh! Shiny!" factor. But if a game relies on someone visualizing a situation based on word descriptions, and you are telling them to not pay attention, you are shooting yourself in the leg.

It's not about not visualizing things, though. I can visualize a lot of things that are unrealistic and even impossible. I can also visualize a lot of things that would fall apart if examined closely.

What the sentence "don't think about it" really does is enable the GM to craft worlds without being a physics major. He can do all the staples of fantasy or even science fiction without having to worry about the science involved.

Rhynn
2013-03-05, 06:01 AM
That's either a failure of narration on the DMs part or the specific implemantation of the rules rather than any indication of realism. Surviving a lava bath should be described as a heroic indivual narrowly escaping death with only severe burns due to some heroic act of agility or cleverness. If they just "sit there and bathe in it" then the DM should invoke the inescapable death rules.

Isn't immersion in lava (rather than just stepping on it or just being right next to it) given as a specific instadeath example in the D&D DMG? I could swear...

Anyway, even if the rules of the excessively mechanistic 3E D&D (or 4E) fail at realism, the actual argument is pretty much completely unaffected. There's plenty of RPGs where you won't survive a lava bath.


What the sentence "don't think about it" really does is enable the GM to craft worlds without being a physics major. He can do all the staples of fantasy or even science fiction without having to worry about the science involved.

It's really not just about the physics of it, though. If you want to craft a great system or world that players can become involved in, you do need to know the subject matter. HârnWorld wouldn't be great if N. Robin Crosby hadn't put a heck of a lot of study and work into understanding medieval society, economy, etc. Twilight 2013 wouldn't have an awesome, realistic, and playable combat system if the creators hadn't put a lot of work into understanding modern weapons, tactics, and how combat actually happens.

And even if you're not going for great, your setting or system is probably going to improve in proportion to your increased understanding of the subject matter and the elements that go into it.

Having a great, involving system or world isn't a prerequisite to having fun, though. If you want to create a game specifically to model, say, seinen manga, realistic systems aren't going to enter into it, and it can be a lot of fun for anyone whe accepts the premise.

ArcturusV
2013-03-05, 06:12 AM
I think the issue is Rhynn, and I've run into this a few times when working on collaborative setting building with some people, is they get too hung up on being more "SCIENCE!" than anyone else.

An example was, what was supposed to be a near bog standard Fantasy setting I was working on with a few guys, who's big twist was supposed to be some Cursed Land on the edge of civilization that was basically the magical equivalent to a nuke glassed, hot radioactive zone.

Now... I was constantly trying to stress to the guys that since that was our Selling Point for the setting, we needed to focus on making some interesting dynamics for that zone. It needed rules that allowed people to poke at it, and rules that made it more interesting than just walking into any generic wasteland.

... the other people I was working with were far more concerned with magic "science" for their Magic and applying real world earth sciences and physics to the setting. It was some point where they still hadn't really defined anything about that zone (And refused to talk about it when I brought it up), but were arguing about what Barometric pressures for various map regions should be, and how magical activity would screw with barometric pressures and magnetic alignments that I decided they were pretty much a lost cause.

Course last I heard it had been eight months since I left, and the project was on indefinite hold, no one able to agree on anything and still arguing about things like where the dew point would be during widespread magical use...

TuggyNE
2013-03-05, 06:13 AM
Isn't immersion in lava (rather than just stepping on it or just being right next to it) given as a specific instadeath example in the D&D DMG? I could swear...

Anyway, even if the rules of the excessively mechanistic 3E D&D (or 4E) fail at realism, the actual argument is pretty much completely unaffected. There's plenty of RPGs where you won't survive a lava bath.

Not by default, no. In 3.x, immersion in lava deals 20d6/round (and 10d6/round for 1d3 rounds after).

hamishspence
2013-03-05, 06:22 AM
Isn't immersion in lava (rather than just stepping on it or just being right next to it) given as a specific instadeath example in the D&D DMG? I could swear...

Anyway, even if the rules of the excessively mechanistic 3E D&D (or 4E) fail at realism, the actual argument is pretty much completely unaffected. There's plenty of RPGs where you won't survive a lava bath.

4E Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons, has rules for falling in lava. Lots of ongoing fire damage, and the slowed effect after you come out, to represent it hardening.

Morty
2013-03-05, 06:28 AM
D&D in particular has become something of a serpent eating its tail. Instead of referencing sword & sorcery, fantasy, and sci-fi novels and stories (like the D&D of the 70s), modern D&D and D&D DMs/players reference things that reference D&D (including anime, etc.). It's why, when things finally do reference something external, they seem really "out there" and different ("low-fantasy" campaigns in the style of Conan's Hyboria and Fafhrd and Mouser's Lankhmar).

D&D 3rd edition is in general a mess. The flavor text says one thing and the rules say something entirely different. Mundane classes are described as, well, mundane but aren't. But even their ability to pull off impossible stunts isn't enough to match magic-users, so in order to catch up with them they'd have to be even more unrealistic.

