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

[Vaalingrade]

A pro Wrestling RPG recently called their HP 'Momentum', as in it represents how close you are to losing the fight as you lose momentum. The object is to make the other guy lose all their Momentum first.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This again is mired in assumptions about the reference. The simulation must produce what happens when you hit someone with a sword in that cosmos. If in that cosmos heroic luck fends off palpable harm for a time, then the simulation must produce that result.

As for determining where a person was hit, that is only a matter of the granularity of the simulation. Does RQ model fingers and toes? Surely a swiftly swung sharp sword could severe a digit!

The issue is twofold here:

1. First of all, nothing in any of the D&D settings actually suggests that fending off injury just by luck is a significant factor. There are numerous things that suggest skill can, but skill doesn't ablate.

2. There are some serious issues that "all luck until you're out" model runs into. For example, a poisonous stinger. If you're never hit until the end, how is it delivering poison? How about falling or wading across lava? You can resolve it, of course--but you have to actually do that. You have to deal with it in the narrative in a fairly consistent fashion (the falling you have to narrate some sort of thing breaking the fall, the farther the more elaborate, the lava you have to narrate floating bits of solid rock, and so on).

D&D doesn't do any of that. It doesn't even declare all of it as luck until the last bit. It just says the only authoritative bit is the last bit, without giving you any information. If it declared all but the first bit luck or skill (both of which would be more than a little bit odd--if it was all luck it'd mean that D&D characters had no defenisve skill for example) it'd at least be a different conversation.

 

[Hussar]

It seems to me the argument is that hit points either aren’t a simulation or aren’t a good simulation because they aren’t 1 to 1 with their causes and effects.

/snip

That's not what I'm arguing.

I'm not arguing that a simulation needs a 1:1 relationship with cause and effect. That's @Oofta's argument that that is needed for a simulation.

My argument is that for something to be a simulation, at least as far as RPG's go, it needs to be able to allow the player to definitively say X did NOT happen. It doesn't necessarily need to say that X did happen. Because you can certainly substitute Y and Z for X. But, in order to be a simulation, it needs to be able to definitively say that, while X, Y or Z might have happened, A definitely did not.

To me, refining my definition as we've been going along, Sim is mostly defined by being able to say that something did not happen in the fiction. So, in a Wounds/Vitality system where a hit does not deal any wounds, we are obliged, by the system, to make a narrative where that hit does not actually cause any physical harm to the target. Conversely, if the attack did deal Wound damage, then the narrative could not include any narrative that did not include some sort of physical harm to the target.

There's more to the definition than simply saying that Sim systems tell you what is. That's not really all that useful. After all, a non-sim system can generate exactly the same narration as a sim based system, simply by choosing the same narratives. But, a non-sim system cannot tell you what didn't happen, whereas a sim system can.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The relevant question (from my perspective) here is what comes first. Are we modeling a specific kind of fiction that we are designing to or are we using posthoc justifications of game mechanics that were obviously designed first and foremost as a game? What are we actually trying to do?

World of Warcraft uses all sorts of fictional justifications for its gameplay-oriented mechanics. That does not make it a simulation of anything.

And this becomes more and more of an issue as a game's lifespan goes on. To move to another aspect of D&D, fire and forget spells are an oddity in fiction; once you move back before fiction that was influenced by D&D, there's only one example of magic that looks (vaguely) like it, and when D&D got started, there was no explanation for it at all, even in-game; it just worked that way. A lot of people extrapolated from bits of phrasing ("memorizing" spells in the old days) but its not clear it was every supposed to represent anything other than a mechanically simple way of limiting spellcasting ability. More modern games come up with some sort of vague explanation, but as you note, at this point they're more post-hoc justifications for the mechanic rather than the mechanic existing to simulate much of anything.

(Which doesn't mean someone couldn't have come up with a setting fire-and-forget spells wouldn't be a proper representation of, just there's little sign D&D is that game. Like a lot of things in D&D, it appears more of a gamist tool, and unless "game" is a dirty word to you (which it is to some extent for some people) there's nothing intrinsically wrong about that. I'm not terribly fond of some of the gamist choices in D&D, but that's absolutely just a matter of taste, not a criticism of them because they're gamist).

 

[DND_Reborn]

A lot of people extrapolated from bits of phrasing ("memorizing" spells in the old days) but its not clear it was every supposed to represent anything other than a mechanically simple way of limiting spellcasting ability.

I'm not so sure of this. I can't recall from B/X, but I know from AD&D the idea of the magic being imprinted (or "memorized" as you say) was pretty explicitly stated in the DMG IIRC. The idea was you could only "study/pray" to imprint so much magic and as you gained experience and power you learned how to imprint more. So, there was fiction to support the mechanic.

Of course, as far as I know every every game limits magic in one form or another. Personally, I prefer "drain mechanics", but that is also a side-effect of the unfortunate "memorizing" idea from prior editions. To me, memorizing implied that it was also forgotten. But the knowledge of the spell wasn't forgotten, only the magical symbols imprinted vanished after the magic they held was released as the spell was cast.

I remember when I started college I played in a group and we actually wrote all the prepared spells down on little bits of paper, and each time we cast one, we tore the paper into pieces. We were always able to re-write the spell on another piece later, and so forth. I always liked that physical representation of imprinted spell.

