Ask Angry time again. Do you want to ask Angry a question? E-mail it to ask.angry@angry.games. Tell Angry what to call you, be brief, and get to the f$&%ing point. Why is that so hard for people to understand? Why?!

Ishmael asks…

Though you often rail against the cult of realism in game design, when you’re sharing your own thoughts about designing or adjusting mechanics, you often cite realism as a reason for doing something a certain way. You just don’t call it realism. What’s the difference? How should a designer think about realism?

Oh man, I love that. The Cult of Realism. Like there’s these cowled figures who’ve seen through the tissue-thin veil that hides true reality from other gamers. And they’re spreading their non-madness like a cancer.

First, you’re right. I don’t call realism realism. I call it verisimilitude. That’s because it’s stupid to talk about realism when you’re talking about imaginary worlds. As many gamer a$&holes are willing to point out. Like when someone says it’s ridiculous that a six-inch tall pixie could have an 18 Strength, wield a broadaxe and become a barbarian, There’s always someone on hand to say, “oh, so you can imagine dragons are a thing, but not that a six-inch tall pixie could be as strong as an evil orc?”

Not that that’s the reason I’m swapping the word out. I’m not trying to avoid fights like that. I can just say, “yes, that’s right, dragons are okay but pixies with 18 Strength are not and I don’t want to stick around to explain why because I’m afraid whatever the f$&% is wrong with your brain might be contagious.” I say verisimilitude instead of realism because that’s the right word.

See, verisimilitude comes from Latin and it basically means “kinda, sorta looks like the truth.” It refers to a semblance of reality. It means that s$&% behaves the way you’d expect it to as long as you accept certain non-real assumptions. For example, if you accept that the myths about monsters and magic in medieval Europe are mostly true, you’d end up with a world that functions basically like the real world except for the wizards and dragons. And even the wizards and dragons would behave pretty much like every other living creature except for the fire-throwing and fire-breathing. In other words, except for the exceptions, s$&% makes sense.

S$&% needs to make sense. Because RPG players need to know how s$&% is going to work so they can form plans and make choices. Which is what an RPG is all about. Making choices. When a pixie annoys the s$&% out of you, it’s a reasonable choice to grab her and squeeze her until she turns blue. Because pixies are many things, but strong ain’t one of them. If the pixie broke free with her raw, physical strength and then hurled you through a brick wall, you’d call bulls$&%. Most reasonable people would.

That said, if she used magic to zap you so you released her and then summoned a gust of wind to throw you around, that’d be fine.

Verisimilitude allows people to come into the fictional world with some basic assumptions about how it works. Without it, you’d have to spell out literally everything about how everything in the entire universe worked. And you’d end up with quite a page count, let me tell you. I can add a spell to the game called ignite and say that it sets flammable objects on fire and most reasonable gamers would be able to handle that. They know how the f$&% fire works. There’d be some quibbling over fine details, sure, like damage numbers. But everyone would know what you can and can’t do with that spell. But let’s say I add a spell called infect. It infects vulnerable objects with creeping destruction. Well, what the hell does that do? What the hell is creeping destruction? Is it an infection? Does it spread? What’s vulnerable to it? Even if creeping destruction worked just like fire, you’d never know it.

Now, as important as verisimilitude is, it’s not a design a goal. It just shores up some very important parts of RPG design. Like approachability, consistency, and coherence. When s$&% works the way most people expect it to, the game’s easier to understand. It requires less rules, it’s less arbitrary, and it’s less likely to break the players’ suspensions of disbelief. That’s why you’ll never hear me say, “I’m going to add this thing to the game to make the game more realistic.” Or “more versimilitudinistic.” I need better reasons than reality to add most s$&% to the game because realism is something the GM and the players bring to the table on their own.

Instead, when I’m designing something, I keep a careful eye on whether the things I’m adding also behave the way most reasonable people would expect them to. And when they don’t, I make sure that’s a deliberate choice and I explain it very clearly and carefully.

