Why use D&D for a Simulationist style Game?

[Andor]

But, again, what does that actually mean? Diminished capacity to take more damage? Diminished how? Again, I don't need anything precise, but, "I'm down 14 HP" isn't imprecise, it's actually fairly meaningless since loss of HP only means that you have less HP, nothing else.

I'm not looking for granularity. I'm looking for a model that actually says something about the game world. "I lost 14 HP" has no real correlation in the game world since no one in the game world knows what a HP is and there is no mechanical link between HP loss and physical effects.

Do you know precisely what has happened? No.

You know that someone hit someone with a weapon, as that was the attempt being modeled by the system.
You know that blood was drawn (if it was a s/p weapon.)

Some will argue that you cannot know that blood was drawn as HP are abstract, which might be true except that you can paint them into a corner. Frex a blowgun dart does 1 or 1-2 points of damage. And each and every hit with a blowgun dart is capable of administering an injectable poison, if and only if the dart actually does damage. A barbarian with DR 2 can be shot so full of darts he looks like a hedgehog, but he will never have to make a poison save. Ergo a 1hp hit from a blowgun dart indicates that the dart penetrated into the bloodstream. We now know that 1hp of damage is at very least the equivalent of a pinprick. It cannot be a near miss whatever some say. So there we have a mechanical link between hp loss and physical effects.

You could, if you were an evil scientist in a D&D world, explore this rigorously by chaining a bunch of people to posts and having your ninjas blowgun them to death while you record the events.
You would rapidly discover mean hp totals for the base population, and whatever tougher figures you could find. "Interesting, Thorvold the Belligerent required 78 darts to be knocked unconcious, my god that's four times as many as his horse!" If you were fantasy Himmler you could probably derive the entire damage system by weapon as well as hp by class and level.

Ergo, HP mean something concrete within the gameworld of D&D. It's not something we understand well, because our reality doesn't work that way. But can the people inside a D&D world perceive the existence of HP? Yes, yes they can. Actually for an extreme example of this there is always Erfworld where HP totals are explicit and actually viewable by others inside the world.

Indeed they are probably well aware of other implications of the HP system, for example it's impossible to accidently beat someone to death with your fists. Doing lethal damage (depending on the edition) requires deliberate effort. So Houdini would not have died from that punch to the gut unless his assailant was a monk attempting to assainate him. Which now that I think about it should imply that D&D worlders are even quicker to use their fists to resolve disputes than real world people, but beating someone to death might just stir up a lynch mob....

Like I said, thinking about this stuff is fun.

 

[Emerikol]

Unless you think I was just making stuff up on the other recent thread that discussed these things, you have encountered such a person online - namely, me. (And if you think I'm anti-sim, then you haven't been following my posts very closely. I GMed Rolemaster for 19 years. The reason I think Ron Edwards' descriptoin of purist-for-system sim is terrific is because it captures exactly what motivated me during those 19 years. And the fact that Burning Wheel's Fight! system satisfies so many of these desiderata is part of what makes it appeal to me.)

I'm not doubting some people exist that want what you are describing. The problem is that a lot of people that I consider "in my camp" thinking wise are not wanting those things and yet still reject a category of other mechanics.

I think I want a game that has mechanics that don't break my immersion as well as one that is fairly rules light but with the ability to add on options. I don't mind the DM being empowered to cover all the corner cases using judgment instead of a book full of a zillion rules. That judgment can be guided though by solid guidelines that teach the DM how to set effective DCs and how to interpret spells and so forth.

So perhaps I am just a subcategory of simulationist. I'm a rules lite simulationist.

 

[Bluenose]

But, if there is nothing to show how those results are reached, then what's being simulated? What is the model? I miss an attack, which means that my opponent does not lose HP. None of that has any impact on the game world. I hit on an attack, my opponent loses HP. We still have no idea what's actually happened in the game world.

What good is a model that doesn't actually tell us anything?

What's being,or perhaps I should say should be being, modelled is results that fit into the range of plausible ones for the game in question. How those are arrived at is plenty abstract. But, Abstract is not the opposite of Simulationist. Not getting plausible results from situations is where a game fails in the simulation aspect, and it's certainly the case that D&D often gives horribly silly results - but that's not because the process isn't detailed enough to explain how this happens, which is largely irrelevant to whether the result is plausible enough.

