Well I meant that I derive the most pleasure from games with a strong simulationist element. I did not intend to imply that there are not narrativist and/or gamist elements to my gaming. Just that things to go against simulationist preferences tend to bother me. Thus I call myself a simulationist which I intended to mean as nothing more than tends that way.
I'm not sure that you are using "Simulationist" in the GNS sense (as you said you were), here. The GNS agendas are things that are focussed or concentrated upon in game play - the things which, at any specific instant of actual play, are at the forefront of the player's mind when considering what they want the play to generate. As such, I don't think that "things that go against simulationist preferences" really makes much sense except as "things that distract me into addressing other agendas for play". This means that, if you are at the present instant addressing a gamist or narrativist agenda, the simulationist one is a bust, since you are, by definition, distracted from it.
I think what you are describing here is something different; more to do with whether your suspension of disbelief is being disrupted - which I'll come back to, because other posts have things to say about that, too.
I haven't looked at those games so forgive me if I'm off on this. But a game being abstract or not abstract has nothing to do with a game being simulationist or not. So 1e,2e, and 3e D&D were all able to be played in a simulationist style. Of course you could play them in other styles too. To me that is a good quality in a mainstream roleplaying game. The ability to be versatile playstyle wise. Because I theorize that there are approx the same number of people who favor one of the GNS styles.
You can play any game in "simulationist style", I think. You just have to focus on "dreaming the imagined reality" rather than on overcoming obstacles through player cleverness or luck, or on creating dramatic conflicts to "force" a dramatic story to emerge.
Speaking purely for myself, I find that the D&D elements of experience points (driving me to think about tackling and overcoming challenges rather than just "experiencing the world") and treasure tend to distract me from the Simulationist exploration of the game world/situation/character/etc. For some this will be less of a problem, but I still think that a game without these elements suits Sim play
better than D&D.
I liked D&D all the way until 4e. 4e is the only edition that I actively disliked. I found that game eliminated the playstyle I liked from the game. It made assumptions about what is and isn't fun that I think were false for some people and true for others. But by forcing a single style, they drove off a lot of people with other styles.
I think every edition of D&D has done this - some less consciously than others. It has been claimed that older editions were "broader" because they "allowed" all GNS preferences, for example. To some degree this might be true, but the lack of any clear and unambiguous rules about a range of game elements in older editions I certainly found compromised the pursuit of a gamist agenda significantly. In retrospect, I think one major reason I gave up D&D for other RPGs for so long was that it simultaneously pushed me towards a Gamist agenda by the experience and treasure systems/assumptions, and made tackling challenges through pure skill and luck impossible by having so many areas of the rules subject to DM whim/beliefs about "reality".
The form of constraint on magic can be pretty much anything. Magic is after all, outside the players' direct experience. A player cannot look at the magical framework and say (with a straight face) "That's unrealistic! Magic doesn't work THAT way."
I think I reached a watershed when I could look at D&D and other RPG frameworks for combat, climbing and such like and say (with a straight face) "That's unrealistic! Combat/climbing/whatever doesn't work THAT way."
Interestingly, I think this is a serious weakness with process-Sim (and hence of process-Sim reliance, which I broke free of around the time I hit this watershed). It works fine as long as the folk involved buy into the idea that the process being simulated actually does (or at least can) work the way it is portrayed. Once they see the process as implausible, they can no longer cope with the system that uses that process. There are two ways around this:
1) Come up with an alternative process that all present do find plausible.
2) Model outcomes only, abandoning the explicit modelling of processes, and let each person present come up with their own assumptions concerning the process that led to the outcome.
Telling a player that a Fighter may only swing a sword 3 times a day regardless of success, rest, etc. will be treated differently than telling the same player that a Magic-User can only cast 3 spells a day. It's the same constraint, but the Fighter version will get a lot more complaint.
If you make the situation that extreme, sure. But it can be a lot more subtle, I think.
HârnMaster has the concept of "Tactical Advantages". These are things you can "win" in combat as a result of a particularly successful defence or attack to gain a "free action"; they help represent the shifting initiative of a swordfight and allow fighters - especially skilled ones - to strike several times during a (roughly 10 second) combat round. The base rules arbitrarily restrict the number of TAs that can be earned to one per character-turn. This is not an ideal solution is several ways, but it is generally agreed that simply allowing unlimited TAs is also problematic. A solution I like is to say that TAs may be unlimited, but any specific aspect of a weapon (the edge, the point, and so on) may be used only once in attack per complete round. Some folk love this rule; it restricts the potential effectiveness of an extremely skilled or lucky fighter and also gives outcomes that are seen in actual armed combat with melee weapons - that blows are attempted with any aspect of a weapon that bears, not exclusively with the most "effective" aspect. But some folk hate the rule, because they see the choice of weapon aspect as a character choice, and the limitation to "only once per aspect per round" as not modelling the process - some even prefer a system where the choice of aspect is actually limited randomly every time a strike is attempted.
In short, we seldom really understand even "mundane" processes and, even when we do, concocting systems that model not only outcomes but also processes and are still simple and have low handling time is typically too hard to actually be achieved.
Different players are willing to accept different levels of game constraint and I don't think this axis lines up with any other (simulationism, immersiveness, personality types, whatever).
I think you may well be right, here.
I do think, though, that the ability to mentally model the processes "inside" a system that generates plausible outcomes is a learnable skill, and a very valuable one.
So I have some questions about the labels:
I think your questions had more to do with the function and purpose of "Simulationist and process-Sim mechanics" than with the labels, but whatever. I had a range of nuances running through my mind with each statement, but the only one I think really gets to the nub of the issue is this one:
6) is it controversial to suggest that the quantity and quality of "Immersion" (or "in-character roleplaying") is increased when everyone has the same/similar understanding of the shared fiction (as helped by the rules/mechanics)?
In my opinion, yes - because I don't think this is (necessarily) true at all.
There are certain points - let's call them "facts" - about the shared fiction that the players must all agree on, I think that is clear. But there is a level where that becomes unnecessary - as indeed it must if play is to be possible at all, since it would be impossible for every player to have the exact same mental model of precisely what happens in the fiction in all places and at all times (we don't even have such an awareness of the "real" world as that!)
The question, it seems to me, is one of degree. Of ascertaining at what 'level' everyone needs to agree. To take a simple example: a combatant strikes another with a sword. Does he do so via a Conanesque swing of the blade timed such that his adversary's shield is not placed to be able to defend? Or does he strike with his shield so as to bind the adversary's weapon and shield while simultaneously cutting up into the opponent's armpit as he does so? Does it really matter if I see it happening one way (the way I would find believable - the second way) and another player sees it happening the other way? The facts we share are that (i) the swordsman struck, and (ii) his opponent is now disabled on the ground.
As long as we both have the same outcome pictured in our heads, does it matter that we each envisioned the route to that outcome in our own way - a way that we each, separately, found believable in the fiction?
Isn't this, generally, the answer to anything that gives people trouble in RPGs? Don't use the stuff that gives you trouble? And isn't that response often met by people claiming the Oberoni fallacy (as it it's possible to design a game where there is no element that will give groups and their play styles trouble)?
I think this
may be different
if the "trouble" relates only to those game elements that the player uses him- or herself. If you are troubled by using certain abilities, then you can avoid this simply by not using them; no rules changes (houserules) are necessary. If, on the other hand,
other players using those abilities causes the same problems, then houseruling
would be required to eliminate the issue. There is an additional issue, then, however, in that you would need not only houserules, but also other players that are prepared to be limited in the way prescribed by such houserules.
