tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post8067623963849529771..comments2024-03-28T17:59:09.906+08:00Comments on Monsters and Manuals: The Neverending Campaign and the Problem of Verisimilitude Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-49800304672704275372016-02-11T18:30:34.900+08:002016-02-11T18:30:34.900+08:00Verisimilitude is a fuck of a concept, along with ...Verisimilitude is a fuck of a concept, along with its cousin believability (or "suspension of disbelief" or whatever). In my mind realism is impossible and undesirable except insofar as it's employed deliberately, stylistically - to achieve a certain effect. Realism is an aesthetic whose distinguishing feature is its telling you it's not, that it's the only valid one. It's a kind of weed. Imitation is clever rhetoric - a way of making claims about the thing you've asserted you're imitating.<br /><br />I think believability is a bad term because I'm sure you don't really believe you're a wizard fighting a dragon or that there is one somewhere. Instead I'd talk about involvement and flow - getting into the groove of an internally consistent logic which involves enough dynamism, contradiction and exception to keep things interesting, challenging. You need the right amount of resistance - where's the fun in declaring your problems solved? That's the problem with Dungeon World's adventure gear - instead of having to make do with 60 ft. of rope, 10 iron spikes and a pole, you can just pull out a grappling hook.<br /><br />There are sweet spots between stasis and dynamism, ease and difficulty.<br /><br />And yeah rules-as-physics has always been a groovy, underexplored facet of RPGs.spigothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10731224119469018601noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-16330805906639904392016-02-10T10:03:45.239+08:002016-02-10T10:03:45.239+08:00Mystic Empyrean is a table top game that works lik...Mystic Empyrean is a table top game that works like that. The PCs are basically transcendent beings that adventure to rebuild the world. Their actions alter the world by changing the balance of elements. It is a very interesting system and one of the few storygames I like.Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04786498942396099197noreply@blogger.com