And that’s the way to do it. Realism alone ain’t a good enough reason to design something. It ain’t a goal in itself. Not even if you call it verisimilitude. But it is something you have to watch throughout the design process. Verisimilitude makes the game playable. And if you break it, you break your game.

Steven asks…

The question I had for you revolves around spellcasting components that require a certain intrinsic value. For example, a diamond worth 50 gp. I am of the belief that, no matter how many times you tell others to get the f$&%ing point, you really and truly want me to write an essay expounding on my personal views. Only when I’ve finished explaining, usually with hundreds of words, what I believe to be the correct answer do I want to hear yours. After all, how can you possibly answer a question unless you know what I think the right answer is first. I mean, sure, the very idea of me asking you a question indicates that I respect your wisdom and judgment and want you to help me understand something I feel I don’t actually understand. But that doesn’t mean my answer is less important or less valuable than yours. And, because I once heard of a thing called context, I know it’s important for me to analyze a bunch of other, unrelated s$&%. To babble on and on and on for paragraph after useless paragraph. And I know, I just know, that I’m special. I know that even though you spend inordinate amounts of time lambasting people for sending you 500-word essays to explain simple questions, my essay and my question are obviously different. And you will no doubt read every single word. And then praise my brilliant analysis of an issue absolutely no one else has ever raised before. Anyway, how should I think about the required cost for spellcasting components given that the value of a thing depends very much on who’s setting the value? What does it actually mean that a spell requires a diamond “worth” 50 gp?

… huh? What? Sorry. Must have drifted off there. Was there a question in that mess? Oh, yeah, it’s the standard question about how the idea of spell components with specific values totally falls apart if you think about it too hard.

No f$&%ing s$&%.

As an accountant, I totally appreciate the point that in the real world, the value of a thing — its price or cost — is determined entirely by what two people are willing to trade the thing for. No matter what pissing, moaning artists on the internet say. Or what interventionist governments demand with artificial price floors or ceilings. If you have an old AD&D 2E Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set and ask 125 bucks for it and I pay 125 bucks for it, then it’s worth 125 bucks exactly.

And yes, in the real world, diamonds are only worth what they’re worth because of artificial supply shortages, marriage traditions, clever marketing schemes, and a biological aesthetic appreciation for sparkly things because it helped cavemen find clear, clean drinking water. And yes, the price varies from day to day. But in the world of Dungeons & Dragons, there’s no economy, no commodities market, no nothing. There’s just a rule that says every item has a value and that value’s measured in gold pieces. And while a wizard may pay more or less than that value depending on some good bargaining or intimidation rolls — or even pay nothing because she found it lying on same dank dungeon floor or extracted it from the vacuoles of a gelatinous cube — the thing itself is still worth whatever its game value is.

And that’s because D&D is a game and it runs on game mechanics.

And actually, I’ll tell you that that’s not as crazy unrealistic as you think. See, in the real world, there’s worldwide markets that determine the day-to-day prices for all sorts of s$&%. Everything from stocks and bonds to land to gold to oil to rice to diamonds to labor. Those prices are just the averages of all the different sales and purchase prices for those goods from that day. Thousands or millions of transactions in a free and open market. And those basically work as a sort of fixed and objective value of a thing. And in the real world, any given trade might not happen at a thing’s market price. A collector might pay you more for a specific diamond because it once belonged to a specific historical figure. You might have to settle less than the market price of the gold when you pawn off your wedding ring to pay off a mobster. And you might even find a diamond on some dank, dungeon floor. Lucky you.

