This is exactly what I do when I’m DMing. I use to explore these elements. I like to make CP tired, dirty, with holes in theyre clothes.

I like to imagine them just comming out a fight and entering a new city. Everybody would look at them all swet and dirty.

Your site is amazing and those tips are really cool!

Congratulations!

Seriously, this is a good aspect of gaming to remember. Good GMs don’t go for a 1:1 imitation of reality any more than good maps don’t go for a 1:1 scale. Reality is a guidepost, not a goalpost.

The group finds it, marks it, and moves on. Not much interesting in there as we all know.

Recently, however I used it to great affect. We had a new player enter the group, and I needed a way to get them into the story.

That poor gnome sorcerer was chained directly in the Drow urinal when the team found them. It made for some interesting roleplay.

@Horza – That is an awesome way to add semi-realistic elements. Things like that are realism that add to the group’s enjoyment instead of detracting from it. Every group is going to want a different level of realism in there game.

@rwenderlich – Well if you don’t eat you don’t have to use the bathroom. There is a rule in TV that if eating, sleeping, bathroom use, or any other mundane element isn’t important to the story leave it out. It works pretty well for RPGs. There is something to be said for experiencing those moments in character at least once. It kind of bonds you to the character, but it would get annoying to act it out every single time.

@Rafe – I’ve always liked alternates to the HP system, but I enjoy the abstractness of it. Wounds should be something major but I like the fact of having generic damage up to a point. I’ve never had the pleasure of playing Burning Wheel, but I’m just getting into Savage Worlds, which can definitely be a much grittier system.

@OrangeYngvi – Some single cockpit military planes have evacuation systems, so yeah a mech probably would. However, it wouldn’t generally be talked about. Those details are the kinds of thinks that I enjoy to find in sourcebooks. One of my players loves those kinds of things and will bring them into game for effect.

@Tyson J. Hayes – I was doing work on an early version of a game system I had developed and had all sorts of things like movement rating based on character attributes worked out, and then I had an epiphany and said screw this! We need some simplicity here. I remember wondering if that was something that all developers went through.

@Scott Martin – “GMs often facilitate the shift, by hand waving encumbrance or handing out a bag of holding…”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I know that I sometimes work to justify the handwaving of certain things, but sometimes I just say meh and don’t worry about it. Coin counting is always fun. I always implemented a house rule that it wasn’t necessarily 1,000 copper coins but had the equivalent value of 1,000 copper coins.

@Havukin – “Gaming is incredibly fun because it doesn’t *need to* take into account realism.”

That is a very good point. I very much like the way you worded it. I wrote this with a particularly fantasy bent in mind, especially with an eye to d20. It is the kind of standard that this “style” of gaming evolved in. Modern settings take a lot of the issues out of this. They’ve also got a much higher tendency to not revolve on dungeon crawling.

@NeonElf – “How many Movies do you even see a bathroom unless it’s part of the plot?”

That is definitely the point of this article, and you make a lot of good points in the favor of realism. It definitely isn’t a system thing, but a style thing. D20 was the system I picked on for the purpose of making the argument. I think a definite way to restate the point of the article is to say that “Realism shouldn’t get in the way of fun or the story.” Sticks on cooking fires, dirt on the party, damage and healing abstractness, unrealistically useful dungeons, or bathroom breaks are all elements that can enhance a game or not.

@itliaf – That is a great way to use realism to focus the game. The game described, being a survival and horror game, wouldn’t be that fun without the realism aspects. They almost seem to be what the group is playing against. It works well because the heroes aren’t larger than life, as is the case in a lot of role playing games.

@idea assassin – Good point! True, all RPGs are fantasy (as in not real, not as in genre) and are unrealistic by their nature. Realism in a game should be fluid, coming into effect when required or beneficial and being left out when not. I think it might be fair to say the realism of an RPG is not the realism of the actual world. It is more the realism of a story world, where things that don’t matter to the story or the audience don’t happen on screen.

@The_Gun_Nut – Wow. The Morrow Project sounds incredibly detailed. I can’t even imagine doing a combat in that.

You’re right. Realism doesn’t have to be thrown under the wheels of mechanics. When I GM I will fully handwave away the effects of dirt, food, pretty much any mundane thing that doesn’t make the game more fun. I will however consider the effects a fireball has on a wooden structure. I’ll tend to play less towards realism and more towards affect on the situation. If a player shot the fireball and had the intent of collapsing the structure then I’ll generally let that happen. If the BBEG did so, then I’d give the players an opportunity to jump off of it or get out of the way, but penalize them major if they didn’t.

The Morrow Project is an incredibly realistic (and somewhat depressing) look at the world after a nuclear holocaust. Reputedly based upon a real-life report from some government group (Pentagon, DoD, CIA, take your pick there) the game not only keeps track of food, water, radiation exposure, and filth (yes, how dirty you are), but the combat system even takes into account what injuries your character suffers (with realistic healing times). The hit location table includes locations for the parts of your body like digits (fingers and toes), ears, major (are there minor?) organs, and individual genitalia (no kidding).

Oh, did I mention that combat rounds are prohibitively long? Needing about 15 to 30 minutes to determine EACH attack is a bit excessive.