It's funny to think how I've had these same arguments before in the context of a different type of game (tabletop wargaming, specifically). I'm rather expecting a similar long term effect, once the arguments settle down and emotions calm a little. Some time in the 2020s, I believe.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You know that someone hit someone with a weapon, as that was the attempt being modeled by the system.
You know that blood was drawn (if it was a s/p weapon.)

Some will argue that you cannot know that blood was drawn as HP are abstract, which might be true except that you can paint them into a corner. Frex a blowgun dart does 1 or 1-2 points of damage. And each and every hit with a blowgun dart is capable of administering an injectable poison, if and only if the dart actually does damage.

Actually, EGG went into just that question in the 1e DMG. The upshot was that a successful save vs an insinuative poison indicated that no open wound was inflicted for the poison to envenom. A 'pseudo-hit,' as some folks called it back then.

So, you could, with just one extra step (a gratuitous poison save), determine if an actual wound had been inflicted or not. You could also dream up odd coincidences where a character could be reduced to 0 hps without ever failing that poison save, and thus have been pseudo-hit to pseudo-death.

Pretty weird, but that was AD&D for you.

A barbarian with DR 2 can be shot so full of darts he looks like a hedgehog, but he will never have to make a poison save.

That /really/ depends on edition.

You could, if you were an evil scientist in a D&D world, explore this rigorously by chaining a bunch of people to posts and having your ninjas blowgun them to death while you record the events.
You would rapidly discover mean hp totals for the base population, and whatever tougher figures you could find. "Interesting, Thorvold the Belligerent required 78 darts to be knocked unconcious, my god that's four times as many as his horse!" If you were fantasy Himmler you could probably derive the entire damage system by weapon as well as hp by class and level.

That is hilarious, yes. Of course - again, in 1e - if the DM ruled the chained-up experimental subjects 'helpless,' they'd just be killed at a rate of 1/round (actually, startlingly slowly, thanks to the 1-minute round).

Doing lethal damage (depending on the edition) requires deliberate effort. So Houdini would not have died from that punch to the gut unless his assailant was a monk attempting to assainate him.

In any edition of D&D, even if Houdini had been /stabbed/ in the gut, /but left with 1 hp/, he wouldn't have had a penalty to his attempt to escape, and wouldn't have drowned. No wound penalties. For that matter, if he had been punched for enough lethal damage to die /later/, he'd have been unconscious.

Other systems, if not exactly more realistic, could conceivably see such things happen. Hero, for instance, tracks 'BOD' (lethal damage) and STUN separately, so you could be conscious, but dying.

 

[BryonD]

Just a point of order - In AD&D, the DC to pick a lock was entirely based on your character level. Are you now claiming that AD&D embraces "anti-sim" elements?

I don't recall that. Are you referencing the "lockpicking %" ability of thieves? Because that is completely different.
The point I've made with "anti-sim" is blatantly rejecting any attempt at simulation. The Thief table does not do that.

If a 2nd level thief and a 14th level thief approach the same lock, the higher level thief will have a better chance because his skill is better, there is nothing in the system to suggest that the lock itself became easier to open. 1E *does* assume that all locks are the same. And I'd put that under a poor showing at sim, but it is still a date, nowhere near as sweet as a strawberry, but still a fruit, unlike Coke. If there were different difficulties of locks and it was built into the system that the same lock was harder depending on how high the thief level, then THAT would be a soft drink, and yes, I'd call it "anti-sim". If I've missed or forgotten something in 1E, please direct me to it.

My problem is, you're claiming that D&D "earnestly pursues simulation", at least I think you're claiming that. Is that correct?

Where? Where is D&D earnestly pursuing simulation of anything? That's the point I'm trying to discover here. D&D, AFAIC, does not, and never has, earnestly pursued simulation. There might have been some simulationist veneer glued on here and there, but, of all of the things that people claim make D&D D&D, Vancian casting, levels, 6 stats, the combat system, none of it comes anywhere near trying to model anything. Where are these models that are trying to earnestly pursue simulation.

