Why use D&D for a Simulationist style Game?

[pemerton]

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).

Yes. Though the purist-for-system games tend to adopt inworld features designed to at least nudge things in a genre direction - eg the spells in RM, and the magic systems in RQ. At least in RM, this does tend to cause caster/non-caster balance issues of a sort that I'm pretty sure you are familiar with in (at least some versions of) D&D.

Apart from the inevitable-seeming pointlessness of building up one and disparaging the other, not terrible

There is no disparaging of high-concept sim, nor of purist-for-system sim. There is disparaging of 2nd ed AD&D and White Wolf, but that is because their mechanics, when used as written, don't actually deliver the promised genre experience. CoC and Ars Magica, which don't have this problem, aren't disparaged at all.

Ron Edwards labelled simulationist play incoherent which meant either he doesn't understand it or it doesn't fit the model properly.

Can we have quotes for this? He doesn't say any such thing in the "Right to Dream" essay, and as someone who has played a bit of RQ and Traveller, and a lot of RM, I think he nails purist-for-system perfectly.

He does say that some high concept sim games (especially AD&D 2nd ed and White Wolf/Storyteller) are incoherent, but that is for the reasons I stated in my post and reiterated just above: they ostensibly aim at genre fidelity/replication, but have no system to achieve that other than GM override of the classic D&D-style combat mechanics plus a task-resolution skill system. He doesn't suggest that CoC is incoherent, nor Ars Magica.

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?

<snip>

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?

Rolemaster allows for both the falling outcomes, though not at the correct odds: any fall has a 1 in 50 chance of doing no damage regardless of its distance (because an 01 or 02 is always a "fumble", or auto-miss in the case of a fall); and between high open-ended attack rolls plus crit tables any fall can deal a fatal injury.

HARP is similar.

RM doesn't deal with adrenaline in the way you describe - Adrenal Moves that permit temporary ignoring of wound penalties or stun are a distinctive skill that have to be developed.

In any event, my point is not that RQ, RM, HARP etc achieve what they aspire to: my point is that they have a definite aspiration. There is a reason that all the classic sim games depart from D&D, and especially D&D's combat mechanics, in the way that I have described. They are driven by a common frustration with those mechanics, namely, that they don't model ingame causal processes but rather generate outcomes while requiring "ad hoc rationalisations" to fill in the details of the gameworld events.

This is not a criticism of D&D, but rather an observation about the motivations lying behind the design and play of those systems.

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

Here is a quote from the Right to Dream essay that explains why Pendragon is a (high concept) simulationist game (that in the same essay is described, together with CoC, as "truly outstanding"):

A lot of internet blood has been spilled regarding how this phenomenon [of a game like Pendragon that, via its system, generates a long-term story arc] is or is not related to Narrativist play, but I think it's an easy issue. The key for these games is GM authority over the story's content and integrity at all points, including managing the input by players. Even system results are judged appropriate or not by the GM; "fudging" Fortune outcomes is overtly granted as a GM right​

Conversely, central to narrativist play as Edwards uses that term is the absence of GM authority over the story, and indeed the absence of any authority over the story on the part of any participant - in Story Now play, story is to be emergent from each participant doing his/her thing, with no one actually authoring it.

As I posted upthread, I think relatively few ENworld posters interested in Story Now play. And the most common way that "narrative" or "narrativist" is used on ENworld has nothing to do with Edwards' own use: it is used to pick out the existence of rich backstory and a plot continuity to the campaign that is deeper then "Well, this week our intrepid adventurers find themselves standing at the entrance to White Plume Mountain."

In Edwards' terminology, most of this sort of play is High Concept simulation, but some of it will be gamist but built on a very rich fiction as its chassis - I imagine the best of Adventure Path play is like this. (Which doesn't mean that it is "gamist" in the way that term is normally used on ENworld - but the typical ENworld usage of "gamist", just like the typical ENworld usage of "narrativist", has basically nothing to do with Edwards' usage. As I posted upthread, the differences in play that are highly salient to Edwards are generally not that relevant on ENworld, where people are interested in different sorts of contrast of playstyle.)

 

[Celebrim]

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?

Err... not to ruin your otherwise good point, but... mine?

