On 9 Mar 2007 16:57:03 -0800, "Will in New Haven"
<bill.reich@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>Thanks, I can see that the definition you are using needs a word and
>"simulationist" was one choice. Not the choice I would have made but I
>can live with it. "Realism" doesn't really fit what I mean either or
>maybe it does. Rules that make recon by throwing yourselves at the
>enemy a good choice would make me itch just as badly as rules that
>said that the best way to aim your bow was to face away from the
>enemy. It is quite possible to play settings with highly unrealistic
>elements while preserving ordinary common-sense "realism" such as the
>idea that getting into a fight is committal and backing out after it
>starts, while not impossible, is generally risky.
Except that "common sense" can be based either on real life or on how
things work in various fictions - action movies, comicbooks, fantasy
novels, etc. Sometimes writers depart from reality in their fictional
descriptions because they don't know any better, but sometimes they do
so because it makes a better story.
For example, a lot of people "know" that pistol rounds are roughly
equal in deadliness to rifle rounds; this is "common sense" from James
Bond and all the other action movies they've seen. But anyone who is
clueful about real-world firearms knows that this simply isn't true -
rifle rounds are actually much deadlier.
Despite this, many of us will prefer game systems that use Hollywood
Action Movie bullets (pistols just as deadly as rifles), rather than
real-world bullets (rifles much more deadly) because we want our games
to resemble what we see in action movies rather than what we know
happens in real life.
>Given some special
>advantage, such as quick tele****t, can make an exception but the rules-
>naive player should not, in my opinion, find himself constantly being
>told "Of course we can do x, y or z, which seems so odd, because the
>rules say so."
And the rules say so because that's the way the world designer wants
that world to work. The idea, usually, is to let characters act in
genre-appropriate manner - to act like their favorite fictional
characters - without the rules puni****ng them for doing so.
>
>Anyway, that's the way I like it and I don't think I lose anything
>that way.
The problem is when you get a new player who tries to have his
character do x, y, or z because that's how characters in fiction do
it, only to be told "No, you can't do x, y, or z because it's
unrealistic. It's stupid and makes my skin itch when I see it in
fiction, and I won't let it happen in my game." Which is your right as
a GM and world-builder - but it's just as much of an *assumption
clash* (another nifty bit of rgfa terminology, btw) as your example of
a new player confused by "Of course we can do x, y or z, which seems
so odd, because the rules say so."
--
Erol K. Bayburt
ErolB1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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