Where does it not?

I mean, vancian casting attempts to simulate a world with magic in which spellcasting works by those basic rules. What more do you want? A STR of 18 is stronger than a STR of 12. You seem to be arguing that because it does not meet some unstated standard of being a statistically provable accurate sim that it is no more sim than things that openly abandon sim.

If Joe is the local arm wrestling champion and he has a STR of 16 in my 1E game, his STR is known and can be compared to the STR of anyone else. If Mike (STR 11)and Sue (STR 17) challenge him, I know how they compare. Does that make it a great sim? No. Does it make it anything less than an attempt at sim? Of course not.

Now, if I’m playing some other game and the rules expect me took look at Mike’s level and find the DC for beating Joe on a page in a book and then look at Sue’s level and find a very possibly DIFFERENT number for beating Joe on that same page, then Joe no longer has a meaningful value within the world. In this game it just became “anti-sim”.

Look, I totally agree that a Star Fleet Battles level is not what I want either. Snore fest. Totally agree.

I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I said the standard was absurd for RPGs.

But, the models have to simulate something don't they? They have to be able to tell us something about the game world. But, all the combat system tells us is when something is alive or dead. And even that's iffy. All the level system tells us is that if I kill enough orcs, I learn how to speak Elven. Bwuh? Even the six stats don't really tell us much. What does a 14 Int mean? What does a 9 Cha mean?

An Int of 14 means I’m near the top of intelligence in a scale based on 3 – 18. The char is clearly smarter than average but not as smart as can be expected at the top of the normal range.

Sure, I can peg interpretations to stuff, but, most of it is artificial fabrications with virtually no connection to the actual model. My fighter has taken 14 damage. What does he look like? Well, he looks like anything I want him to look like since the system doesn't give a single indication of what he actually looks like. Can my 10 Int character come up with detailed, intricate plans? Why or why not?

On and on. The models don't tell us anything. They aren't really modelling anything. The mechanics are not there to model anything because they can't. The mechanics can't answer any questions, because they are not really earnestly pursuing simulation.

First, I’ll state that repeatedly claiming these are not earnest efforts to pursue simulation is just obtuse denial. Degree of success, and the ability of a group of players working together in the spirit of a good experience has shown that it does work for decades.

Again, you are using a pointless standard that completely attempts to sidestep the key issue. You have shown me over and over that dates are less sweet than fruit, but you have done nothing to show me that they are not fruit or that Coke is a fruit.

Prior to 4E I would largely agree with the spirit of the points you are making. I would ENJOY debating the merits of improving the tangible meaning. I would have never acknowledged that they were not “sim”, but I’d agree that you could call them “very poor” sim in a lot of cases. Keep in mind that I left 2E with no desire to go back for pretty much this reason. But 4E has changed the context of the conversation.

Saying that 14 INT is not meaningful is a completely different matter to saying that a DC14 lock turns out to be DC 21 because a different character tried to open it. Saying 40 hp damage to a fighter does not have a fixed meaning is different than saying that a fighter can be beat unconscious by Ogres and have absolutely no after effect the next morning, with no outside mechanism for recovery. I don’t care how many times you tell me you don’t think pre-4E versions of D&D were bad at sim. You are completely entitled to your opinion on that. But over and over 4E abandons sim altogether. It has been PRAISED for this. So there is no point in arguing where 1E falls on the scale if the question at hand is whether or not a game should be on the scale in the first place.

 

[BryonD]

Up to this point, your post was doing pretty good.

I'm pretty sure that styles that don't require as much or as successful sim as you prefer don't define themselves solely by their opposition to your style - as you have just done in dubbing them 'anti-sim.' I don't think it's at all helpful for you even to discuss that imagined, diametrically-opposed point of view. For one thing, people who actually know what their various styles are about are going to violently disagree with you, and you just might construe any defense of other styles as an attack on sim.

Shrug.

I didn't seek this out. Hussar is proclaiming all D&D non-sim. The new bizzaro standard requires a term to address the difference.