I use a modified version of D&D 3.0e. The falling rules I use are a bit complex to go into now, but the heart of them is a variant falling system published in Dragon during 1e.

Let's do the stewardess first.

a) Stewardess is a 1st level human commoner with 8 CON. She has the typical 10 hit points you'd expect. She falls 33,000 feet hitting terminal velocity on the way down, but luckily falls into a snow drift which qualifies as a 'soft' surface so she takes no impact attack and has an increased damage divisor. As a medium creature, base damage for this fall is (20d20)/(1d6+1). Maximum damage is 200, but there is a huge range of expected results based on the throw of that 1d6. With a lucky throw of 6, she has a divisor of 7. Average damage from 20d20 is 210, so she has a 1 in 6 chance of 'only' taking 30 damage. This would still instantly kill her, but if the throw of 20d20 is less than 140 and she rolls a '6' for the divisor, then all she has to do is make an stabilization check before bleeding out and not die of hypothermia. If the throw of 20d20 is less than 63, then she won't even lose consciousness or take serious injury. And of course you can play around and see that there are a lot of possible results. In the real life example, the inflicted damage was probably around 16 (in my system terms) and she took traumatic injuries but managed to not break her head then stabilized and made a lot of other lucky throws to survive. Still the outcome is possible.

b) Big man falls off a step ladder is harder. Assume he was standing on a 6' step ladder above an unyielding surface, such as concrete, so that it is approximately a 10' fall. A big man in my system would be a 1st level brute with 14 CON and 16 hit points. He falls approximately 10' doing base 1d20/1d6 damage. Worst case this is 20 damage by itself, enough to put him on the floor unconscious bleeding to death or provoke a traumatic injury roll that could crush his skull. Worse, he also is going to take an impact attack from the unyielding surface as a +1 melee attack doing 1d6+1 damage. Worst case on that is 14 damage (a critical hit). So maximum expected damage here is 34 damage, enough to instantly kill even a much tougher man. Of course, expected damage is an entirely different matter. The average damage her is probably closer to 5, which bruises the big guy but is hardly memorable. Those around him don't really realize just how close he came to dying.

 

[Emerikol]

It's far easier to classify what I don't like than state exactly what I like.

Paramount for.me is suspension of disbelief and as.a result immersion in a fantasy world. If I were watching a serious drama where a.cartoon rabbit appeared occasionally making wisecracks then I would cease to enjoy that drama.

In order for me to achieve immersion my mechanics need narrative mechanical unity. As a result they cannot be dissociative or time travel. They must make sense as the rules of the world and not just as the rules for the PC. The more they seem to follow a consistent system vs being random exceptions the better.

When a game honors the above restraints it makes the world feel right to me. I can suspend my disbelief for a few hours.

I don't mind some abstraction within the above boundaries. Abstraction has nothing to do with realism. You can be highly abstract or very not abstract and still be realistic or not.

I will leave the classification of my playstyle as a homework assignment for you theoreticians. I will say that I believe a lot of people out there share my preferences to varying degrees.

 

[Celebrim]

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.

- emphasis mine

Back in the day, when I was playing AD&D and I and almost everyone else in my groups assumed that the ultimate goal was to obtain realism plus versus clearly spelled out exceptions to reality in the rules that pertained to the specifics of the game universe (magic, if you would), one of the show stopping arguments was over realism. Realism was something anyone could appeal to when they didn't feel that the rules as written or the DMs ruling matched up with reality. What for example was the realistic way for infravision to work? Was it realistic to model a dog as having much higher than written Int and Wis for the purposes of detecting invisible creatures given the dog's incredibly acute senses of smell? Just how fast could a giant eagle ferry a small army up a cliff? How long would it take for wood to cure? Bringing in a specialist book of knowledge to the table was about as good as bringing in a rule book if it had numbers that pertained to the question in play. How much weight could a 2" hemp rope lift?

Of course, quite often such an authoritative source to inform our simulation was not on hand. People relied on the best informed guess based on their prior conceptions of the causal processes.

Of course, anyone can tell you that quite often these guesses were wildly off, particularly in the case of those made by 17 year old nerds convinced they knew a little of everything. Not only were their spectacular arguments that derailed play for hours, but I'm sure a lot of gamers on these boards can tell you horror stories of GMs whose house rules and rulings were based on their prior conceptions of the causal processes where they were just wildly off base in terms of not only realism, but how well their custom smithed rules matched reality and how gameable those rules actually were.

