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Friday 16 August 2019

Get real

The realism versus playability debate has been going on for decades. Which is odd, because there aren’t really any games that err by being too playable. I can cite lots that are too realistic, though. There was the CRPG where you had to remember to restock on shoe leather. If you didn’t, your character would go “Ow!” every so often and lose a hit point. A long journey could kill you before you even got to the dungeon.

The same debate occurred long ago in movies and TV – although there it was “realism vs enjoyment”. Thankfully, the realists were beaten back into a tiny corner. Other than 12-hour Andy Warhol epics watching a flag flap on the side of the Empire State Building, visual narrative is free of realism. Arnie says, “Let’s go to Cairo,” and – alakazam! – there he is.

The guys at Pyro got it right when they talked about narrative games (like CRPGs) involving a contract with the player. It’s what happens all the time in movies when there’s a flashback. Sixty years ago, audiences needed a wash dissolve to believe it. Now you can play around with time using just an ordinary cut.

Why have realism at all? Well, take an example I used when designing my RTS Warrior Kings. Without any rules for supply in such a game, conquest works like infection. You can take a single worker behind enemy lines and build a massive base to attack from. That will lead to some pretty odd strategies if the game is set in the Trojan Wars.

But you don’t want real realism. Full-on true-to-life supply line rules can so easily lead to a player struggling against the game rather than against the other players. So you need to find a way that rewards the player if he does it right, but still allows him to ignore supply lines if he wants. One way to do that is to have injured characters automatically recover hit points if they’re in supply, for example, which is how I had it work in Warrior Kings. The player doesn't have to micromanage supplies, but they do get a bonus for not letting a force get cut off behind enemy lines.

Still, games aren’t movies. The whole point of a game is to give the player a hands-on experience. And sometimes that experience might be of inevitability. I played a wargame of the Cuban revolution. The government player couldn’t possibly win (Michael Corleone was right) but it was fun to see why they couldn't. Only games can do this. Which is why the debate will rage on. And there will always be a case to be made – even for shoe leather.

10 comments:

  1. It’s the eternal conundrum. Hit location tables and gruesome “critical hit” consequences can be fun to read but not always that fun to play. It’s all well and good when you chop off the villian’s hand...not so much when it’s your character...unless of course they get a new cool magical/mechanical one... Some of the best games I’ve played have used really simple rules - even Fighting Fantasy with some tweaks can work really well. I think the problem is where you have high hit point character whose player knows they can’t be killed by a single blow from that weapon. When I’ve tinkered with system design I’ve thought that having open ended damage rolls and/or degrees of success can be the answer. That dagger might just knick your opponent or be driven to the hilt into their eye socket... Dave can you please give us a sneak peak into how you’re going to tackle this in DW2?

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    1. Hit points (Health, that is) don't increase in Jewelspider, so you're definitely still in mortal danger in any fight. Even if you're in full plate, there's a chance that the opponent will get a master stroke, which is a partially open-ended effect roll that potentially goes up to 11 (of course!) and with mastery and quality bonuses it's possible that dagger will kill even the toughest fighter with one blow.

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  2. Sounds good! Is there any process to acquire some “heroic toughness” to boost health a bit like a Don McLean in Die Hard or perhaps more classically Rasputin? Or is that dealt with another way with a different mechanic rather than adding a couple of Health points with accumulated skill/experience? I don’t suppose there’s any chance of alpha/beta release to some avid fans/test players (cheeky bugger I know...)

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    1. I think we're still at the pre-alpha, if that! But I'll reveal a bit more in this Friday's post, and no doubt we'll be looking for willing players before too long.

      It's quite hard to boost Health itself, though with a high Vitality score you can keep on going despite levels of damage that would finish off an average man or woman.

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  3. If you want realistic supply lines, "Campaign for North Africa". Hint: you really don't :)

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    1. Jamie and I happened to see your comment at the same time, James (we had taken a day off to play Pillars of Eternity II, but that's a detail.), and he burst out laughing.

      "Why?" I asked, never having played Campaign for North Africa.

      "It's the game where you have to ensure sufficient rice supplies for the Italian Army cook pots," he said once he'd recovered.

      So yes, that does sound like realism taken to crazy extremes!

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    2. Apparently it's even sillier. You have to give Italian units an extra ration of water so that they can boil their pasta. Otherwise they become "disorganized" and useless in the field. Also, it takes something like 1500 hours to play.

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    3. Pasta, that was it. Duh -- what am I talking about, rice???

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    4. Maybe there was a follow-up game set in the Pacific that takes 3000 hours to play?

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  4. Reminds me of that joke “Wanna buy an Italian WWII rifle? Never fired and only dropped once...” :-)

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