So, if you absolutely can’t play the game without a way of reconciling this s$&% in your head, there you are. Just think of the value of that diamond or objay duh arte or +1 toothpick of dentistry as its market. But that’ll just raise other questions. Like “why the motherloving f$&% does magic know or care about the current price of diamonds on the Faerunian commodities market?” And the answer is “it doesn’t.” Because that’s stupid. And it’s a game. But magic likely does care about some objective quality of the thing that’s strongly correlated with the market value. The purity of gold in karats for example. Or the weight of the diamond in karats. Or the nutritional value of the magical herbs in carrots. Who the f$&% knows? I don’t. But I do know that no one — absolutely f$&%ing no one — wants to keep track of a different quality measure for every single f$&%ing thing they own or find in a D&D game. And no one — absolutely f$&%ing no one — wants to simulate the Faerunian commodities market. Not even me. And I do my taxes by hand every year for fun.

Truth is the component value mechanic is just a way of putting an extra price tag on a valuable spell. One the designers felt needed some extra restrictions beyond the normal Vancian spell slot bulls$&%. It’s a game mechanic. One that makes the most sense it can possibly make while still doing its job. And it works for reasonable people who know what willing suspension of disbelief is. It breaks when you apply real-world logic to it the same way everything in the game breaks when you apply real-world logic to it. It’s not like it makes any less sense than f$&%ing hit points. Or initiative.

And yes, you can exploit the hell out of it by selectively applying the right mix of real-world logical ideas to it. But that’s why the game has a GM who’s empowered to say no. And to slap the s$&% out of players who push it.

Especially players who take over 500 words to push it.

Wanda asks…

I’d like to account for the direction creatures are facing in my game. How would you handle this?

Hello Wanda! And thanks for asking me a question without a doctoral thesis attached. You literally asked your entire question in one line. And I only edited it slightly because I wanted to stick a specific word in there. The word is ‘facing.’ And the reason I stuck it in there is that that’s the name of the game mechanic you’re asking about. Gamers call such mechanics ‘facing rules.’ Many tactical tabletop games have facing rules.

And I’ve got good news for you. D&D’s got them too. They’re optional rules. Just open your DMG to page 252 and you’ll find them. And they’re perfectly fine.

Truth is most editions of D&D offer facing rules. Usually, they’re optional, variant rules, but they’re almost always there somewhere. And they all basically work the same way. Every creature’s got a front, back, and two sides. If the creature’s got a shield, it’s got a shield side and a the other side. When the creature moves, it can adjust its facing but then it’s stuck facing that way until it moves again. Creatures can only attack in front of them and any shield they’ve got only protects against attacks from their front or shield side. The creature can’t see anything behind it and, consequently, attacks coming from behind have some kind of advantage.

Obviously, some creatures break these rules. Beholders can see and attack in every direction, which is one of the things that used to make them so dangerous. Oozes are nothing but front sides. Creatures without shields don’t have shield sides. And so on.

The rules are simple and logical. And, if you’re using miniatures or tokens, they’re easy to keep track of. But despite existing in some form in every edition of D&D, they’re seldom part of the core rules. And almost no one ever uses them. In the few instances when they were core — or core-ish as part of a major, optional combat revamp like the one that came in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Players Option: Combat & Tactics — they’re almost always overlooked. This is why I’ve got to ask what it is you actually want.

Look, any random a$&hole internet GM can point you to the rules and say, “there they are.” Or even tell you how to write your own rules and what you should take into account. But you asked me. And that means you don’t want some random a$&hole on the internet throwing a quick couple of paragraphs at you. You want a very specific a$&hole on the internet doing his trademark thing of overanalyzing the question until even you don’t know what the hell you’re asking.

So, why do you want facing? What do you think it’s going to add to the game? And is there any easier way of adding the same thing to the game? Consider what happened when they revised D&D 3 into D&D 3.5. See, the designers realized that facing was a giant pain in the a$& when it came to large and oddly shaped creatures. And that it was a weird thing for melee combatants to worry about. See, facing’s the sort of game mechanic you see in games about naval ships and airplanes and huge military formations. Things that can’t turn quickly and easily. But individual melee combatants can literally spin in place and small-scale melee combat happens at a faster pace than naval and army combat and a slower pace than dogfighting fighter jet combat.

