Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
The answer now please. I'm sure you think it's a better one.
D&D General D&D isn't a simulation game, so what is???
- Thread starter DND_Reborn
- Start date
Scars Unseen
Hero
Ooh, can you do younger? These forums have been around for a couple of decades, so if you could go back and post your opinion... let's say 12 years ago, that'd be fantastic. When you're done, lend me your time machine so I can go revise my investment strategy. Not gonna lie: I'm definitely going the Biff Tannen route.
Vaalingrade
Legend
As I always say: D&D is drunk.
Scars Unseen
Hero
Yeah, it's funny how the writers go out of their way to make sure that fire spells don't lead to the natural conclusion of introducing fire to things that burn when that's pretty much the only reason anyone would dedicate years of study to mastering the art of magical fire in the first place.
Hussar
Legend
But it is justified if you want to talk about D&D as a simulation game.
It's not justified if you want to talk about D&D as being gamist.
Hussar
Legend
On the point about square fireballs.
It's not that square fireballs are more or less simulationist - they can easily be used as part of a simulation. They are less accurate, true, but no less simulationist.
And, from a gameplay point of view, the odds that it will make a difference in play are fairly small. The odds that you have 9 targets placed just so, that would be affected by a square fireball and not a round one, is VERY small. It just doesn't happen.
But, again, this gets back to the amount of jiggery pokery we have no problem accepting in the game. Any sort of reroll mechanic is 100% against simulation, for example. You are replacing a result with a preferred result - not because it would be a better model, but because you want that result and not the first one. Simulation should never care about what you want. "What you want" is antithetical to simulation.
It's not that square fireballs are more or less simulationist - they can easily be used as part of a simulation. They are less accurate, true, but no less simulationist.
And, from a gameplay point of view, the odds that it will make a difference in play are fairly small. The odds that you have 9 targets placed just so, that would be affected by a square fireball and not a round one, is VERY small. It just doesn't happen.
But, again, this gets back to the amount of jiggery pokery we have no problem accepting in the game. Any sort of reroll mechanic is 100% against simulation, for example. You are replacing a result with a preferred result - not because it would be a better model, but because you want that result and not the first one. Simulation should never care about what you want. "What you want" is antithetical to simulation.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Not--really? They're just how my tastes changed, and were accellerated by the general tastes of the people I game with.
When I entered gaming I was a pretty solid gamist/simulationist mix, who would have found most dramatist intrusions just that--intrusive. One of the reasons I left D&D was it was only half-serving even half of my needs--as a game it was kind of subpar, and it wasn't doing any kind of real job with simulation at all. I went off to RuneQuest and a lot of games that came out in the 80's that were clearly much more serious about making at least an attempt at some simulationist design.
But over time I've become more interested in a stronger dramatist ethic, and most of the people I play with (and have for a long time) either don't care about simulationism worth mentioning, or do so only to a minor degree. So these days I'm probably gamist/dramatist with a tinge of simulationism.
I'm also more willing to tolerate a few games in the D&D sphere than I was for decades, in part because of my diminished simulationist concerns. Note I left that part of the hobby when my tendency toward simulationism was strongest. Because I thought it OD&D was a subpar game and a remarkably poor and underfed simulation. I wouldn't have anything to do with it for, oh, 20 years I want to say? Until D&D 3e came along because at that point it was at least a somewhat engaging (if ultimately broken) game.
Last edited:
Manbearcat
Legend
I'll go one further. The invocation of and focus upon "square fireballs" is nonsense and edition-warring nonsense in the same vein as everything we've seen prior ("fire keyword effects can't set the environment on fire!").
In the fiction, you're not statically occupying the 5 ft square space that your PC token occupies on the game-mat/table.
In the fiction, your fireballs aren't square.
These increments are game artifacts meant to facilitate functional play within an integrated game engine.
Period. Full stop.
If you're mapping your shared imagined space upon obvious game artifacts (and then using that mismatch to proliferate edition warring nonsense), that is on you. Fix it and course-correct. Or carry on your obviously incorrect edition warring.
Take the following Fighter power:
Does the shared imagined space contain turns? Does it contain grabs that knowingly and automatically end at the end of someone's next turn? Does it contain squares? Does it contain slide target 1 square? Does it contain Strength modifiers or Dexterity modifiers or damage expressions? Does it contain penalties to attack rolls?
No. It obviously doesn't (yet the shared imagined space somehow contains FIRECUBES!).
What does it contain? The freaking italicized text at the top:
You slam your weapon through your foe's defenses, creating an opening. You then step in and trap your enemy.
Its embarrassing that we're still doing this and perpetuating this well over a decade later.
EDIT - Or better yet, Fireball!
Globe vs LOL4E FIRECUBE
Hussar
Legend
It was not my intent to relitigate edition warring. That's ancient history, mostly, and it's just not worth it.
But, the funny thing is, so many of those ENORMOUS issues in 4e are passed in 5e without comment. Yet we STILL have people banging the simulation drum. As if 5e is somehow more simulationist. I'll give @Micah Sweet mad props here for consistency. He (sorry, presuming the pronoun) knows what he wants and he's more than willing to go and get it. HUGELY impressive.
The hobby would be so much healthier if people were more like that.
Play what you want to play. If what you're playing isn't fitting with what you want, find something that does. It's not like there aren't all sorts of solutions out there. Even in this thread, asking for a more simulationist style game should NEVER get the answer D&D. Yet we see people still trying desperately to cling onto the idea that D&D was ever about simulating anything. It never did. The only difference is that now, we no longer have to pretend that it did at some point.
But, the funny thing is, so many of those ENORMOUS issues in 4e are passed in 5e without comment. Yet we STILL have people banging the simulation drum. As if 5e is somehow more simulationist. I'll give @Micah Sweet mad props here for consistency. He (sorry, presuming the pronoun) knows what he wants and he's more than willing to go and get it. HUGELY impressive.
The hobby would be so much healthier if people were more like that.
Play what you want to play. If what you're playing isn't fitting with what you want, find something that does. It's not like there aren't all sorts of solutions out there. Even in this thread, asking for a more simulationist style game should NEVER get the answer D&D. Yet we see people still trying desperately to cling onto the idea that D&D was ever about simulating anything. It never did. The only difference is that now, we no longer have to pretend that it did at some point.
DND_Reborn
The High Aldwin
You know, I find it strange how far away from the purpose of the thread it digressed. I mean, it happens, I get that, no issue with it... I've just found it all interesting reading anyway.
Similar Threads
