Realism in RPGs

Realism in gaming can be a touchy subject. This is especially true in RPGs, because you tend to be viewing things on a much smaller, more intimate scale than in a war game or TCG. The closer you get to something the more detail resolves, or in this case have to be resolved.

I should probably clarify things here. I'm talking about realism in combat mechanics. You can look at realism for things like lock-picking or tanning or haberdashery, but most people don't care about how to scrub a lock or the differences between chrome and brain tanning. They certainly don't want mechanics for the effects of mercury fumes from felt stiffening solutions.

Much of the contention is due to differing opinions on what is, in fact, "realistic." Debating what's "realistic" in fictional combat is a great way to start a six hour argument. The first problem you run into is that combat is really hard to analyze. This is a problem people struggle with in real life. Everything happens very fast, and you really just have to reconstruct everything after the fact. Factor in things like post adrenal shock and people flat out lying, and you'll have yourself tied for several weeks trying to piece together what happened in one knife assault.

Keep in mind that you're also trying to create an abstract, absolute system for simulating what is often barely controlled chaos. There's very little good data on the immediate effects of physical trauma on a person, and that makes it difficult to make realistic rules for it. Why does a knife deal 1d6 of damage and a sword deal 2d6? How long does the blade have to be before it deals the extra die of damage? And these are fairly minor philosophical problems. You should see what people come up with once they start actually playing the games.

There are a few things you can do to deal with the realism problem. First, decide the level of realism you want the game to have before you start playing. A lot of this will depend on the system you're using, but a lot also depends on the tone the GM sets. Match the tone and the system to what you're trying to do.

If you do run into a question of whether something is realistic, ask yourself this: Does it make sense? If yes, you don't have a problem. If no, find out what doesn't make sense and who has problems with that element. Chances are once you do that you can solve the dispute fairly in short order. If not, have something else happen. The goal is to play the game, not sit around arguing how a fictional universe adheres to abstract, arbitrary rules. Rule of thumb, gravity should be pretty constant. Everything else is mutable for the sake of the game.