While the minutia of life doesn’t need to be covered realistically in a game, how people act and react DOES need to be addressed in a sensible manner. Just because it is a game does not mean you can throw common sense out the window. If your players face opponents and threats that act and react in a sensible manner, then the players themselves will be able to use good judgement to plan, or just react, in a plausible even realistic fashion.

I stumbled on this epic of a post on the WOTC community –Lessons from DMing with my GF–
a few years back that, in addition to making me completely rethink my approach to DMing, also happens ot contain a exhaustive and entertaining account of a zombie survival game run in 3.5
http://tinyurl.com/yf95jp6

I bring it up because it basically breaks all five rules, (without delving into the HP as abstraction argument).
1 Inventory – Its a survival game, so keeping track of a dwindling inventory and weighing that against the need to care for a group of stranded survivors by venturing out to forage.
2 Damage and healing – They are zombies. One bite spells your eventual doom.
3 okay I lied, the dirt thing doesn’t come up, but isn’t #5 kind of a subcategory of this anyway
4. very crucial to maintain realism with what supplies can be found where in the city so the players can make reasonable plans for foraging runs
5. Getting rid of accumulated shit eventually becomes a plot point.

Ok that was a bit of a stretch. NeonElf already “won” the thread. I mostly just wanted to point out what I consider to be an awesome link.

These are my defenses of your alluded to points:
1- inventory and packing. There were many people in times of yore that were wanderers. They survived off the land and/or the good grace of strangers. Cooking w/o a pot is easy, it’s called a sick over a fire. or eating things that are not cooked, or heated. Where do you think beef jerky came from?

2- Damage and healing: This argument comes up time and time and time and time again about D&D or D20. Why does 1 sword bash kill you at first level and it takes 10 times that at level 10. What’s a level anyway? The model that D&D uses represents your characters ability to survive an attack. Weather it’s armor, dodging, “rolling with the punch” or the ability to withstand grievous injuries through repeated exposure to pain, the HP is an abstract figure. And ask someone stated other (even D20) games like modern D20 handle damage differently, more realistically. There’s even an optional rule in 3.5 for massive damage. The option is there to make it more realistic so saying it isn’t really just means you haven’t explored it fully.

As for healing again your point isn’t clear. Are you saying D&D healing is too fast? If you view HP as an abstract number I’m not sure how you are comparing it.

3- Dirt & adventuring. What’s your point here? If you don’t add the realistic element of how the party gets dirty, again your fault not the system. Unless you’re asking for mechanical rules on being dirty? I always make it clear to my adventurers they’ve been days without a bath, they smell the city before they see it, and describe how the dirt covered urchins from the slums scatter before their horses. I’ve even told players they’d have to buy new clothes after combat becuase they were now blood soaked.

4- Dungeons. Have you heard of the underdark concept? Are you familiar with the variety of magical animals who burrow to create these tunnels, how many races live underground and build tunnels? Again the caves in a fantasy world are as realistic as you want them to be and have as good a back story as you want them to have. Google “how to host a dungeon” for a fun way to create a dungeon with history.

5- bathroom breaks – this is the only one that I think you have a point on. But as many have said it’s about having fun. How many Movies do you even see a bathroom unless it’s part of the plot?

I’d change the articles final point to “Gaming is incredibly fun because it doesn’t *need to* take into account realism.”

As a side note, I got a great idea for some dungeon crawling in a (more or less) realistic natural cave. Think of the paranoia you can get out of the players knowing there are hundreds of little holes and crevasses they are to big to explore but which could still contain some really nasty things.

It’s also fun to ignore those things and concentrate on the exciting battles. GMs often facilitate the shift, by hand waving encumbrance or handing out a bag of holding… that’s a clear sign that copper counting and weight distribution is no longer going to be a big issue. [Well, until you try to carry out the gold painted sofa...]

Has anyone also calculated how fast most people move in D&D? Everyone runs a five minute mile. The monk at really high levels gets into a three minute mile. I know they are supposed to be fast but there is a point of ridiculousness.

Good article though, just reminds me why I don’t get that nitpicky about this stuff.

Burning Wheel, for instance, handles combat and injury quite well, and it can be brutal. He who draws first blood usually wins. A character in our game took a light wound and a midi wound (aka, a moderate wound, which is -2D to every ability, and the light is -1D).

His recovery time for the light wound was 3 weeks, with 8 weeks for the midi. During that time, any abilities reduced to 0 could not be used — that would be most of his non-combat skills, with his combat skills now at about a raw recruit’s level. Additionally, if a mental stat is reduced to 0, you’re unconscious for however long it takes to recover the dice you need to return to consciousness. If a physical stat is reduced to 0, you are incapable of moving yourself unaided and will have to be carried.

So my point here is that I mostly agree with your premise that realism does not necessarily equate to fun, but it certainly can! Personally, I prefer a gritty system (system, not necessarily setting) when I game.

I suppose the whole point of RPGs though is to get through the mundane aspects of life to where the fun drama and conflict is though, much like how in TV shows they rarely focus on what people do day-to-day at work…