I think we all had some ideas about what the idea rules would model that D&D didn't. For example, I was for example pretty sure that D&D needed to focus much more clearly on the value of parrying attacks. In particular, I was pretty sure that weapon length needed to be a much bigger factor in play than it was based on my experiences in fencing and weapon play. And that was just one of several areas that I felt needed revisions, if ever I could figure out a good mechanic for doing so. For example, I was pretty sure D&D needed explicit mechanics for tripping, disarming, grappling and other sorts of alternative attacks - or at least better than the ones in the DMG which were really broken (and abused by me as a DM for keeping low level monsters relevant).

Almost invariably among people with strong prior conceptions of the causal processes involved, two mechanics that repeatedly came under fire were hit points and Vancian spell casting. They didn't 'make sense'. They weren't 'realistic'. Even to the extent that 'health' could be quantized, it certainly shouldn't increase with experience. To a large extent I accepted these sorts of arguments and didn't question them, though in general, I didn't know exactly what to replace the ideas with.

It was only when I actually abandoned D&D in frustration with its lack of 'realism' and started playing and examining the alternatives, that I began to question the assumptions behind 'hit points aren't realistic'. Largely this is because I found that all the systems created by people with strong opinions that D&D wasn't realistic and who were trying hard to create process as simulation were in fact failing in that hard, and not only failing in the their goal of being more 'realistic' but producing arguably worse games. Instead of being more realistic, what they really turned out to be was the published equivalent of that guy who had house ruled a bunch of 'realistic' stuff that was really just based on his on preconceptions of what the causal processes for simulating realism should be. They weren't in fact actually the causal processes of reality. They were just preferences based on the assumption that this sort of causal process would produce more realistic answers than that sort of causal process, even if in fact the range of results and the likelihood of results no more matched reality than the simplier systems with different assumptions that they had replaced.

The problem with saying that if you don't have hit points you are more purist for sim is that life doesn't actually work like the other system whatever it is (wound tracks, inflicted conditions, etc.) either. If you step back from the individual elements of the process and looked at the inputs and outputs from a black box perspective, the ones with the more moving parts weren't necessarily doing better at producing answers to the questions. The things that they were modeling can't easily be quantified in real life either, and the individual pieces weren't necessarily any better fits to reality.

Believe it or not, this didn't initially deter me in the slightest. I was so convinced that there was a pony in their somewhere, that I just kept right on refining. You could in fact get there. I could see it. Many of the rules in GULLIVER had some basis in actual physics. It was being informed by actual reality. But it turned out that reality was ungamable. The final iteration of this, the bottom of the rabbit hole, would be turning to a physics book as the authority source for your process simulation. It became clear to me long before that that it was never going to work, and it was only then that I started putting my assumptions to the test.

Turns out hit points are just as much process sim as wound tracks and inflicted conditions. You just have to give up your biased preconceptions about what a realistic model would look like and start asking, "What is the real question I'm trying to answer in this contest/scenario?"

 

[TrippyHippy]

Here is a quote from the Right to Dream essay that explains why Pendragon is a (high concept) simulationist game (that in the same essay is described, together with CoC, as "truly outstanding"):

A lot of internet blood has been spilled regarding how this phenomenon [of a game like Pendragon that, via its system, generates a long-term story arc] is or is not related to Narrativist play, but I think it's an easy issue. The key for these games is GM authority over the story's content and integrity at all points, including managing the input by players. Even system results are judged appropriate or not by the GM; "fudging" Fortune outcomes is overtly granted as a GM right​

Conversely, central to narrativist play as Edwards uses that term is the absence of GM authority over the story, and indeed the absence of any authority over the story on the part of any participant - in Story Now play, story is to be emergent from each participant doing his/her thing, with no one actually authoring it.

As I posted upthread, I think relatively few ENworld posters interested in Story Now play. And the most common way that "narrative" or "narrativist" is used on ENworld has nothing to do with Edwards' own use: it is used to pick out the existence of rich backstory and a plot continuity to the campaign that is deeper then "Well, this week our intrepid adventurers find themselves standing at the entrance to White Plume Mountain."

