Why use D&D for a Simulationist style Game?

[pemerton]

Are there really multiple styles all fighting over being called 'sim?' Why?

Blame GNS theory.

Ron Edwards uses "sim" for a particular analytic and classificatory purpose. He is trying to contrast RPGs in which the participants are expected to make decisions drawing upon concerns that come from outside the play of the game itself - these he labels either narrativist or gamist - from RPGs in which the participants (players moreso than GMs) are meant to confine themselves, in deciding how to make decisions in the course of play, to the contents of the game itself.

Within sim, he distinguishes two main approaches:

*Purist-for-system, in which (i) players confine themselves to applying and discovering the consequences of the game system, and (ii) the game system itself aspires to be, and is at least adequate as, a model of the ingame causal processes. Classic Traveller, RQ, RM, GURPS, C&S and HARP are all examples of this.

*High concept, in which the system is not necessarily meant to model in game processes (though it might) but rather to deliver genre-appropriate outcomes, with the players along for the ride. CoC is a classic of this; so is Ars Magica. A lot of White Wolf and 2nd ed AD&D play aspires to this, but Edwards is very down on it because the mechanics won't actually deliver the genre experience unless the GM manipulates and fudges them along the way (rule zero, or "the golden rule" fromWW). I think a lot of ENworld posters play D&D in more-or-less this style.​

Notice that purist-for-system play brings with it a type of constraint on mechanics (rules-as-gameworld-physics) that high-concept sim play does not. For instance, the "obscure death" rule in Dragonlance is designed to help support high-concept play, but it doesn't model any ingame causal process. Similarly for action points in 3E Eberron.

By gamism Edwards doesn't mean what most ENworld-ers mean by that (on ENworld, "gamist" tends to be used to mean "uses metagame mechanics"). He means play where players make decisions based on the desire to win. Again, this is not related to any particular style of mechanics. For instance, Gygaxian AD&D is a mix of rules-as-physics mechanics (eg the way weapons are modelled, Vancian casting, the morale and loyalty rules) and metagame mechanics (eg initiative and action economy, hp, saving throws, XP gain), but the default playstyle for Gygaxian D&D is gamist (what Gygax calls "skilled play", which includes what many ENworlders would regard as improper metagaming, like planning spells among casters for optimisation without wondering about how they communicate with one another in game; as well as gaming the GM).

For Edwards's purposes, the goal of winning via skill play is more salient than the mechanical details or so-called Gygaxian naturalism; but for others, including I think many ENworlders, the "naturalism" is highly salient, and makes them think of Gygaxian D&D as a type of sim (not in Edwards's sense, but in the sense of aspiring to present a "naturalistic" gaming experience).

Finally, by "narrativism" Edwards means play that aspires to yield a satisfactory story as a pretty immediate consequence of play, without anyone actually having to take responsibility as a storyteller - the idea is that the mechaincs will be such that if the players do their bit, and the GM does his/her bit, then story will emerge "automatically" with no need for fudging or deliberate authorship. I think among D&D players, especially ENworlders, this is a rather uncommon motivation for play. Most ENworlders, when they talk about "narrative" play, mean something like a game with a high degree of continuity in the fiction, and rich backstory that makes sense of the conflicts in which the PCs find themselves. (The starkest contrast would be play in which the PCs simply start at the entracne to this week's variation on White Plume Mountain, with no backstory continuity beyond the PCs being the same ones.)

Most ENworld "narrative" play is, in Edwards's terms, high concept sim with a high degree of GM force to maintain the coherence of the backstory and continuity - but many of these ENworld players wouldn't label themsevels as sim players because they are not using the terminology for the same classificatory purpose as Edwards is.

 

[Neonchameleon]

First, the problem is root-deep for two reasons. First, Ron Edwards labelled simulationist play incoherent which meant either he doesn't understand it or it doesn't fit the model properly. It's the obvious proud nail. Second, it's being waved around as a banner in the edition wars - and such banners tend to have whatever usefulness they had stripped away.

