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Old 07-11-2018, 11:54 PM   #21
tanksoldier
 
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Default Re: What do we mean by "Realistic"?

Realistic for me equates to internally consistent.
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Old 07-12-2018, 12:11 AM   #22
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Default Re: What do we mean by "Realistic"?

For me it's about consistency with my (and my player's) expectations for the game being played*, but to a lesser extent it's also about consistency within the rest of the system. However the first takes precedence over the second

Take the Human ST goes up to 20, that get's referenced a lot here.

So OK you want humans that can chop through Plate armour with ease with pretty much any edged weapons, well OK it's not consistent with reality but if you want it than it's consistent with your game desires, i.e it's fine by my first point above.

But it also means your 250lb-300lb human is as Strong as the average 1,000lb polar bear and have as many HPs (a stat that is driven from mass), then to me that strays into not being consistent within the system.

IMO just modelling world record weight lifts with ST without also referencing training, effort and will power (despite there being systems in the game for that) is similar. KYOS has changed this for those who use it.

However as I said consistency with your desires trumps consistency within other areas of the system.

Ultimately though the system's overarching goal is to provide a framework for us to create the games we want and like. And it's consistency with that overarching goal that is more important than worrying about consistency in Strength to mass ratio of humans and polar bears.


P.s. I agree that using some rules are also more about desire for detail rather than desire for "realism"


EDIT: And I've just seen the locked Stat thread that got into weight lifting, sorry not my intention to reignite that here!


*which of course is not the same as "reality"
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Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-12-2018 at 03:29 AM.
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Old 07-12-2018, 12:26 AM   #23
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Default Re: What do we mean by "Realistic"?

Trooper 6 and I have reached an impasse as I don't believe that Dolph Lundgren actually exists, I was going to go on an Asperger rant at this point but all my therapy after my diagnosis kicked in and I realized it wouldn't be funny, and it might strike too close to home for some besides me.
I figure we came to Gurps because we wanted to go our own way with our gaming and other systems didn't do that very well.
We wanted to establish what was reasonable in our game with out some sort of dictatorial rubric saying otherwise. Gurps has enough moving parts we can build what we want, how we want and to look for some kind of assumed reality in a game like Gurps might be possible but it would have to take into account everyone's interpretation of Gurps to get a actually true answer.
There are too many moving parts to treat Gurps like some kind of board game where you can enact your will on others by manipulating the rules, There is a GM and other players and they all have to want to do that...we sometimes forget role playing isn't supposed to be some kind of completion and if you're looking for that maybe you should play a board or card game, I know a good company that makes several great ones.

-End rant-

Last edited by pestigor; 07-12-2018 at 12:31 AM.
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Old 07-12-2018, 03:03 AM   #24
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Default Re: What do we mean by "Realistic"?

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I tend to prefer social realism and economic realism over scientific realism, as I am running games for people and not for robots. It is so satisfying when I see the faces of my players when they realize that they understand, sympathize, and even agree with the villains yet oppose the villains because they do not condone their methods, even if they agree with the goals of the villains. There is a moment of the highest drama when a PC must decide whether to stop the villains, even if it will prevent the events that the PC desires from occurring for years or decades, or to join the villains, even if it will betray everything that the PC believes in.
I find the notion that 'socially unrealistic' games like Star Trek, classic Supers, cyberpunk, soap operas etc. are for robots and not people to be surprising, interesting, and requiring more elaboration of reasoning.
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Old 07-12-2018, 03:32 AM   #25
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Default Re: What do we mean by "Realistic"?

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I tend to prefer social realism and economic realism over scientific realism, as I am running games for people and not for robots. It is so satisfying when I see the faces of my players when they realize that they understand, sympathize, and even agree with the villains yet oppose the villains because they do not condone their methods, even if they agree with the goals of the villains. There is a moment of the highest drama when a PC must decide whether to stop the villains, even if it will prevent the events that the PC desires from occurring for years or decades, or to join the villains, even if it will betray everything that the PC believes in.
Sorry I'm not sure what you mean by Social and Economic Realism and how it differs to Scientific realism?