In Edwards' terminology, most of this sort of play is High Concept simulation, but some of it will be gamist but built on a very rich fiction as its chassis - I imagine the best of Adventure Path play is like this. (Which doesn't mean that it is "gamist" in the way that term is normally used on ENworld - but the typical ENworld usage of "gamist", just like the typical ENworld usage of "narrativist", has basically nothing to do with Edwards' usage. As I posted upthread, the differences in play that are highly salient to Edwards are generally not that relevant on ENworld, where people are interested in different sorts of contrast of playstyle.)

The trouble with this argument is that the games he highlighted as ‘Narrativist’ games in his original essay, including his own Sorcerer RPG, were just as GM controlled as Pendragon or other ‘Sim’ or ‘Gamist’ games he cited. I do recognise a clear structural difference in games like My Life With Master or Fiasco or Baron Munchhausen, but what I read from Ron Edward’s selection was a preference for rules-light games spiced with a bit of gaming bigotry. This came to a controversial head, of course, in his later essay which asserted that the ‘incoherence' of Vampire: The Masquerade rules literally caused brain damage.

Moreover, I just don’t think he spent enough time looking at gaming innovation outside his own bubble of self aggrandisement. 1980s comedy games like Paranoia, Toon and Ghostbusters all had aspects in their mechanics that would now be called ’narrative’ in design. In Ghostbusters, for example, you had a pool of points that allowed players to influence plot, Toon had narrative hooks and motivations and Paranoia an almost ritualistic approach to scenario design. The ‘revolution’ in game design had happened a long time before The Forge started. All Ron Edwards and co did was to stick labels on it. Which didn’t work.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's far easier to classify what I don't like than state exactly what I like.

We all know you didn't like 4e. It contentious and doesn't really matter a this point. /Try/ thinking about what you actually 'need' for this version of sim of yours, in the positive sense and why D&D in general (or a given ed if you must) works so well for it... or, you know, maybe a definition that isn't all edition-war talking points and hot-buttons.

You could give examples from your campaign of great sim moments. You're very passionate about the subject, have run that way for a long time, and your players all love it, so you must have lots of 'em.

 

[pemerton]

The trouble with this argument is that the games he highlighted as ‘Narrativist’ games in his original essay, including his own Sorcerer RPG, were just as GM controlled as Pendragon or other ‘Sim’ or ‘Gamist’ games he cited.

*shrug* I'm not here to defend or even anayse Sorcerer, a game I've never played - though from what I know of it I think it includes techniques, such as "kickers", which mean that it is not "just as GM controlled" as a game like Pendragon or CoC. And I personally think the techniques presented in a game like Burning Wheel are clearly different from those in a game like RQ or Pendragon or Ars Magica, as far as distribution of authority, and approach to scene-framing and action resolution, are concerned.

I just don’t think he spent enough time looking at gaming innovation outside his own bubble of self aggrandisement. 1980s comedy games like Paranoia, Toon and Ghostbusters all had aspects in their mechanics that would now be called ’narrative’ in design.

This passage is from Edwards' "Story Now" essay, written in 2003:

Looking at earlier games from a Techniques perspective, a shift to Narrativist play within the larger Gamist context is apparent in some Tunnels & Trolls, as discusssed in "Gamism: Step On Up". I also recommend reading and playing Marvel Super Heroes, reviewing the entire Strike Force text in light of the 1st and 2nd editions of Champions being used by that group, reviewing the extensive documentation of Champions play presented in the APA-zine The Clobberin Times', and giving Toon, Ghostbusters, and James Bond a try. I am not saying "These are Narrativist games," but rather, evidence supports the claim that these rules-sets supported some Narrativist play back then.​

I've always felt Edwards has a pretty good knowledge of a pretty wide range of RPGs and how they were played. In his "Hard Look at Dungeons & Dragon Essay"[/rul] (also from 2003) he discusses narrativist approaches to early D&D play. In his Story Now essay he recognises plenty of pre-Sorcerer but clearly 90s games that demonstrate narrativist aspirations (eg Over the Edge, 1992) as well as important techniques for supporting narrativist play (eg Maelstrom Storytelling, 1997).

