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Why use D&D for a Simulationist style Game?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6349120" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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). </p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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."</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>"'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.</p><p></p><p>"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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6349120, member: 4937"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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