I have a hard time saying that D&D has always been "primarily gamist" in its approach. Whenever you adapt some kind of other reality (be it real reality or genre reality), the main job you're doing is applying a gamist eye to the process. It's all about adapting some element into a playable game simulation of that element, but that doesn't make it "primarily gamist" in its approach, at least not how Hussar seems to be using the term.

D&D, especially before DL1, is the textbook example of a gamist RPG. You're going down a really weird obstacle course and trying to retrieve as much loot as possible as the core activity. The simulation, such as it is, serves to facilitate this.

But if we were to compare multiclassing rules, for example, 4e drops a lot of the simulation aspects the previous editions held. In an effort to enable the player to create their particular character concepts, players can multiclass their fighter PC for an individual wizard spell to add to their suite of powers. There's barely even a nod to simulating a character gradually growing in wizardly power - elements that are included in previous editions in which wizards progress from neophyte 1st level casters whether they started as one in 1e/2e's multiclassing or picked it up later in 3e's version.

I couldn't disagree more. 4e is IMO the only version of D&D with a simulationist form of multiclassing.

First you do not leave your old class. You don't suddenly forget or fail to use everything you've learned before and utterly change your approach. Instead you take the new things and integrate it into what you already did. And you don't suddenly stop getting better at your core competency. Secondly, you're misrepresenting the 4e multiclassing rules. If you want to slowly grow into additional power in their new class, there are three separate ways of doing it - feats, Paragon Path, and Paragon Multiclassing (which no one ever uses). All of which represent substantial continuing investment.

From a sim perspective AD&D dual classing is ridiculous - and AD&D multiclassing is duplicated by 4e's Hybrids. As for 3.X multiclassing, when you suddenly stop learning what you were doing for a whole level - and the way a powerful fighter learns and is meant to use first level wizard tricks is exactly the same as the way an apprentice wizard is, no that isn't sim either. At least not of the world as I know it.

D&D until 4e worked fantastic for my style of play. 3e got too heavy at the end and magic mart of too far. Still overall D&D fit my playstyle like a glove from beginning to 4e. 4e totally rejected my style and went off in another direction. Now all of this paragraph is absolute fact. What you want to call it is up to you? I've called it sim but maybe I'm using the wrong term.

The interesting question is why it didn't work. And what I got from your list is "They changed it and now it sucks. I like D&D because I was happy with it."

The short answer is that D&D was a) internally consistent, and b) not caught up on details.

... seriously?

AD&D of the myriad subsystems was internally consistent? 3.X of the Standard Climbing Tree was not caught up on details?

Unless it is, which is how I would run it as a process-sim. It's just a fact of the world that this particular dude can take so much punishment before going down.

I mean, there's nothing stopping you from running it that way. I'm sure lots of people did, and still do. You could also not ​do that, if you think it's too silly.

If you do it that way IMO you are into Order of the Stick territory. Nothing wrong with that - but it's very distinctive and doesn't work like most fantasy settings.

 

[The Black Ranger]

Sounds to me like an argument that tries to paint people who like sim oriented games into gamers who think every part of a game needs to simulate real life, and that's just not true.


Also, if I hear "well there are wizards and dragons so how can it be a sim game", it just lets me know that the person doesn't know what a sim oriented game actually means.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I do remember the Ron Edwards essay on ’System Matters’, now included in his Sorcerer RPG, and thinking just how stereotyped his examples were of supposed Gamist, Narrativist and Simulationist games. He proposed that Pendragon was a prime example of a simulationist game, for example, yet it holds a greater awareness of narrative structure than most other games I know, while there are plenty of ‘game’ rewards within the rules too.

I think the proposition, stated in that essay, that any game could only be effective in just one ‘outlook’, and that it was ‘incoherent’ for them to attempt anything else…was fundamentally idiotic, frankly.

So do I see issues with D&D attempting to, say, simulate historical accuracy or the narrative of specific literature? Of course. Yet, I do think that people get hung on labels rather than simply enjoying different games on their individual merits - which can often defy any simplistic categorisation.

 

[dream66_]

In 2001, if you had claimed that you self identified as a sim player and your go to game for that style was D&D, everyone would look at you like you had two heads.