Now, an extension of that idea that I always liked: what if you only had so much paper to use?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm not so sure of this. I can't recall from B/X, but I know from AD&D the idea of the magic being imprinted (or "memorized" as you say) was pretty explicitly stated in the DMG IIRC. The idea was you could only "study/pray" to imprint so much magic and as you gained experience and power you learned how to imprint more. So, there was fiction to support the mechanic.

Having finite spells is easy to explain. Them going away when you use them requires a lot more heavy lifting.

Of course, as far as I know every every game limits magic in one form or another. Personally, I prefer "drain mechanics", but that is also a side-effect of the unfortunate "memorizing" idea from prior editions. To me, memorizing implied that it was also forgotten. But the knowledge of the spell wasn't forgotten, only the magical symbols imprinted vanished after the magic they held was released as the spell was cast.

Notice how progressively more specific you're having to get here to justify them? And I have to note that OD&D was absolutely mum about why it works that way.

 

[Alzrius]

And I have to note that OD&D was absolutely mum about why it works that way.

My take on that is that Gygax and Arneson likely presumed that people who were interested in playing D&D were also likely to be up on the fiction that inspired it, i.e. Vance, and would recognize where such a particular style of magic came from, with the attendant explanations.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's not what I'm arguing.

I'm not arguing that a simulation needs a 1:1 relationship with cause and effect. That's @Oofta's argument that that is needed for a simulation.

My argument is that for something to be a simulation, at least as far as RPG's go, it needs to be able to allow the player to definitively say X did NOT happen. It doesn't necessarily need to say that X did happen. Because you can certainly substitute Y and Z for X. But, in order to be a simulation, it needs to be able to definitively say that, while X, Y or Z might have happened, A definitely did not.

To me, refining my definition as we've been going along, Sim is mostly defined by being able to say that something did not happen in the fiction. So, in a Wounds/Vitality system where a hit does not deal any wounds, we are obliged, by the system, to make a narrative where that hit does not actually cause any physical harm to the target. Conversely, if the attack did deal Wound damage, then the narrative could not include any narrative that did not include some sort of physical harm to the target.

There's more to the definition than simply saying that Sim systems tell you what is. That's not really all that useful. After all, a non-sim system can generate exactly the same narration as a sim based system, simply by choosing the same narratives. But, a non-sim system cannot tell you what didn't happen, whereas a sim system can.

This formulation doesn't really work. Take Blades in the Dark. If a PC attempts something, and gets a 6, the GM cannot narrate a consequence attached to the action nor any form of failure -- they are mandated to narrate success or progress towards success per the set Effect. But Blades resolution isn't simulationist at all -- it's intentionally not. So, "result mandates a not-something" can't be a functional definition of a simulationism.

No, I go back to the first used definition here -- simulationist mechanics directly tell you what happens in the fiction when they resolve. This is the core definitional block. Damage to HP in 5e doesn't tell you at all what happens in the fiction until and unless you run out of them, and then you learn the PC/monster is incapacitated, which at least has some required fiction. So, HP are very low simulation. Rolemaster, though, provides much more detail as to the outcome of an attack -- there is quite often mandated fiction from hits in RM (it's been a few decades, so I'm rusty, but I remember this). Combat in RM has many high simulation mechanics. RM is much more of a sim game than 5e -- by a few miles. Millennium's End (again, a few decades) is even more so for combat. That game told you with high detail what happened when you shot a target or got shot.

Once you have the core of resolutions must tell you what's happening in the fiction, you can layer on other considerations, like what goes into the resolutions -- are they driven by things in the fiction that directly flow into the resolution? If I'm shooting my gun left handed but I'm right handed, does that factor into the resolution? If so, more simulationist. If not, less. Really, simulation in RPGs is about the relationship to the fiction on both the feed in and the feed out of the resolution processes -- does the fiction direct the resolution on the input and does the resolution direct the fiction on the output. Maybe demand is a better word than direct, here.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Them going away when you use them requires a lot more heavy lifting.

I don't really think it does, but YMMV I suppose.

Notice how progressively more specific you're having to get here to justify them?

I really don't see how am getting more specific to justify anything, I am just explaining how it works.

And I have to note that OD&D was absolutely mum about why it works that way.

My take on that is that Gygax and Arneson likely presumed that people who were interested in playing D&D were also likely to be up on the fiction that inspired it, i.e. Vance, and would recognize where such a particular style of magic came from, with the attendant explanations.

I really couldn't say, but that could be the reason why. Frankly, I don't know anything about Vance as the fiction that might have inspired it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My take on that is that Gygax and Arneson likely presumed that people who were interested in playing D&D were also likely to be up on the fiction that inspired it, i.e. Vance, and would recognize where such a particular style of magic came from, with the attendant explanations.

That was a pretty big assumption, however, and I'll not other elements of the Vancian spells were not present (note for example, there were no such thing in the Vance stories as minor spells; you only had a small number of spells, but they were very beefy).

And note as I said, no other writer used a magic system that looked anything like that. So unless you were familiar with one specific (albeit relatively well-known) writer, it wouldn't look much of anything like any fictional magic you knew.
So I think it required more unpacking than you got.