The idea of a “grounded” game is something that I’ve repeatedly expressed in the podcast over quite a number of episodes. By this I mean in touch with our experiential sense of reality as a human being living in the world.
Thus, in a modern conspiracy game the particulars of the Secret Masters and their plans might be totally fantastical but I want the game to feel believable and grounded in what I understand to be possible in the modern world.
When it comes to the Fantasy genre, I want this sense of being grounded even though I am aware that the world of the game might have fantastical elements. If there are dragons, great! But please let the way the dragon’s breath works broadly conform to the why physics works.
The exception MIGHT be where the magic intersects with the world although, in truth, I even prefer that to feel as though it is integrated, a part of the whole and not some mechanical add-out to make a fun game. Magic must provide depth to the world.
This is why I like my game to come with rules that are designed to emulate reality, at least to some degree of believability. I want consistency and, as far as I can tell, the only way to be consistent is to write decisions and rulings down… and then to stick to those rules. Grounded worlds are underwritten by grounded systems of play.
I’m not sure why I feel so strongly about it except to express that this is what I seek from both the worlds I play in and the ones I (often fail) to create.
Game on!
Roleplay Rescue’s Blog 
I feel strongly about this as well and the reason for that I think is suspension of disbelief. Comedic endeavors often need a “straight man” and serious drama often needs “comic relief”. The fantastical benefits from a grounding in reality in order to help maintain immersion. In my humble opinion anyway.
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I might be wrong in suggesting this,
and I certainly don’t mean it as any slight,
but I often wonder that the concept being described here or the understanding being sought here by the use of words “believable” or “realistic” in a fantasy game circumstance would be better served by the use of a word such as “credible”
By this I mean, a dragon can never in any proper sense be “realistic” and can only be legitimately “believable” in whatever sense that it manifests as similar to the natural world, in fact I’d go further and suggest that to require either in terms of acceptance as to what a dragon is or isn’t in the context of a fantasy role playing game is to almost miss the point of dragons
BUT
a dragon CAN be completely credible as a dangerous malevolent fantastical creature without having a jot of overlap (beyond obvious but chimeric aesthetics) with what we would demand to satisfy our very modern demand for “believability” or “realism”
Now I don’t get many players getting upset about dragons but I occasionally get players being upset about their metaphysical cousins: magic and spellcasting.
I’ve lost count of the number of times a players quotes actual high school and popular science level physics to get me to agree that a spell does or should do something not categorically outlined in the description (usually related to fire, as in fireballs etc, and how we both know in our real lives how fire works and acts)
My answer is always the same, it’s not measurable science and spellcasting would be something different if it was, it’s magic that happens because the wizard said words and made gestures and you know it’s magic when it happens because that’s not supposed to happen when someone just says words and makes gestures. It’s not that it’s unbelievable, it’s incomprehensible.
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Actually just to clarify my last point, it’s not not its unbelievable and therefore suspect fraudulent or fake and in being that less of an existential threat, rather it’s VERY real and incomprehensible and , at least to any sane person, utterly terrifying
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None of which is to say that a dragon CAN’T be an alien/mutant/hybrid/ super evolved dinosaur whose powers are entirely in keeping with known science or at least modern scientific theory, but I imagine context is king and such a beast would jar less in a world influenced more by MOORCOCK or Martin rather than say Tolkien or Rowling
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I use the term ‘realism’ in the way Tolkien did: “inner consistency of reality”. That said, thanks for suggesting ‘credible’ as a term.
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