I'm not arguing if it is or is not, I'm just finding your choice of date there interesting.

3.0 came out in August of 2000, one of the biggest attacks I saw against it at the time was complaints about "too simulationist"

so it seems to me that in 2001 that would be point of absolute maximum simulation in all of DND history.

 

[Andor]

My point is that all the classic "process sim" games had a conception of the processes they wanted to model that was prior to the game rules - namely, they wanted to model the processes of real-world biological and physical systems and their interactions. For instance, they want a sword fight in the game to resolve in more-or-less the way that it would in real life.

The idea that you would settle on an essentially arbitrary system of mechanics, and then read the gameworld off that, is one that I have never encountered except among a few posters on this board (you being one of them). It has no precedent in the history or culture of the classic sim RPGs.

Which is not a criticism, but an observation that I think is relevant to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s OP. When Hussar is referring to sim play, I believe that he, like the classic sim RPGers, is assuming that we have a prior conception of the causal processes that our rules are meant to model.

Wound systems are perhaps the classic place where gamers and game systems have different goals and expectations and it's a classic scrapping ground over 'meaning'.

As I've mentioned in this thread, even the most anal retentive attempts to model real life biological processes like Morrow Project or Erma Felna EDF will fall utterly short of their goal. Big stong men have died falling off a step ladder. A stewardess survived a fall of 33,000 feet. Is there any game in the world that allows for both of those outcomes? In real life a sword through the shoulder might be meaningless, or it might kill you if it's 1 mm to the left and nicks the subclavian artery.
Something no game I've ever played models is the fact that wounds may get worse over time. At the moment you're stabbed chances are your adrenaline is up and you may not even feel the wound. The next day however after the adrenaline wears and swelling sets in you will surely feel it. Anybody know a game system where wound penalties are worse the next day? No? And that's not even taking into account infection, or poor healing.

My point? All damage systems are abstract, and are poor models of real world processes. Some of them admit it better than others.

Frankly for D&D I actually like to use what you describe as a purist-for-system approach to understanding the damage system, using a fiction conceit I first saw in the game World Tree. In that game (which is actually not a level based game but nevermind) hit points represent not just 'meat points' but the effectively supernatural skill of your soul to hold onto your body even when mere biology indicates you should be dead. In that world no one would expect an experienced warrior to die simply because he was shot in the eye and stabbed in the heart.

Is it an accurate depiction of real world wound behavior? No. But then again no system is, and it explains the consequences of the rules system in a way which both satisfy my expectations and allow me to understand whats happening from the POV withing the world.

 

[SkidAce]

Back in the day, say circa 1990, I was certain that imbalance and failure to properly judge player proposition, where features of a game that where primarily the result of its low realism - that is to say, that they didn't simulate reality with its complex give and take and checks and balances faithfully enough. I figured that the basis of a game was reality plus stated consistent departures from same as described consistently by the rules. Otherwise, players wouldn't know what to do, and rules wouldn't produce answers that made for a predictable outcome for anyone.

So I started running GURPS. Only to my annoyance, GURPS was doing absolutely no better in play than D&D. So I decided that I needed to fix GURPS, and to my great delight I found that there was a guy out there who had done exactly that. He'd created a system he called GULLIVER based on GURPS and various house rule fixes he'd applied to the GURPS 3e system (much of which ended up being official in GURPS 4e).

But then I discovered a the limits of my theory. While the GULLIVER system was awesome in many ways and fixed a lot of problems, it created a game which was basically too complex to prepare, run, or play. It caused me to step back and reassess my priorities and assumptions. What I eventually decided was that a system didn't need to be faithful to reality. All a system really did for you was generate a fortune - '56% chance of X/44% chance of Y'. A good system needed to generate that fortune quickly (so that it was playable) and transparently (so that the GM could tweak for circumstance), and all it had to do in terms of realism was be believable and broadly applicable. In the process I went back and reassessed the design of 1e D&D and discovered there was more going on than I'd thought.

I felt that 3e D&D offered for me a good balance between my various goals, which largely still remains, "I want a game that produces self-consistent consequences from the actions of all beings within the shared imaginary space."

