D&D General D&D isn't a simulation game, so what is???

[Hussar]

For example, 4e's "square fireballs" that people liked to poke fun of (and, amazingly, sometimes with affection rather than scorn). A grid is already somewhat un-simulationist (since we know space doesn't actually exist on a grid), but 4e goes a step further by using Chebyshev or "chessboard" geometry, where diagonal distances are equal to rectilinear distances. This is often cited as outright anti-simulationist, at least by self-identified pro-sim folks I've known. It certainly doesn't follow your assertion of simulating a type of fiction, at least not as far as I'm aware.

Heh, there's a perfect example that I hadn't actually thought of.

OTOH, I REALLY wish 5e would go back to square fireballs. They are such a much better way of handling area of effect than pixelated circles. I get really annoyed with players spending fifteen minutes of game time trying to place that fireball in JJjjjjjuuuuusssstttt the right square. Makes me want to drive a pencil into my ear. Just make the damn things square and be done with it.

And 5e is especially bad. There's no 11 counting in 5e. So, if you play on a grid, then you use 4e geometry for everything EXCEPT spells. It's really annoying. All those, "Well, is it covering enough of the square to count" moments. Grr, I absolutely hate that part of 5e.

 

[pemerton]

It's all equally pretend.

I don't think anyone is confused about that.

But there is a difference between the following three ways of resolving a fight in a RPG:

* Make up some fiction. What you make up doesn't matter to what happens next. (D&D hp are like this, at least until they reach zero and sometimes even then if the players have healing resources available.)

* Make up some fiction. What you make up will affect downstream resolution. (In various ways, Dungeon World and Torchbearer are like this.)

* Learn what the fiction is by reading it off a chart or similar. (RM and RQ are like this).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't mind them being as punishing as they are, personally, but if there was more granularity it probably wouldn't bother me, either.

Chase rules? Oi... Don't get me started.

Frankly, this gets to the heart of one of my biggest issues with 5e: it chose to go for low-granularity effects (Ad/Dis, Exhaustion, a handful of others), but failed to design rules that mesh with that low granularity. As a result, you get Exhaustion as the only place where "death spiral" effects really appear....but they're so severe that you're discouraged from enforcing them outside extreme circumstances, and any mechanic that does enforce them, like the Berserker's Frenzy feature, is borderline worthless because it provides indefinitely-scaling harsh penalties for comparatively paltry benefit.

Heh, there's a perfect example that I hadn't actually thought of.

OTOH, I REALLY wish 5e would go back to square fireballs. They are such a much better way of handling area of effect than pixelated circles. I get really annoyed with players spending fifteen minutes of game time trying to place that fireball in JJjjjjjuuuuusssstttt the right square. Makes me want to drive a pencil into my ear. Just make the damn things square and be done with it.

And 5e is especially bad. There's no 11 counting in 5e. So, if you play on a grid, then you use 4e geometry for everything EXCEPT spells. It's really annoying. All those, "Well, is it covering enough of the square to count" moments. Grr, I absolutely hate that part of 5e.

You have got to be kidding. People tore 4e a new one, up one side and down the other, over not being 1-2-1 on the diagonals, that it was incredibly awful and immersion-breaking that you could get so much more benefit out of running diagonally than rectilinearly. Now you're telling me 5e DOES still use it, and nobody complains about it? That's...that's....ugh. That is incredibly infuriating.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Frankly, this gets to the heart of one of my biggest issues with 5e: it chose to go for low-granularity effects (Ad/Dis, Exhaustion, a handful of others), but failed to design rules that mesh with that low granularity. As a result, you get Exhaustion as the only place where "death spiral" effects really appear....but they're so severe that you're discouraged from enforcing them outside extreme circumstances, and any mechanic that does enforce them, like the Berserker's Frenzy feature, is borderline worthless because it provides indefinitely-scaling harsh penalties for comparatively paltry benefit.

Yeah.

I've found our endurance (adding CON mod as free levels of exhaustion) house-rule helps a lot. Now, most PCs can take a couple or few levels of exhaustion before the death spiral begins, but then they know that buffer is gone and the PCs feel themselves being tired out before the penalties start to pile on.

and nobody complains about it? That's...that's....ugh. That is incredibly infuriating.

Actually, this came up in our last session. One of my regular players is trying his hand at DMing again and this became an issue. I told him about the 1-2-1-2 option, which has been around forever of course, and he thinks we should go that route in 5E now.

So, yeah, people complain about it.

 

[Charlaquin]

See above. This sounds to me like dissolving any difference that might be had between "narrativism" and "simulationism,"

Good. It’s a useless distinction used primarily for gatekeeping, I think it ought to be dissolved.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Good. It’s a useless distinction used primarily for gatekeeping, I think it ought to be dissolved.

Okay. Some people find value in the distinction, purely for describing their own preferences.

What would you recommend they use instead for talking about "I am interested in telling stories through gaming, through tools that encourage the kind of narrative events that interest me," vs "I am interested in a world that acts by consistent, cognizable rules that one can reason about organically, as one would do in the real world, in order to predict future consequences."?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, certainly not a realistic simulation, but it works pretty well for simulating action movie combat, for instance.

I don't even agree with that. There isn't sufficient detail level there for it, for example, to give good output. As I said, it can do a credible job of controlling pace-of-resolution, but that's about as far as it goes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Good. It’s a useless distinction used primarily for gatekeeping, I think it ought to be dissolved.

Every single preference anyone has could be used for gatekeeping. That term is being thrown around in situations where it isn't warranted.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Okay. Some people find value in the distinction, purely for describing their own preferences.

What would you recommend they use instead for talking about "I am interested in telling stories through gaming, through tools that encourage the kind of narrative events that interest me," vs "I am interested in a world that acts by consistent, cognizable rules that one can reason about organically, as one would do in the real world, in order to predict future consequences."?

I'll go a little further and suggest that the lumping of "simulating how something works out in process steps" and "emulating genre conventions" isn't always as useful to lump together as could be. Back in the RGFA days their gig was generally to put the latter into dramatism rather than simulationism and it honestly still seems to serve a more common set of interests than post Forge simulationism does (this can be pretty stark when you get to strongly stylized genres where doing things to emulate what goes on has usually pretty little to do with any other stripe of simulation).

T

 

[Thomas Shey]

To get back to the OP, who I never answered, the choices of Harnmaster or Runequest immediately jumped to my mind too (though I'm only passingly familiar with the former). But I'm going to present an example that I think is more simulationist than most people would assume (and also mention the one glaring case where its origin lets it down outside of the genre originally it was designed for): The Hero System, specifically Fantasy Hero.

If you're using the optional hit location system, Fantasy Hero can have a strong set of input-to-output correlations that let you know what a character has done in a combat round (the specific manuevers and weapon traits), what its result was, and what its result means in a non-cryptic way. It also does so in s somewhat less bookkeeping-intensive way than most systems with hit locations (the locations modify damage types and can produce secondary penalties, but aren't recorded location by location).

Now, if you get outside of combat and a few other action-resolution things, its nothing special about simulating setting elements, but I'm not thinking that's what you're talking here.

(The one glaring flaw with it is that it very much assumes most people will go down from shock (stun) well before they take a lethal wound. That's an artifact of the fact the Hero System got its start as a superhero game, where that's very much true as a general rule. Its not super-intrusive in settings where there's not a lot of body armor, but its extremely visible in ones like fantasy where there is. There are various patches around that, but they're clearly that. And it can cause some story progress issues where you have avowedly heroic characters having to decide what to do with all the captives they have).