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

[Micah Sweet]

For what system?

I'd like to do something with in D&D. Not sure how to implement it yet.

 

[Oofta]

Something well beyond nothing? As noted, plenty of other games still manage to have considerably beyond "well, you iterated them toward death."

Outside of machines (i.e. mechs), I've never seen a game that did anything other than alive, nearly dead, dead. If there were demand for it, it would be a regular thing in many games.

You have yet to explain how it would work or why it would be anything other than descriptive fluff. If it's just fluff I sometimes throw in specific details that fit the current narration. I don't see how canned narration from some lookup table or rule would be an improvement, how it could always be appropriate for the scene, how it would do anything other than slow down the game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I really can't disagree more. I've played several games with a death spiral (most versions of L5R and all versions of Cyberpunk are good examples) and at no point did that mechanic make the game less fun for the players, or the GM. It does make you more careful, since getting hit actually matters in the moment and moving forward, but I view that as an unequivocal good thing. The rules are made with whatever concern the designers wanted to make them with. Narrative, gamism, simulation, it all depends on what the rules are what the designers wanted to do.

D&D does lean toward what you're describing, but that's actually one of my problems with it.

To be fair, one of the things D&D does do that games of the sort you're mentioning don't is provide a somewhat slow pace-of-resolution. For some people that's absolutely a virtue because they get time to realize things are going bad before they're irrecoverable.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Outside of machines (i.e. mechs), I've never seen a game that did anything other than alive, nearly dead, dead. If there were demand for it, it would be a regular thing in many games.

Then I'll be blunt, Oofta; you haven't seen nearly enough games. There have been at least four I can remember off the top of my head in this very thread that do more than that. Either that or you're dismissing a lot of median cases because you write them off as death spirals.

You have yet to explain how it would work or why it would be anything other than descriptive fluff. If it's just fluff I sometimes throw in specific details that fit the current narration. I don't see how canned narration from some lookup table or rule would be an improvement, how it could always be appropriate for the scene, how it would do anything other than slow down the game.

Let's just look at the Hero System for a simple one; using the heroic scale hit location rules, if you take half your Body in one hit, you get an Impairment, based on where you got hit. That's well beyond "descriptive fluff."

Oh, but I forget, that starts a death spiral so that's unacceptable. Its funny that if you won't accept any system that actually produces something other than fluff, then you won't get anything but fluff.

 

[Oofta]

Then I'll be blunt, Oofta; you haven't seen nearly enough games. There have been at least four I can remember off the top of my head in this very thread that do more than that. Either that or you're dismissing a lot of median cases because you write them off as death spirals.



Let's just look at the Hero System for a simple one; using the heroic scale hit location rules, if you take half your Body in one hit, you get an Impairment, based on where you got hit. That's well beyond "descriptive fluff."

Oh, but I forget, that starts a death spiral so that's unacceptable. Its funny that if you won't accept any system that actually produces something other than fluff, then you won't get anything but fluff.

As I stated above - I'm basing my observations on popular video games. Video games bypass the "D&D is the 800 lbs gorilla" argument, there's plenty of competition in the AAA video game market. Video games should be able to be much more accurate about these kind of things but with a couple of exceptions for Fallout and mech games I can't think of any.

I don't want a death spiral in my game and I don't think it works well because D&D can be far too combat oriented. Based on observation of the market I'm not the only one that doesn't care for it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To be fair, one of the things D&D does do that games of the sort you're mentioning don't is provide a somewhat slow pace-of-resolution. For some people that's absolutely a virtue because they get time to realize things are going bad before they're irrecoverable.

I get that, but it is of limited value to me. Sometimes things just go bad fast.

 

[clearstream]

I don't think it has to entirely do this, if said fictions and beliefs are literally true in the setting. The problem with genre conventions is that the characters are not supposed to acknowledge them, but there's nothing that forbids a simulation acknowledging magic for example, because the characters can be aware of magic.

Ah yeah, here I meant "a reference" as in "among" them. Maybe that needs spelling out? It gets tricky, because how do you say that there can be exceptions without letting in another doubt as to how much can be exceptional? What if corporality is one of those things that are exceptional so that injury and death work the way the bare mechanice for hit points works in DnD? Should there be a preference for beliefs that reference real world beliefs, even if they're about things that aren't real? Those kinds of questions arise.

Again, as above, a high level of granularity isn't always necessary, but it the less granular you get the less information you're getting out of it (and of course it may give you actual counterfactuals you have to resolve yourself--D&D's elevating hit point model not only doesn't tell you what's happening, if read literally it tells you things that are ridiculous, so you have to use a lot interpretation to not do so. That's why I claim that its a fundamentally minimalist gamist artifact more than anything else).

Hmm, a lot of interpretation to one person is a bagatelle to another. All game systems have ridiculous edge cases, or cases that can be narrated ridiculously.

Uhm. I'd say more that the information is sufficient if they don't feel a need to, but there may still be cases where it can add to the experience. In most combat systems even if it gives the broad strokes more than adequately, there may be some fine details that will be desirable, but that tends to be more in the color and dramatist desire than that to engage with it on a basic level. The big issue is that it tells you at least enough, and doesn't tell you things that you can't make sense of without extending beyond what you've been told.

