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

[Ovinomancer]

Yes, you're right. I need to walk back what I said here a bit.

Let's see if this works:

Sim games - to work as a sim game, the mechanics need to inform the players at least a minimal amount, about what happened in the fiction, while, at the same time, excluding some potential results.

I think you have your logic reversed, still. If I say A occurs, then I know that all not A does not occur. If, however, I say that some set of not A doesn't occur, I cannot say that A occurs because there's still some set of not A that isn't precluded. So arguing from the position of not A being precluded means simulationism isn't sufficiently distinct because lots of rules include precluding sets of not A. Take hitpoints -- if I take hitpoint damage but still have hitpoints left, then "you die" or "you fall unconscious" or "you turn into a black hole" are precluded by the system. This isn't sufficient to say that hitpoints are simulationist. And we can say some set of A is required by not losing all your hitpoints -- we do know something about the fiction here that isn't negative -- you are absolutely, positively still in the fight.

Arguing from the negative here doesn't really work.

I'd point out though that while non-sim games can produce similar results, that doesn't really matter. After all, if the same player didn't roll a 6, then the DM has all sorts of flexibility on the results and there aren't really any results that are off limits. So, BitD kinda sorta looks like it might kinda be sim in a certain light, but, most of the time it isn't.

I.. what? That opening is pure special pleading -- you've just handwaved away the entire point of defining simulationist rules. That point is so we know them when we see them. But, here, you've literally said that rules that aren't simulationist can pass your test but that doesn't matter because they're... I dunno why they'd get the special privilege here.

As for Blades, no, again. If the result is 4-5, the GM cannot narrate failure and MUST narrate success with a complication or cost commiserate with both Effect and Position. On a 3-, the GM cannot narrate success and MUST level a cost or complication commiserate with Position. In all cases with Blades, the result absolutely precludes fiction but doesn't tell you what actually happens in the fiction. These mechanics provide who gets the "say" in the outcome and puts constraints on that say, but do not dictate what happens in the fiction at all. Success can be a wide range of things, cost and complication can be a wide range of things. The outcome of the dice don't dictate fiction, they dictate who gets to say what about the fiction.

It's kind of like how in D&D, you do have a pretty specific result when someone is dropped. You are supposed to narrate that as taking physical damage that is potentially life threatening. Dying of embarrassment isn't really a thing that is actually going to happen at the table. OTOH, the other 99% of the time, the sky is the limit in terms of narrating successful or unsuccessful attacks.

You are? I don't have that in my rulebook. It just says, "if 0 hp, then incapacitated. Also make death saves." The only fiction requirement is associated with the incapacitated condition, and that's got nothing at all to do with description of injuries!

 

[Cadence]

Beyond kind of fitting with the Vance one shot spells, one-use magic runes occurred in The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany (which is in Appendix N).

Where did the concept of single-use spell scrolls originate?

It has been a standard rule in Dungeons & Dragons for as long as I can remember that spell scrolls are single-use items. Once a spell is cast from the scroll (or, sometimes, even if an unsucces...

scifi.stackexchange.com

Apologies if I missed it being mentioned above

 

[Ovinomancer]

No? I'm assuming exactly the opposite. Rules can be (and, for some games, are) the means of producing an imagined reality in the first place. The imagined reality only comes after one or more rules have been chosen, in that case.

The mechanic was--with as much certainty as we can have about such foggy past events--developed because it served a game balance function. It then became a source of fiction: if this is how spells work, then the world must look like X and Y. Being gamist in origin implies no limit whatsoever on what can arise from the resulting mechanics.

You keep getting caught up on this and I just...I really don't understand it. All I'm talking about is where things got started.* Did the designer start from fiction they knew to be true, and then extrapolate mechanics from those truths? Did they start from mechanics they knew they wanted to include, and derive what that must say about other things? Or did they start from asking about the kinds of story they wanted to see happen, and thus determine what fiction is required, and/or what mechanics would permit or foster such stories?

Like...let me break down that second question there. "A mode of creatively expressing an imagined reality." Does that reality already exist, in the sense that you have invented it and could describe its characteristics to others? That sounds simulationist: you have a world that is, and must determine how it works from its nature. The imagined reality is "already there," and one describes how it goes about its business via creating new mechanics. In this circumstance, fiction leads mechanics; you know what the world already is, and the mechanics are whatever either must follow, or (more often) one reasonable thing that could follow from the world being whatever it is.