FWIW I also like the situation you then go on to describe, but I'm not seeing how the different realisms you describe tie into it?
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Old 07-12-2018, 03:51 AM   #26
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Default Re: What do we mean by "Realistic"?

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
I find the notion that 'socially unrealistic' games like Star Trek, classic Supers, cyberpunk, soap operas etc. are for robots and not people to be surprising, interesting, and requiring more elaboration of reasoning.
I take umbrage at the notion that a utopian socialism like Star Trek is economically or socially unrealistic... (it hurts my idealistically utopian communist soul)

C-Punk is close enough to 'real' I don't even need to do any work.

I agree that Soaps and Supes are completely 'unrealistic'. The suspenders get a lot of work.
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Old 07-12-2018, 04:23 AM   #27
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Default Re: What do we mean by "Realistic"?

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
I find the notion that 'socially unrealistic' games like Star Trek, classic Supers, cyberpunk, soap operas etc. are for robots and not people to be surprising, interesting, and requiring more elaboration of reasoning.
Is that what's meant by Social realism (and therefore the implied social un-realism)?

In which yes I agree with you. Unrealistic settings don't have to be unrealistic in all aspects uniformly so. IME the fantastic aspects are often applied selectively, How ad when they are applied is more a matter of consistency with genre and player expansion anyway.

Or put it this way, I can have a fantasy game were 200ft dragons can fly and breath fire despite the fact that flying fire breathing 200ft dragons break all kinds of realism, but that doesn't mean I have to then allow all creatures to be able to fly and breathe fire just because I have those dragons.

If nothing else "magic dog I don't have to explain ****" (and of course in a lot fantasy settings a suitable application of magic allows things other than dragons to fly and project fire!)
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Last edited by Tomsdad; 07-12-2018 at 05:48 AM.
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Old 07-12-2018, 04:43 AM   #28
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Default Re: What do we mean by "Realistic"?

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
I find the notion that 'socially unrealistic' games like Star Trek, classic Supers, cyberpunk, soap operas etc. are for robots and not people to be surprising, interesting, and requiring more elaboration of reasoning.
I suspect "social unreality" in this context would be less about the existence of a specific cultural milieu and more about whether or not people are depicted as behaving in a manner which fits that society - the same issue occurs when people bring modern attitudes to historical or pseudo-historical settings.

Of course, there will be fictional societies that make no sense as a stable state or where the material provided fail to justify their existence or provide insufficient background detail to determine whether someone is acting believably or not. These can often occur when RPGs are spawned from media franchises - something that was added to the film/TV show/novel in passing as a shiney thing turns out to be non-loadbearing when used in a different context during an RPG scenario.
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Old 07-12-2018, 07:37 AM   #29
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Default Re: What do we mean by "Realistic"?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomsdad View Post
If nothing else "magic dog I don't have to explain ****"
This made me instantly think of my absolute most unfavoritest form of unrealism: "This setting features wizards, therefore it is completely immune to complaints of unrealism or inconsistency."

This argument is usually presented within fifteen seconds of any mention of unrealistically depicted female armor, for example.
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Old 07-12-2018, 08:05 AM   #30
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Default Re: What do we mean by "Realistic"?

When I say "realistic," I mean things work as they do (or as they would, if it's a situation that has never occurred) in the real world. That doesn't mean I want strict realism in my games (or settings), however - I tend toward high realism, so long as it doesn't interfere with the game/setting. If I want a space opera with ships traveling between star systems on a regular basis, I'm throwing relativity out the window and having space travel follow physics that work for the setting, not for how things work in real life. To wit, in that particular setting, interstellar travel is through a fictional hyperspace, and intrastellar travel uses special reactionless or semireactionless drives (the latter are more energy efficient, but do expel some reaction mass) that are boost drives with pseudovelocity, but when unallied ships get too close together, the drives instead function as pseudoatmospheric drives with real velocity, and in fact the reactionless drives have performance roughly comparable to WWII-era aeroplanes, with the semireactionless drives being more akin to WWII-era naval vessels (albeit able to maneuver in 3 dimensions). None of that is remotely realistic, but it works for the setting I'm trying to build.
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