All Ron Edwards and co did was to stick labels on it. Which didn’t work.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "it didn't work". Plenty of people seem to have had useful conversations about how to achieve a certain sort of RPG play - for instance, how to achieve the epic and thematic scope of Dragonlance without the need for GM fudging and railroading - and then gone on to achieve it.

And in my own case, Gygaxian D&D, and D&D more generally, made a lot more sense after reading Edwards's essays than beforehand. Edwards' discussion of fortune-in-the-middle and other non-process-sim approaches to resolution also helped me work out how 4e was meant to be played (given that I came into 4e after 19 years of GMing Rolemaster, which takes process-sim in resolution absolutely for granted).

 

[BryonD]

We all know you didn't like 4e. It contentious and doesn't really matter a this point. /Try/ thinking about what you actually 'need' for this version of sim of yours, in the positive sense and why D&D in general (or a given ed if you must) works so well for it... or, you know, maybe a definition that isn't all edition-war talking points and hot-buttons.

You could give examples from your campaign of great sim moments. You're very passionate about the subject, have run that way for a long time, and your players all love it, so you must have lots of 'em.

You know, this is actually a very interesting way to phrase the question and makes me rethink some of my perspective and use of labels.

The first RPG I ever personally experienced was 1E. To me, at that time, it was obvious and completely intuitive, that 1E D&D was "simulating" being a character in a fantasy epic tale. Of course between both being a kid and lacking the years of evolution of the gaming community and perspectives, I never dwelt on this in anything approaching the way it is discussed today. It was simply true that D&D was about being Strider or Merlin and thus, it was defacto a simulation experience. In modern perspective I do not think of 1E as remotely a "sim" game. But this is different than a modern game that is not "sim". Late 1970s computers can not be described as "fast" in any reasonable modern standards. Btu the best computers then were "fast", and 1E was the best "sim" going in the same way. And, for starting from war games, I give all credit to Gygax and fellows for the massive first step in innovation they provided.

But to me it was always about "sim" and always meant to be sim. To the extent I discussed these matters with friends, I have zero recollection of anyone every challenging that idea. As time went by and I found games that innovated on the "sim" elements, I left D&D. And when 3E came along there were plenty of references to the fact that is was "HEROizing" D&D, etc.... It was turning D&D into a reflection of the collective progress that had been made.

But there were never moments of "this is a great sim thing". It was a constant goal to ever strive after at every step. I want consistent immersion in "I am *THAT* character" and if there is a better way to make the world feel like that, I want it. Start with absolute reality, but immediately start tossing huge chunks aside to adjust for being in the story. Obviously things like magic redefine the mechanics. But the stories are relatively simplistic and the warrior hero can go toe-to-toe with the hill giant. So HP and a list of other issues are embraced as a way to get there. Btu the spirit always remains, do the best you can at "being that character".

The goal is being that guy in an otherwise natural feeling world that behaves in a reasonably consistent manner based on the alternate truths that define it. Any moment that sticks out as contrary to that is a bad thing. And in almost any game system there are these moments. I won't remotely claim that 3E doesn't hiccup in a variety of circumstances. But it tries and, case by case, does between and adequate and an outstanding job. So ti has never been about that great sim moment. It has always been about avoiding those "anti-sim" moments.

Games that instead embrace that anti-sim spirit have never been remotely successful for me.
And to be absolutely clear, for the purpose of conversation I'll presume I am the one who is out of touch here. Loving these anti-sim elements is completely legitimate and wonderful. I respect the difference in taste and preference.

But, the explanation for why I love "3E/PF (hopefully 5E)" as "sim", is going to require presenting thing that will sound "edition war talking points" to someone who is defensive about 4E. Because 3E doesn't have high points of awesome sim. But it never has points of intentional anti-sim.
4E embraces and takes joy in anti-sim.
I (me, and me alone) hate it when a character gets beat up by ogres and then just bounces back with no recovery time or outside source of healing.
I hate it when DCs can consistently and reliable be taken from a single page that covers almost everything.
I hate it when one brilliant move does not solve a problem then and there because the skill challange says 3 more successes are needed.
Obviously I could go on and on.

If you want to say that 3E doesn't make a great sim, then fine, I won't argue with you.
To me, it aspires to be a great sim. And it never takes it upon itself to aggressively point out that it doesn't want to be a sim.
So, I can play a game that, at my table, is a sim game and uses 3E rules and works in a highly fun manner. And that stands without a single moment of "now that was sim glory!".