Again, 4E was hugely praised by its fanbase as rejecting sim.

As a matter of fact, it occurs to me as funny that Hussar never felt motivated to make this case in the early days of 4E when there was a constantly flood of "Thank God D&D isn't trying to be a sim any longer."

 

[BryonD]

Unless you think I was just making stuff up on the other recent thread that discussed these things, you have encountered such a person online - namely, me. (And if you think I'm anti-sim, then you haven't been following my posts very closely. I GMed Rolemaster for 19 years. The reason I think Ron Edwards' descriptoin of purist-for-system sim is terrific is because it captures exactly what motivated me during those 19 years. And the fact that Burning Wheel's Fight! system satisfies so many of these desiderata is part of what makes it appeal to me.)

I realize you were not replying to me, and you were replying to a statement about "anti-sim" people.

I don't think I've encountered anyone that I would label "anti-sim" as a gamer. There may be such people. And I'd have nothing against it if I did. But I'm not saying this about people.
Further, and I said this in another post to you but it bears repeating, 4E certainly has lots of sim elements throughout it. I mean, I suspect if you played a long session of 4E and flagged every minute in which an "anti-sim" thing came up, the % of minutes would be very small. But it does happen, by design, throughout the experience. So, for example, a fighter could go through a day of adventure with nothing happening that crosses into the unfun elements as perceived by Bryon. (Some of these things probably would happen, but it certainly "could" be avoided for any given day). But if he ends up thrashed by Ogres and then that evening insto-recovers his HP then that is a big moment of intentionally designed and celebrated "asim". So it was a day of sim, a moment of asim, and then , lets assume another full day of sim. Well, to me that whole next day is in the context of existing as it does because of that one asim moment. I'm not going to be satisfied. So, the point is, I can be completely unsatisfied because of asim elements while 99.7% of your game time was "sim".
So I'm not saying anything about people and I'm not saying 4E is remotely lacking in sim elements.
And, probably most important of all, I'm not claiming any merit to either system being remotely superior to the other, only which I prefer.

I'm also stating that the difference does exist.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Saying that 14 INT is not meaningful is a completely different matter to saying that a DC14 lock turns out to be DC 21 because a different character tried to open it.

In no edition of D&D does the DC of a lock change because a different character walked up to the lock and tried to pick it. At best, we can put this off to mistaking guidelines for rules.

Just because guidelines might say that a CR 3 ogre is an appropriate challenge for a given party, doesn't mean that a Cloud Giant turns into an ogre when attacked by said party. 'Status Quo' vs 'Tailored' DMing styles notwithstanding.

Saying 40 hp damage to a fighter does not have a fixed meaning is different than saying that a fighter can be beat unconscious by Ogres and have absolutely no after effect the next morning, with no outside mechanism for recovery.

That's no more non-sim than being beaten to 1 hp and receiving no penalties at all. D&D characters are unrealistically resilient, that way. Sure, in some eds, a dying character could 'stabilize' on his own get up, and be at full potential for all his attacks, checks, and so forth. That's just the level of abstraction - and, to some extent, of simulating genre - it went for.

Shrug.Hussar is proclaiming all D&D non-sim.

Are the two of you even working from the same definition of sim?

Again, 4E was hugely praised by its fanbase as rejecting sim.

I don't recall anything of the kind - and trying to dig into that would only bring back up the edition war. But, why does it matter what /one/ edition of D&D did, if the question is 'why D&D for sim?' If /any/ one version of D&D is adequate for sim, that's all you need to answer the question - no need to even allude to the existence of others. Likewise, if you want to prove Hussar wrong in his assertion, you need only prove that /one/ edition was suitable for sim.


That digression out of the way (and thanks for the more neutral 'non'-sim)....

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.

Here, AFAICT, we mean simulation in the natural language sense, not some weird-later-RPG-theory sense. And, in the context of the day, it's not like you had a lot of other choices (my point in my first reply in this thread). So it's only natural to project whatever to-be-labeled-sim-later impulses upon the game we were actually playing.

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.