Meanwhile, the designers realized that all they really wanted to do was allow creatures to attack other creatures from behind. And in melee combat, that’d only be possible if two attackers managed to surround one defender. Otherwise, the defender would just spin to face whoever was attacking. Hence, they made all creatures circles with no facing and replaced the facing rules with the much simpler flanking rules. After all, when it’s not their turns, the D&D game still assumes that every creature is moving around in its square anyway. So why can’t they spin to face approaching attackers? The only time they can’t do that is when they’ve got attackers coming from two opposing directions.

Flanking is, by the way, also an optional rule in D&D 5E. It’s on DMG 251.

Now, the one thing flanking doesn’t consider — not even in D&D 3.5 — is ranged attacks. But you can fix that easily enough in any edition. For example, just say that if you’re engaged in melee, any attack that comes from the opposite direction as the opponent you’re engaged with has advantage. Or, if you want to make it more interesting, give the target the option of either granting the incoming attack advantage or spinning to intercept it and thereby provoking an opportunity attack from the engaged melee combatant. It’s a nice, simple fix.

I probably wouldn’t add facing to the game myself without a really good reason. And I don’t know what your reasons are. But I would add flanking — with the modification to account for incoming ranged attacks — if not for the fact that there’s only one bonus in D&D 5E. Advantage is already too easy and too impactful. The game doesn’t benefit from yet another way to get advantage. Especially when it doesn’t stack.

Spoof asks…

I’m trying to design a system for tracking creatures through various environments and conditions. I want to emulate the feel of real-world tracking without turning it into a simulationist slog.

Why? Why are you doing this thing? What does it add to the game? Are you just doing it for realism’s sake? Because don’t do that.

Here’s the problem with tracking: there’s no strategy to it. No choices. Nothing interesting about it.

Say the party comes upon the scene of an attack in the road. Let’s say it’s a little sidequesty, optional thing to investigate so we can avoid the fight about gating success behind single rolls. I mean, I don’t have a problem with that, but other gamers sure as hell do. And they’re whiny f$&%ers.

Anyway, burnt cart in the road. Clearly attacked by something. And the players want to investigate. “No problemo,” says the ranger, “we’ll just track the curs what did this back to their hideout and make them pay in spades for the dastardly deed.” And no, I don’t know why the ranger’s speech patterns are a weird mix of Brooklyn goombah and the king of NES-era Alefgard. Players are weird.

So the ranger looks around for tracks. And if he finds some, he follows them. And that’s it. There’s no more decisions or strategies than that. He can’t do anything to track better. And once he’s tracking, he’s going to keep tracking he until gets to the end of the trail or he loses it. Any minigame you might add here just adds extra die rolls and stupid non-questions like, “okay, now you’ve moved from the soft grasslands to the hardscrabble hills and the DC is 20; do you want to continue or just give up?” No ranger’s ever going to say, “DC 20? I’m not even going to try to roll better than a 20! Forget it, I’m done.”

Tracking is 10% locating and interpreting clues — that’s the die roll part — and 90% following the trail. All the other s$&% you described in the — admittedly limited and forgivable — superfluous crap that followed your question amounts either to flavor stuff or stuff that just changes the difficulty of the roll. The former doesn’t need any rules. And the latter doesn’t benefit from much granularity. The rules on DMG 244 for setting tracking DCs are fine as they are. Though I’d probably have added some modifiers for weather and for the size of the creature or party leaving the trail. Then again, any GM worth his screen should be able to set a DC like that without needing a f$&%ing table anyway.

Now, maybe you’ve got some brilliant take on tracking I haven’t considered. I’m not a tracker in real life. If you’ve got a perspective on different tools and strategies and interesting decisions players can make while tracking, then have at it. But to me, it looks like you’re just adding complexity for realism’s sake and that it won’t add anything to the gameplay itself.

Adding complexity for realism’s sake without adding to the gameplay? That’s what the road to simulationist slog looks like. And sure, you can turn off that road before you get mired neck-deep in slog swamp, but there’s nothing else down that road anyway. You shouldn’t even be on that road.