 

[TrippyHippy]

*shrug* I'm not here to defend or even anayse Sorcerer, a game I've never played - though from what I know of it I think it includes techniques, such as "kickers", which mean that it is not "just as GM controlled" as a game like Pendragon or CoC. And I personally think the techniques presented in a game like Burning Wheel are clearly different from those in a game like RQ or Pendragon or Ars Magica, as far as distribution of authority, and approach to scene-framing and action resolution, are concerned.

According to the Sorcerer text, a ‘Kicker’ is “an event or realisation that your character has experienced just before play begins” to acts as a catalyst. Whoop-ee-doodaa! It’s not as if RQ or Pendragon or Ars Magica ever laid out any provision of those things, is it!? Whether you choose to think the techniques are different to those provided in other games, they are not objectively so. To me, the notion of Troupe-style play used in Ars Magica is very much an explicit device for ‘distribution of authority’. It’s the issue that games like Ars Magica fail to get recognised for innovating half the ideas proposed by Ron and co. that tends to discredit their ideas themselves.

This passage is from Edwards’ ”Story Now” essay, written in 2003:

Looking at earlier games from a Techniques perspective, a shift to Narrativist play within the larger Gamist context is apparent in some Tunnels & Trolls, as discusssed in "Gamism: Step On Up". I also recommend reading and playing Marvel Super Heroes, reviewing the entire Strike Force text in light of the 1st and 2nd editions of Champions being used by that group, reviewing the extensive documentation of Champions play presented in the APA-zine The Clobberin Times', and giving Toon, Ghostbusters, and James Bond a try. I am not saying "These are Narrativist games," but rather, evidence supports the claim that these rules-sets supported some Narrativist play back then.​

I've always felt Edwards has a pretty good knowledge of a pretty wide range of RPGs and how they were played. In his "Hard Look at Dungeons & Dragon Essay"[/rul] (also from 2003) he discusses narrativist approaches to early D&D play. In his Story Now essay he recognises plenty of pre-Sorcerer but clearly 90s games that demonstrate narrativist aspirations (e.g. Over the Edge, 1992) as well as important techniques for supporting narrativist play (e.g. Maelstrom Storytelling, 1997).

All written after the publication of his Sorcerer game, of which none of these ‘innovations’ were acknowledged. In retrospect, he basically chooses older games he likes and relates their influence to his own preferred games alone.

I’m not sure what you mean when you say “it didn't work". Plenty of people seem to have had useful conversations about how to achieve a certain sort of RPG play - for instance, how to achieve the epic and thematic scope of Dragonlance without the need for GM fudging and railroading - and then gone on to achieve it.

And in my own case, Gygaxian D&D, and D&D more generally, made a lot more sense after reading Edwards's essays than beforehand. Edwards' discussion of fortune-in-the-middle and other non-process-sim approaches to resolution also helped me work out how 4e was meant to be played (given that I came into 4e after 19 years of GMing Rolemaster, which takes process-sim in resolution absolutely for granted).

It didn’t work because his categories, which were essentially lifted from Jonathon Tweet’s Everway, but presented in more ‘authoritative’ fashion, fall down on so many exceptions to the rule. They also fall down, incidentally, on the simple grounds that they caused more tension and conflict in the gaming community than the collective worth of the games their movement spawned. How many of them are truly played with the same community levels of D&D or CoC or any other? How can people claim these games are less well designed than the ones they push? Indeed, any game designer who feels the need to make vain proclamations about how influential their game is, in the text of the game itself, is really just demonstrating how little influence they ever had at all.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

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

AD&D was consistent in that it always used the same rules for the same stuff. A level 5 priest was a level 5 priest, whether it was a PC or NPC, and a longsword always dealt 1d8 damage.

I will definitely grant that 3.5 was pushing the limit on acceptable details, though. Of course, that limit is going to vary between people, and even 3.5 never got as detailed as something like GURPS.

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.

You certainly could play it that way, but it isn't really necessary. I was actually thinking something closer to Slayers, though my go-to example for in-game-world acknowledgement of physical punishment is Brock from Venture Bros.