[MUD-Dev] realism and unrealism

[Travis Casey]

In the recent discussions about realism in games, a couple of people
have made the statement that "realism != entertainment".  This seems
to be a common point of view, echoed quite often on mud newsgroups and
in other non-mud-specific game design forums.

I'd like to point out that the reverse is also true:

 unrealism != entertainment.

It's perfectly true that some "realistic" features can be boring
and/or too much of a pain for players to deal with.  However, the same
is true of unrealistic features.

Thus, the mere fact that a particular feature is "realistic" does not
make it a bad feature, any more than the mere fact that a particular
feature is "unrealistic" makes it a bad feature.  Either type of
feature can be boring or too much of a pain for players to deal with.

Second, I'd like to point out that people's tastes vary.  A game that
some people find to be "too realistic" others may like; on the other
side, a game that some find to be "not realistic enough" others may
like.  Neither group is "wrong", any more than people who like PvP or
people who don't like PvP are "wrong" -- they simply have different
tastes in games.

In the paper RPG world, we have games ranging along the "realism"
spectrum from Toon (a game where characters are Saturday-morning
cartoon characters, with all the attendant things like being able to
ignore the law of gravity "because I never studied law") to Sword's
Path: Glory (a game that cuts combat in phases one-fifteenth of a
second long, and uses different charts for hit locations depending on
whether you're thrusting, cutting vertically, cutting horizontally, or
cutting on an angle).  There's no reason why different muds can't
similarly vary in how much or little emphasis they place on realism.

To put it another way: Can't we just recognize that people have
different tastes and get along?  :-)

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_     Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-' 
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