I'm not sure I wholly believe that a system is 'simulationist', or 'gamist', or 'narrativist'. While it can certainly lean that way and encourage those things, fundamentally if you look at the definitions it's clear that those things have less to do with system than they do with a way of approaching and thinking about play.

For example: "Process-sim is a style of gaming in which you focus on the "how" of what your characters are doing and the realistic/self-consistent consequences thereof." You can take the tools of any system and use them to that purpose. All you are doing is judging roughly what you think the realistic fortune is based on the player proposition. It's a stance; not a system.

"'simulationism' treats the rules of a game as if they were an accurate simulation, and explores what those de-facto laws of physics imply about the world and its denizens." - Again, it's a stance; not a system.

"Genre fidelity or genre emulation is an attempt to simulate a genre (like fantasy, in an FRPG) or genre conventions, rather than simulate any actual (or even imagined), consistent, 'reality.'" - Again, that's a stance; not a system.

I don't think it's any weirder to treat D&D generally as a good basis of simulationist play than it is to treat 4e (or any other edition) as a good basis of narrativist play.

Quoted so it can be read again.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Because the game rules are necessarily less complex than the underlying reality, it means you will always get some things which are different within the game world, but which use identical mechanics. You'll just never get the same thing within the game world, which uses different mechanics.

Ah! that does make more sense.

You could have a light torso wound, or a heavy arm wound, and they might both be represented as 4hp of damage.

And, on characters with different hp totals, a light arm wound might be 1hp for one or 10hps for the other - but they're on different characters, so they're not the /exact/ same thing being represented by different mechanics.

Blame GNS theory.

I do. ;P And the edition war. And I'm sure there are others...

 

[Tony Vargas]

Ron Edwards uses "sim" for a particular analytic and classificatory purpose. He is trying to contrast RPGs in which the participants are expected to make decisions drawing upon concerns that come from outside the play of the game itself - these he labels either narrativist or gamist - from RPGs in which the participants (players moreso than GMs) are meant to confine themselves, in deciding how to make decisions in the course of play, to the contents of the game itself.

Within sim, he distinguishes two main approaches:

*Purist-for-system, in which (i) players confine themselves to applying and discovering the consequences of the game system, and (ii) the game system itself aspires to be, and is at least adequate as, a model of the ingame causal processes. Classic Traveller, RQ, RM, GURPS, C&S and HARP are all examples of this.

*High concept, in which the system is not necessarily meant to model in game processes (though it might) but rather to deliver genre-appropriate outcomes, with the players along for the ride. CoC is a classic of this; so is Ars Magica. A lot of White Wolf and 2nd ed AD&D play aspires to this, but Edwards is very down on it because the mechanics won't actually deliver the genre experience unless the GM manipulates and fudges them along the way (rule zero, or "the golden rule" fromWW). I think a lot of ENworld posters play D&D in more-or-less this style.​

[/QUOTE] So simulating an imagined reality where a genre story could be set and might actually happen (but probably never will, to your character), vs simulating the conventions of a genre story so events tend to tie together into one (if not necessarily a good one).

Apart from the inevitable-seeming pointlessness of building up one and disparaging the other, not terrible - especially when considered as part of a broader set of descriptions...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

4e is IMO the only version of D&D with a simulationist form of multiclassing.

I would assert that 3.X is at least as simulationist, and is even moreso in certain certain areas. You learn your class abilities at the same rate as any other initiate when you first pick up the class, you don't exchange old knowledge out for new knowledge, and how you receive the full benefits of being N level in that class.

To clarify:

1) when you MC in 4Ed you pick and choose what abilities you learn over time, and such learning always comes at the cost of learning in your primary class. Sometimes, you do a straight up swap for things you already learned. But you don't learn intervening techniques & skill, you skip levels. And some MC feats don't even grant a power at all.

2) there are paragon paths in 4ed that are absolutely barred to multiclassed PCs because the MC feat does not grant the prerequisites for the path- look at the PHB ranger paths, for some examples. In a sense, you're a RINO: ranger in name only.