Realism in role-playing

If you have — by chance — already read my personal information on the About page (if you haven’t, why not go there now and return here afterwards 😉 ), you’ll know that my favourite geek activity (and my favourite form of compensation) is pen and paper role-playing.

I’ve been role-playing for 15 years now, and my favourite commercial role-playing game (system) has turned out to be: HârnMaster (also written Hârn Master, Harnmaster — or in some fashion without the circumflex) . I also like to play certain other games, but HârnMaster simply has the best rules of them all.

I think this because HârnMaster tries to be as realistic as possible in many respects; especially the combat, wound, and healing rules are convincingly graphic and detailed.

Why does realism make a good role-playing game for me? — Well… Role-playing is about telling stories, and all stories are — naturally — based on what is real (the things from the real world that we know and that we take for granted)… So, as good role-playing rules should always maintain role-playing (storytelling), they should in turn be as real(istic) as possible — otherwise the stories told will get into conflict with the rules earlier or later. The healthy limitation of the realism should be playability and a smooth game flow.

The “realism” I’m speaking of is also called “simulationism” or — attention! — “verisimilitude” 8) by others. Personally, I also like to call it “emulating reality”.

Nature — one of the main protagonists of this blog — has of course quite a lot to do with realism and reality. I think it would even claim to be mainly responsible for it. Now, my first entry shows you that I’m not really Nature’s best friend (I actually believe it is a danger to public safety and should be banned). For escapist gaming purposes however, I think it’s a very neat and clever trick to emulate Nature’s “invention”, so that what is unreal (the game) feels about as real as what Nature thinks should be real (the “real” world).

So, fellow role-players, get “real”! 😆

p.s.: If you’re a role-player and not yet familiar with the high-realism fantasy role-playing system HârnMaster, I highly recommend visiting its official website at www.kelestia.com (maintained by the author N. Robin Crossby).

Nature fears this blog

Hey there! You’re in time to witness the very beginnings of my blog. Welcome.

I have given this blog its specific title because I plan to rant about Nature (with a capital “N”) mostly — about what we have made of it and what it has made of us. I really think it’s about time that Nature gets a critic — people have sheepishly accepted its doings for too long; even worse, they’ve tried to conform to it as much as possible. For what reason? Because everything they are is Nature? That’s no reason no to complain. That’s no reason not to demand something better.

Nature of course got wind of this blog — or rather of my idea to start it. And Nature got afraid. Really afraid. “Oooh, poor me, a critic after only 13.7 billion years time to develop self-confidence…” That’s why Nature — just like some evil overlord of an eighties cartoon series — came up with the Weekend of Cycling Accidents, a nasty plan to deter me from writing this blog. Well… If you read the news you’d know that it was Mr. Isaac Gálvez Lopez, the racing cyclist, who was killed that weekend (on November 26), while yours truly (on November 25) got away with kissing the the asphalt for about 0.5 m — resulting in two nasty lacerations in the face.

The Weekend of Cycling Accidents… Nature’s plan didn’t work out — I’m still here, so are all my teeth (*phew*), and I got to start the blog. Not with me, Nature!

p.s.: For an introduction of myself and of this blog, please go to the About page of this blog site.