But, instead, it might be the case that the world doesn't exist, in the sense that you haven't populated it with any fictional entities or behaviors, and are instead going to figure out what entities or physical laws that world should possess given the rules you wish to use for it. That's a gamist way of doing things. It starts from the rules, and from that foundation, spins the world into fictional existence. The imagined reality is not "already there," instead it follows after the rule-making.

Spell scrolls, HP, and a variety of other things followed after their selection as game mechanics. That does not, in any way, reduce or deny the power as tools-of-reality-description of these mechanics. The existence of these things has, demonstrably, driven an enormous amount of fictional events--across thousands or even millions of campaigns across D&D's near-50-year lifetime. But there can be difficulties that arise from using tools with one clear and intended purpose in ways rather outside that intended purpose. Choosing to say, "This is a bedrock part of this fantasy, what rules does that imply?" is a perfectly valid thing to do, but it is worth remembering the origin.

Is the problem that I'm using the word "fiction" here? Like, do you think that I'm saying that it is UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE to write a story inspired by game rules when I say "mechanics led the fiction"? Because that's not at all what I'm saying here.

*I should say, I did also allow for things to get started in more than one place. Gamism and simulationism are hard to mix, but it can be done. The other two possible pairs--G/N and S/N--generally mix relatively well, so it's entirely possible to do something like "I think point-buy games are neat and want to tell a story about tragic magical-girl protagonists, what fiction can I derive from this?"

It's interesting that you've either parallel developed or borrowed the GNS framework for some of this, but avoided the point of the GNS framework which was to evaluate the objectives of play and used GNS as methods to achieve differing objectives. Your claim that you can mix gamism and narrativism or simulationism and narrativism don't seem to acknowledge that there's some pretty divergent agendas behind these approaches and they don't mix altogether well.

For example, if I have a strong simulationist mechanic, it's not going to provide narrativism very well because it's not going to center the dramatic needs of play it's just going to simulate what it's intended to simulate. As you noted earlier in a post, any post-hoc insertion of story will be on the players to manage. To continue, we can look at a very strong simulation -- the Forza (non Horizon) driving games. These are high on simulation, in that you can tweak many facets of the cars and they respond very close to real life in how the game models their performance. They do this pretty well, by all accounts. What Forza does NOT do is care at all about how the driver feels about this race -- is it a dramatically important moment for the driver? And Forza does NOT do is resolve anything at all based on or centered around the driver's dramatic needs as a character. Doesn't care. Forza does not provide this -- it's not narrativist a single jot. Further, there's no way to insert any narrativism into Forza that does not require abandoning the simulation. You cannot both simulate the car's performance AND resolve based on the dramatic needs of the driver.

You can extend this to look at Mario Kart as well, where simulation is turned entirely off in many cases in favor of game elements like banana peels spinning out cars, or throwing blue shells at the leader, or even what happens on a "crash." Those aren't parts that make for fun gameplay, so the simulation is turned off in favor of gamist approaches. But, just like Forza above, these gamist approaches do not care one whit for any dramatic need of the driver characters. Inserting any such dramatic resolution means turning off the gamism and the simulation.

And this is because all of these tools are meant to evoke specific goals or agendas of play that don't really mesh very well, if at all.

 

[Krachek]

Oh, absolutely. You certainly can go back, after the fact, and then narrate. Once a combat was finished, you could narrate and be sure that it wouldn't be contradicted, and, once a session is finished, that wouldn't be terribly difficult.

I mean, we've got a huge WotC release based on someone's game fiction coming out very soon. So, it's certainly possible.

What isn't really possible though, is doing it at the time. You can't narrate actions until well after the action is completed because there are so many things that can invalidate a narration.

Whereas in a sim based game, typically that simulation will be time dependent. You shouldn't be able to invalidate a result with a later result in a simulation. But, D&D is chock a block with all sorts of (I SOOOO WANT TO SAY PLAYER FUDGING!!! PLEASE @Ovinomancer, PRETTY PLEASE ) reroll, rework, and interrupt style mechanics that it's virtually impossible.

