Having recognized the benefit we get from incorporating realism in our RPGs, many gamers thru the decades have sought it and, much to their baffled frustration, may note that something has gone awry. They discover that their sessions are clogged up and bogged down with minutia, and the Otherworld-Immersion they seek is ultimately weakened rather than enhanced. What goes wrong here?
In such instances, the likely culprit is that they have put the cart before the horse. Remember that realism is not the actual goal of the game. Realism is merely a tool in service to the goal of Otherworld-Immersion (by deepening the psychological connection Players feel to everything in the gaming world).
"Detailism"
Realism works when it strengthens natural believability but fails when groups focus too much on granularity, trudging in the quagmire of Detailism.
When our focus and energy go too far down the path of trying to simulate the nitty-gritty of things, we start losing the very thing we seek by employing realism. We can fall down rabbit-holes on any topic: Combat, armor, wounds, kingdom-rule, travel, you name it. At that point, we are, to some degree, losing the forest for the trees…or the branches…or even the leaves! So how can we keep employing realism without sliding down into ‘detailism’?
My own solution comes from following a guiding principle—Immersive-Relevant Realism: Global, informed, logical coherence concerning the elements that most strongly affect the way the players relate to the game world, events, and other characters. That is, our aim is not to have perfect accuracy regarding every detail in the world (which, even if it were possible would be agonizingly tiresome).
We must resist the temptation to cross all of the ‘t’s & dot every ‘i’, for we only have so much focus and mental energy during our sessions. Spend that energy in the wrong way, and you pay for it. Instead, we should employ just enough realism—the “right kind of realism”—to help the players feel a deep connection to the Secondary World.
Pareto Realism
This can be accomplished by using a version of the Pareto Principle, which in this application means that we get “80% of our benefit from 20% of the effort”. Most of what generates the sense of realism in your games comes from fast, generalized common sense rather than exploring the nitty-gritty minutia. With just the “20%” effort/time we can represent enough “informed common sense” to generate realism.
This Pareto Realism means focusing on just the overarching, intuitive realities of life, predominantly anything that affects the minds of the players.
Interpersonal interactions may be both the most important and the easiest (intuitive) to handle realistically. How would the farmer react to events or statements made? Trust your imagination; trust your gut! Any GM can look inside and just ask, “How would I react if I were this farmer?” That’s the kind of realism which is fast and natural, and which we need to strengthen relatability.
Avoid the swamps of minutia. For example, the reality of getting wounded in battle can open a Pandora’s Box of ‘if-then’ problems. Instead of focusing on the granularity of ligaments and blood-clots, it is enough to know that wounds endanger us and impair us. If my leg is wounded, I cannot run as well (or perhaps not even walk). If my sword-arm is wounded, my ability to swing my sword is diminished. We don’t have to break open a medical manual and then pinpoint the exact damage that a spear may have done to your thigh. It is enough to trust our informed intuitions and embrace useful generalities: Wounds diminish our functionality—we bleed, weaken, and are closer to death.
We don’t necessarily need to reference the exact velocity of someone’s fall. It’s sufficient to simply know that we roughly fall at 10m/s2, that the squared part of that equation is essential, and then to know that falling from heights (“as little as”) 12’ might hurt, while falling 32’ can be lethal. Such global principles are simple, but sufficient to make realism a powerful tool.
The proper implementation of realism is not in trying to calculate/simulate each grain of sand, but to instead emulate the overarching experience of the beach. By expending just enough energy to give us an instinctual, informed, & relatable realism, we help generate the Otherworld-Immersion we want.