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Why use D&D for a Simulationist style Game?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6349359" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Based on my familiarity with what I have called the "classic sim" games, and the communities around them (especially the Rolemaster and HARP communities found at the ICE boards and before that at the Guild Companion), I think there is one main reason why this is not satisfactory: it requires a notion of "punishment" that has no connection to actual, real-world biological systems.</p><p></p><p>For instance: for a real world person, being run through the chest will kill you <em>whether or not</em> you have a graze on your forearm. But in D&D, on the Gygaxian reading of hit points (which itself requires what [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION] calls "ad hoc rationalisations") you never get run through until you have first had your foream grazed.</p><p></p><p>This also fails to satsify your own consistency requirement - because in the game mechanics a damage roll of 4 is different from a damage roll of 5, but in the fiction they might both mean the same thing - being run through the chest. Also, in the fiction being run through the chest is different from being grazed on the arm, but in the game mechanics these might both be represented by a damage roll of 4.</p><p></p><p>The only reading of hit points that satisfies the "consistency" requirement takes them even further from real-world bioloical systems: in effect, shaving of hit points becomes like shaving off wood or chipping away at a stone block: literal ablation which is certainly one mode of punishing certain material things (though not the only way - they can be broken without being abraded) but has no connection to biology or physiology.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6349359, member: 42582"] Based on my familiarity with what I have called the "classic sim" games, and the communities around them (especially the Rolemaster and HARP communities found at the ICE boards and before that at the Guild Companion), I think there is one main reason why this is not satisfactory: it requires a notion of "punishment" that has no connection to actual, real-world biological systems. For instance: for a real world person, being run through the chest will kill you [I]whether or not[/I] you have a graze on your forearm. But in D&D, on the Gygaxian reading of hit points (which itself requires what [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION] calls "ad hoc rationalisations") you never get run through until you have first had your foream grazed. This also fails to satsify your own consistency requirement - because in the game mechanics a damage roll of 4 is different from a damage roll of 5, but in the fiction they might both mean the same thing - being run through the chest. Also, in the fiction being run through the chest is different from being grazed on the arm, but in the game mechanics these might both be represented by a damage roll of 4. The only reading of hit points that satisfies the "consistency" requirement takes them even further from real-world bioloical systems: in effect, shaving of hit points becomes like shaving off wood or chipping away at a stone block: literal ablation which is certainly one mode of punishing certain material things (though not the only way - they can be broken without being abraded) but has no connection to biology or physiology. [/QUOTE]
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Why use D&D for a Simulationist style Game?
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