Rhynn
2013-03-05, 06:29 AM
Checking the DMG, yeah, full immersion is the 20d6. Lava seems to be a great example of things the 3E designers did not bother to think of at all. How on earth does resistance to fire grant immunity to lava? Lava isn't less hot than fire...


...

That sounds like some bad designers who couldn't prioritize tasks, for sure.

If it plain doesn't matter in play (I can't really see how exact information of barometric pressures ever would), who needs it?

Lorsa
2013-03-05, 06:31 AM
Yes I expect internal consistency and logic in my fantasy. Realism not so much but if there is a Resurrection spell and the king is assassinated without any means used to counter said spell I expect it to be performed on him. That isn't really realism but it would be logical given the setting.

This was a problem fairly recently when a new GM (I say GM here) wanted to play fantasy trying out the D&D (4e) rules. It ended rather badly because he didn't know enough of the rules when he made the setting so the rules and his world didn't match.

As a DM, when someone asks a question you can't answer right away, either you can look it up or you can come up with an answer given a bit time to think. It's the times when you are unable to come up with an answer that there is a problem. So yes, you can expect quite a lot from your DM, because when interacting with an illusion, if you get to roll a Will save for disbelief it's a bad illusion.

Rakmakallan
2013-03-05, 11:05 AM
It would be a tedious job to rummage through the thread for specific snips to quote, so here is my two cents, already known to quite a few.

Verisimilitude/coherence, call it what you will is absolutely a requirement for me to even consider a game. Especially, if there is canon involved, I expect anything new to not stray from it. The GM (usually myself), should try to reconcile and provide explanations for all elements in the setting (eg how the town in the middle of the desert is supplied with food and water), and must fix all problems at first notice of an inconsistency. Players on their side, should be able to discover any details about the setting that can be discovered by available means, even if this would entail them performing natural science experiments (eg roaming around looking for fossils to explain the evolution of species in the setting and then measuring isotopes to find their age). If a GM does not have a detail already prepared, they can ask the players to make it up themselves, improvise, or temporarily adjourn the session so they can work in private. The only exception is in some rare case where there would be no means for anyone to know (eg what happened to the Blue Wizards in Middle-Earth, when there are no records of them or remains to be found).

Moving on to actual realism, I am going to provide a link to the sci-fi hardness scale. http://www.kheper.net/topics/scifi/grading.html
When reading a novel, watching a movie, or playing in someone else's setting, I rarely voice complaints, but for any work of mine, anything below hard sci-fi (and fantasy) is out of the question instantly. Magic must be founded in natural laws, even if these happen to be Minovsky Physics, or be removed completely. Vampires must have some physiological defect to combust in sunlight. Dragons can't fly and their skeletal anatomy is similar to that of dinosaurs to account for their weight (exception: Dragons looking like a Quetzalcoatlus), and to breathe fire, they must consume limestone and then light the gases produced from a neuron appendage at the back of their pharynges (a la Flight of Dragons).

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-05, 11:47 AM
It's not about not visualizing things, though. I can visualize a lot of things that are unrealistic and even impossible. I can also visualize a lot of things that would fall apart if examined closely.


You can. A lot of new players can't. Visualizing these crazy-ass scenarios is not something that comes naturally to some people. I actually have a body of hard data supporting my claim, since I've run a single scenario multiple times to multiple different groups.

When a group had notable amount of old roleplayers, the map they drew based on my descriptions was almost one-on-one copy of mine. They didn't get lost a single time.

When a group had mostly new players, the often got confused of directions and generally drew maps that were nothing like mine. When a group consisted of entirely new players, they could not keep their location straight, even despite using the map made by the skilled players!

Visualization is pretty damn important part of roleplaying. It's not about being a physics major. It's about understanding such things like which characters are left or right after you make 180 degree turn. It's about recognizing when you enter the same room from a different direction. It's about keeping track of where different characters are in relation to each other. You can't make informed decisions and can't act convincingly if you can't imagine these things.

Just using different units of measurements than players are used to, like feet and inches in place of meters and centimeters, will throw a new player off so badly he can't tell when his character is walking in circles.

awa
2013-03-06, 12:10 AM
ugh i had one dm that i could never picture what he was trying to describe i spent a lot of time trying to hide behind open air or accidentally killing hostages with area of effect attacks.

Lorsa
2013-03-06, 05:43 AM
ugh i had one dm that i could never picture what he was trying to describe i spent a lot of time trying to hide behind open air or accidentally killing hostages with area of effect attacks.

Usually I find good descriptions are top-to-bottom. First you describe the general layout and then you move to more and more details. Just remember not to be 'too' detailed or people will forget what you started with. Focus on different details in different scenes and set sort of "standard" for how players should visualize things.

Good descriptions in roleplaying should convey their message as fast and efficiently as possible. Using more words doesn't necessarily make it better. Sometimes just saying "you enter the forest" is enough.