That last I can't agree with, because the point - the joy - of TTRPG is extending beyond what we've been told. I feel folk often overlook this because we are so used to looking at things through a normalised set of filters. Every game system has a myriad of points where we have to join things up by extending beyond what we've been told. Once we're glossing over at all we lose any claim to an objectively more realistic or true narrative. Oh, an abrasion. Is that on my knee? No? My shin? Just anywhere on my leg? One can make sense of it, and one must nearly always extend beyond what one is told.

 

[pemerton]

A question here is whether it is the numbers and not the descriptions that count? And if the descriptions do count, how does it matter that they are not pre-authored..

Description is fiction ("clouds"). Numbers is mechanics ("boxes"). The difference between a RPG and (eg) chess is that it involves engaging in, and generating, a shared fiction. So the fiction matters!

The appeal of pre-authorship/mechanical determination, over authorship, is (in my view) a combination of "playing to find out" and "being subject to rules rather than whim". It's probably also worth considering that when the major simulationist RPGs were designed, the sorts of techniques for channelling/constraining/building on "whim" found in systems like Apocalypse World or even Burning Wheel hadn't been fully worked out or understood. The salient contrast was D&D, where not only is the fiction "whim" but it doesn't affect subsequent resolution.

So my question on that is - we do know how because as we went along we said how. When the ants bit, they were described using bitey language. Afterward, the group would expect M (had M survived) to talk about their enflamed bite marks, torn clothes etc. We do know the state of the character now, because of the fiction we authored in response to cues from the system.

My experience is that much of that sort of colour in D&D combat - about bites, etc - is mere colour. It doesn't affect the resolution that follows. Maybe in your group it's different?

What I'm getting at is, is the test for simulationist in the end a threshold for granularity? And what about the mussed state of my character's hair? Where is the necessary - some might say crucial - detail on that? Does it come down to sufficient granularity of results on matters we care about?

Upthread, in multiple posts, I've referred to the salient details/elements of the fiction. What is salient is relative to tables and to individuals and to mood and expectation. But in RPG combat there are some fairly well-known conventions here: am I hit? am I hurt? am I bleeding? is my armour damaged? These were clearly on Gygax's mind when he wrote his defence of hit points in his DMG; they are clearly on the minds of the RQ and RM authors. They are still on Luke Crane's mind two decades later, designing Burning Wheel. Even Apocalypse World uses armour as damage reduction, and has rules for bleeding out!

So it seems we've devolved into the old "HP sucks" argument.

No one has asserted is not a simulationist mechanic entails sucks.

At the moment the FRPG I am obsessed with is Torchbearer. It uses hit points in its extended conflict resolution system: they are generated for each side at the start of the conflict (as the number of successes on a dice pool throw), are spread across the team members, are lost by suffering Attacks and Feints from the other side, and are recovered within the context of a conflict by successful Defence and Regrouping.

A conflict ends when one side has no more hit points left. And at the end of a conflict, we work out what actually happened to the members of each team by considering how many hit points the winning team lost, as a proportion of their total, and negotiating a compromise that reflects that.

This is an interesting mechanic. It has some resemblance to HeroWars/Quest - Robin Laws's innovative Glorantha-oriented RPG. It's not remotely simulationist!

If detailed mechanics on what an attack does doesn't lead to mechanical penalties, why bother?

Maybe it affects healing/recovery? In hit point/body point systems, normally body points take longer to recover than hit points. In Torchbearer, the Injured condition has the same mechanical significance however a character acquires it, but the difficulty of healing it differs, depending on whether it is bruising, a cut, a burn, etc.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I'd like to do something with in D&D. Not sure how to implement it yet.

You can easily do it by modeling it after d20 SW. I did it a long time ago and the system translated perfectly to 5E.

Summary for modified 5E version we used for a while:

Vitality Points (VP) = hit points (HD + CON bonus)
Wound Points (WP) = Constitution score (if you want a more "forgiving" game since 5E can have some very high damage foes, add your character level to your Constitution score. Creatures can add CR to Constitution as well if you want).

• All damage is dealt to Vitality Points. When Vitality Points = 0, remaining damage goes to Wound Points.
• Critical hits go directly to Wound Points. On a critical hit, Armor provides DR (equal to AC value - 10, so chain mail 6, chain shirt 3, plate 8, etc.)
• If you have lost any Wound Points, you are fatigued (-2 to STR and DEX scores) until you recover/heal all lost Wound Points. You must also make a CON save, DC equal to 5 + the Wound Points taken in the round, or you fall unconscious whenever you suffer Wound damage.
• At 0 Wound Points, are are disabled but can still be conscious. If you remain conscious, you can take an Action or use your speed to move, but you cannot take any bonus actions or reactions. If you take an Action, you loss another Wound Point.
• At Wound Points -1 to -9, you are dying and unconscious. You lose 1 Wound Point at the end of each round until you become stable or die.
• At Wound Points = -10, you are dead.
• Stabilizing requires a DC 10 Constitution save, or you continue to lose a Wound Point each round. Once you are stable, you must make the Constitution save at the end of each hour or you lose another Wound Point. If you succeed in the Constitution save, you regain consciousness.
• A dying character can be stabilized by a DC 15 Wisdom (Medicine) check or if they regain any Vitality Points.

 

[dave2008]

I'd like to do something with in D&D. Not sure how to implement it yet.

OK, I have a system we use in 5e. Here is a link to a PDF: dave2008's house rules

First page is what we currently use and the 2nd page has some rules we are thinking about or tried and rejected.