"What do you expect from your players regarding knowledge?" Topic

There are many definitions of realism. My leedle ole' handbook of philosophy here which weighs in under the featherweight class of such items at 320 pages (as opposed to something that begins with "The Oxford" or "The Cambridge" which comes in at thousands) lists eight, realism, Aristotelian Realism, common sense realism, epistemological realism, naïve realims, personal realism and \ Platonic Realism, and for good measure a listing under "reality" and "realims, objective and formal. Once you toss in solipsism, which can be epistemological solipsism, or metaphysical solipsism the number of definitions of realism increases exponentially by the power of infinity.

Otto:

Just to really clarify the issue. You are designing a game to represent something specific from history. You can be as philosophically lost in infinity as you want, but in the end you are going to have to choose what to express historically with game rules, which means you are going to have to choose what particular version of reality you are going to use to represent that history. Then there are the game rules…which have players doing very specific things, making very specific kinds of decisions. There is no room for an infinity of possible definitions of reality. The designer has to make choices in what he is going to portray.

Players can agree, disagree, pretend anything they want to as well as debate which 'realism' is best or important to them in the infinity of choices…but the designer has already decided before he designed his game system.

Here is what I run into with new players.

I'm using a gunnery system based on WWII tank manuals. The manual states the first shot is a ranging shot. At a range of 1000 meters the first shot has about a 30% chance to hit. Historically the crew "bracketed" the target using range or elevation corrections until a hit was achieved. If the shot hits the gun is assumed to be "ranged in" and may have an 80% chance to hit the target but can never be better than 80%.

Before the game I have to give a briefing to the players that almost resembles an overview of a tank gunnery instruction class. Guys that have been tank crew members already know what's going on because they've read the manual and performed the same actions as in the game. They've verified that the gunnery system does to a large extent resemble the real thing with the same risk-reward decisions and weapons platform performance.

While I can state that the game has a high degree of historical recreation (I hate using the term "realism") because the source is the real manual and I use the terminology and nomenclature from the manual. However, most players are going to be clueless unless given a briefing or watch the instruction videos before the game.

Some people pick up on it quickly, some take awhile. If you try to compare it to traditional to hit + drm methods it takes longer to grasp the system.

I've simplified it to the point the mechanics are pretty simple and not any more effort or steps than other games.

I do state the goals of the game and what I'm attempting to portray and where important abstractions have been made. I feel that if the game play recreates to a large degree the designers goal it is a success. As to whether people feel it is "real" or not is pretty much subjective to the individual and their level of knowledge for the era, weapons and tactics and their expectations going into the game.

The game needs to be enjoyable, fun and interactive too. A dry run through of a detailed simulation would be boring in a game.

As a designer I try to assume nothing. Most of the changes I've had to make from play testing were assumptions on my part that ended up confusing the players. If I observe players having difficulty understanding a game concept or mechanic I'll strongly consider changing it or including it in a play aid.

Wolfhag