By the time AD&D was complete (1st 3 books out), we had RQ, which is arguably more 'sim' (depending on your definition, of course - it made a point of handling melee combat in a more detailed and 'realistic' way, for instance, and had a skill-based system where you learned by doing and training, rather than class/level where you got better at opening locks by killing orcs). It's not exactly the only example either.

And, for starting from war games, I give all credit to Gygax and fellows for the massive first step in innovation they provided.

It was mostly just a scale change. Figures representing one creature instead of several. D&D was a complete, published wargame before anyone thought to label it a role-playing game, but the RP aspect flowed naturally from the switch to controlling a single imaginary character instead of a whole imaginary army.

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.

I get the frequent use of the 'for me' qualifier and it's fine for what it was 'about to you,' but, I think what it was 'meant to be' came from the intent of the guy that wrote it.

The main challenges to the idea of early D&D simulating something were more in the form that it simulated things very badly. Vancian magic didn't simulate any instance of magic from myth, legend, or the fantasy genre (being unique to a specific science fiction series), armor causing you to 'miss' also rubbed a lot of folks sim-fur the wrong way, as did hps (which seemed to simulate taking physical injuries) increasing from 'experience.' When EGG explained the ideas behind these and other objections, the rationales were often in support of what we might (or might not - seriously, these definitions are so effed up as to be virtually meaningless) call 'gamist' (Vancian, for instance, was an attempt, however unsuccessful, to make magic in PC hands playable in the context of a game) or 'narrativist' (in the way hps and saving throws represented an author/narrative tool/trope like 'plot armor,' for instance).

As time went by and I found games that innovated on the "sim" elements, I left D&D.

Nod. D&D was what was available for a time, so of course it got used for everything. As the industry matured, other options that maybe emphasized something differently or did something better emerged.

Thing is, it's also what so many of us started with, and played for so long, and have such an affection for, that the impulse to go on using for things it's maybe not ideally suited for can still be pretty strong - and, I think, perfectly OK.

Ultimately, I think, that for any definition of 'sim' (other than the dictionary definition of simulation, itself), sim is more about how you play that which game you play. And D&D is certainly fair game (pi).

 

[Savage Wombat]

Are the two of you even working from the same definition of sim?

Which is why I broached the point way back when.

 

[Hussar]

Well, I did give my definition of simulation - a model for determining what and how something happens - upthread.

I don't recall that. Are you referencing the "lockpicking %" ability of thieves? Because that is completely different.
The point I've made with "anti-sim" is blatantly rejecting any attempt at simulation. The Thief table does not do that.

If a 2nd level thief and a 14th level thief approach the same lock, the higher level thief will have a better chance because his skill is better, there is nothing in the system to suggest that the lock itself became easier to open. 1E *does* assume that all locks are the same. And I'd put that under a poor showing at sim, but it is still a date, nowhere near as sweet as a strawberry, but still a fruit, unlike Coke. If there were different difficulties of locks and it was built into the system that the same lock was harder depending on how high the thief level, then THAT would be a soft drink, and yes, I'd call it "anti-sim". If I've missed or forgotten something in 1E, please direct me to it.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-Simulationist-style-Game/page8#ixzz39T8PBTvz

The point is, EVERY lock is the same. No matter what, all locks in the world get easier to pick the higher level you are. What is being simulated here? What is being modelled? How is it that all locks in the world get easier to open as I kill more orcs and take ore treasure?

You claimed that DC by level is anti-sim. All editions other than 3e had lock DC's set by level. A lock for a 1st level 1e thief opens about 15% of the time (I'm working from memory here) modified by race, dex and armour worn. A lock for a 6th level thief opens about 40% of the time. IOW, all lock DC's are set by the level of the character.

Note, in 4e, locks do not change depending on the level of the character. If the lock was DC 20 at 1st level, it's still DC 20 at 20th level. In 1e, that lock was DC 18. Now, it's DC 14. All locks get easier. There's nothing being simulated here. IOW, no matter what, all locks get easier depending on the level of the thief. Just like it gets easier to sneak past creatures, regardless of the creature, depending on the level of the thief. All trap DC's similarly fall regardless of the trap, depending on the level of the thief.

That's not even a date, that's a cola right there.