Simulationists, Black Boxes, and 4e

I've been thinking about this for a while, and after Lizard's epiphany thread I decided to post about it.

The "simulationist" label has gotten thrown around a lot in some of the recent arguments about 4e (the recent minion thread for instance). However, I don't think the simulationist label gets at why some people don't like what they've seen of 4e. I think some simulationists can like elements of 4e that drive other simulationists crazy (see Lizard's epiphany, for instance). The real distinction here is how willing a person is to accept a the change from a process-response model to a black box model, particularly for character and monster development.

Black box vs. process-response is one way scientists classify different models. In a nutshell, a black box model tells you what happens, while process-response model tells you how something happens. How is generally a lot more difficult to figure out than what, so process-response models are usually a lot more complicated. If you want a more scientific definition (lifted from this article):

NASA said:

In a process-response model, the components and process of cause and effect are explicitly represented. A black-box model represents the relationship between cause and effect but does not explicitly account for the process. A graph of the relationship between traffic volume and average speed on a highway is a black-box relationship, whereas a simulation of individual vehicles and driver behavior is a process-response model.

Process-response models tend to be more complex, but not necessarily more realistic because process-response models depend on accurate depiction of the underlying mechanisms whereas black-box models can be finely tuned to the outcomes that one is trying to model.

Click to expand...

In general, 3e leaned towards process-response models, particularly when it comes to modeling characters and monsters. If you wanted to make a more powerful version of the regular monster, you had to advance it to more hit dice, or give it character levels, or give it a template. Each of these is complicated and has all sorts of side effects. In 4e, from what we've seen, you slap on a more powerful power or two, add some hit points, compare it to an existing elite or solo monster and say, "looks good". The monster's "internals" don't matter, all that matters is the stuff that interfaces with the players. This is a classic black box model. When the D&D designers talk about exceptions based design, what they're really talking about (at least when it comes to characters and monsters) is moving from a process-response model to a black box model.

Another area where the 4e rules moved from a process-response model to a black box model is the grappling rules. In 3e, if you try to grapple someone, you provoke an AoO, you make a roll to grab, you make a roll to hold, you move into the target's space. Then next turn you're presented with a menu of actions you can choose from with detailed rules for each. It's definitely a process-response model with a nice little chain of cause and effect. In 4e you make one roll to grab an opponent. If you succeed you can hold on. Much more of a black box model, we don't care about all the details of the move, just whether you managed to latch on or not.

So, 4e black box models allow us to jettison a lot of the complexity that goes along with process-response models, but at the cost of not being able to see the internal details of the model. I think a big part of whether or not a person (particularly a "simulationist") is going to like 4e depends on whether they think this is a good thing or not. Do we want to know about the internal workings of a monster or the minutia of a grapple check badly enough to deal with added complexity? Do you want to model characters and monsters, or the interactions between characters and monsters?

So fluff vs crunch. But yeah, I completely agree. Great post.

ForbidenMaster said:

So fluff vs crunch. But yeah, I completely agree. Great post.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

I don't really think black boxes are fluff though. They're just crunchy versus very crunchy.

Blackeagle said:

So, 4e black box models allow us to jettison a lot of the complexity that goes along with process-response models, but at the cost of not being able to see the internal details of the model. I think a big part of whether or not a person (particularly a "simulationist") is going to like 4e depends on whether they think this is a good thing or not. Do we want to know about the internal workings of a monster or the minutia of a grapple check badly enough to deal with added complexity? Do you want to model characters and monsters, or the interactions between characters and monsters?

Click to expand...

We-ell, as a DM I pretty much insist on knowing both: the internal workings, so I can get under the hood and tinker; and the interactions, so I can run the game.

As a player, I really only care about the interactions provided they are arrived at in a somewhat rational and consistent manner, and only when this rationality fails do I want to see the inner workings to try and suggest a fix. 4e's rationality fails in one fundamental way, as an example: different things that in a consistent model would be the same (e.g. commoners and very low level PCs) function under different - i.e. non-consistent - sets of parameters and rules. From a player perspective this makes the interactions between them not work quite right, so I'd be after the DM to get under the hood and make it work.

Lanefan

Blackeagle said:

Thanks.

I don't really think black boxes are fluff though. They're just crunchy versus very crunchy.

Click to expand...

Reminds me of Black Box testing and White Box testing in software development.
Black Box testing doesn't know/use the internals, only the general specification. (If you input 123, the output should be ABC, or something like that). Test Cases are generated based on these specification.
White Box testing goes into more details, analyzing the flow of control and the flow of data and creating. Test Cases are made to ensure that an optimum number of paths through the control flow has been taken. (There are different degrees of "precision" in this - in the simplest case, we just care about covering all parts of the code, but in the more complex, we want to test more - if not even all - of the possible sequences of parts of the code.)
[/borderline off-topic]

I like your analogy.

Blackeagle said:

Thanks.

I don't really think black boxes are fluff though. They're just crunchy versus very crunchy.

Click to expand...

I actually thought about it the other way in that black boxes were crunch and process-response was fluff. Black boxs is the ends where the process-response is the means. Either way its a great analogy.

This is a great way to clarify exactly what I wanted to say about 4e!

It's perfect...and for the record, I think that for a game, it's a brilliant move. Time will tell if it's actually a brilliant move or whether it turns out to lead to even more abuse than before, but right now I'm very happy with the core concept of 4e.

Lanefan said:

We-ell, as a DM I pretty much insist on knowing both: the internal workings, so I can get under the hood and tinker; and the interactions, so I can run the game.

Click to expand...

That's not exactly what he's describing, though. You can go "under the hood" of the system in both systems.

Advancing HD and distributing hit points is not "under-the-hood". It's just using the process-response mode. Just as using the "monster by Level" guidelines.

"Under the Hood" is more understanding the effects of Wealth on game balance (class vs class, PCs vs monsters), or how the random treasure tables can, on average, reach the expected wealth by level values.
That's not stuff explicitly spelled out in the game model, and thus requires "going under the hood" if you want to change it.

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

That's not exactly what he's describing, though. You can go "under the hood" of the system in both systems.

Advancing HD and distributing hit points is not "under-the-hood". It's just using the process-response mode. Just as using the "monster by Level" guidelines.

"Under the Hood" is more understanding the effects of Wealth on game balance (class vs class, PCs vs monsters), or how the random treasure tables can, on average, reach the expected wealth by level values.
That's not stuff explicitly spelled out in the game model, and thus requires "going under the hood" if you want to change it.

Click to expand...

The black box model works when I turn the key; I just trust the mechanic (designer) built me an engine (system) that will last, and I run/play the game without worrying about the back-end design stuff.

The process-response model gives me knowledge of the minutae of the rules, of *how* the engine works and in a game sense how things come to interact in the ways they do. I'm the sort of DM who wants to get under the hood and tinker with the engine, to come up with rules that have as an end result things interacting in ways that make sense to me, while understanding (or trying to) the various knock-on effects such tinkerings might have.

Lanefan

I am a DM.

I like blue cars.

I like 4e.