On a side note, this is generally why 4e, despite drawing inspiration from video game mechanics, makes such a TERRIBLE video game system. 4e was just riddled with interrupt style mechanics that invalidated previous results. There would be almost no way to play that in a video game. It just wouldn't work very well.

I agree, it was a real fun to make post action narrative for 4ed.

I see two point of view for the thread subject:
The simulation is the story
The simulation help build the story
with various kind of mixup.

I see each players as having is own fantasy universe. when time get to play our fantasy interact with a set of rules ( the simulation) and then we go back to our own personal fantasy.
We can even imagine to change rules set at each session, The world, the story and the PCs would continue to evolve despite the various rules set we use to play the story.

I came to this after years of playing. It makes the game much more fun to me. As player it help taking for cash what the DM describe and propose as fantasy. It reduce a lot of suspicious feeling about DM fiat. As DM it help me making smoother call and helping players stay in the fantasy.

 

[Campbell]

Would you agree hit points came out of a desire to model individual soldiers and gunslingers in a skirmish?

This is matter of record. The introduction of hit points into D&D was to address the issue of players not liking going down to a single hit from a monster because they identified much more strongly with the single character under their control than a military unit in a war game. Arneson and Gygax introduced a mechanic based on work they had already done on two naval wargames.

The history of hit points

Before regenerating health, before Doomguy, before D&D RPGs...where did hit points come from?

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Oofta]

Oh right, and yes I agree with your intuition that we elide. Where I resist the intuitions of some other posters, is that I work from a certainty that we always elide. We lean on our human ability to gloss, to ignore missing details, to say that a narrative is close enough for us to be carried along with it as if it were right.

You probably know about the many mechanisms in our brain to helps sustain such elisions. A few include filling in colour, prioritising only a few objects for processing, reordering the time sequence, scanning forward and revising backward (in reading written words), and adjusting edge-contrast. We humans are amazing at drawing upon a few cues and weaving an impressionistic narrative just good enough to persuade us.


All RPG systems rely on elisions, reframings, overlookings, summarisings, subconscious revisions. There are no exceptions. It's all spackle over inconsistencies.


That's exactly what I'm saying. Both are causal chains. Both articulate some but not all change along the timeline. The difference is a matter of granularity, where in all cases the count of change omitted is far vaster than the count of change articulated.

A short example, just for the parry. Did it deflect downward, or upward? Does it leave the foes closer, or further apart. Are they both still centered, or is either off-balance? If off-balance, in what direction? How are feet moving to maintain or recover balance? If the parry is blade against blade, do both weapons have guards to catch the possible finger-slicing slides of sharp edges? If the parry is blade against lucerne hammer, is there a check for a break? What if the sword wielder has specifically faced hammer wielders many times? Do they have any better chance to avoid or mitigate that check? What level of exhaustion does the parry result in for each foe: how much longer can they fight just based on stamina alone, even if they are not hit? Does the parry slightly decrement each sides stamina? After the fight, how much time does it take to hone the blade? What sound did the clashing weapons make? How far did it carry? Does it carry further along a hall than in a windy forest?

There are so many details that could be articulated. It's just a matter of degree.

I would also say that in the case of the parry, in D&D it's just subsumed into AC bonus from dexterity. It still happens, or could, we just don't call it out. Instead of a parry it could also have been a dodge, a weave, a feint, some combination. No game is going to list all the possible variables, therefore it's just a matter of granularity. I don't see why granularity makes one system a simulation but not the other.

 

[clearstream]

This is matter of record. The introduction of hit points into D&D was to address the issue of players not liking going down to a single hit from a monster because they identified much more strongly with the single character under their control than a military unit in a war game. Arneson and Gygax introduced a mechanic based on work they had already done on two naval wargames.

The history of hit points

Before regenerating health, before Doomguy, before D&D RPGs...where did hit points come from?

www.pcgamer.com

That's a strong point, and we must be cautious about something that amounts to one line from an interview in 2004. Earlier in the interview that the quote comes from, Arneson says "This was a fantasy world, so who could come up with anything to prove that he was lying or a monster wasn't accurately represented." Arneson actually cites three motives for the switch to HP, which come down to acknowledging a change in scale and experimentation with a mechanic that had the potential to better model it. Their combat matrix (typical of wargames at that time) was becoming bloated, and players were already making more detailed records of their individual characters, as they didn't need to track a whole army. Arneson says that he wasn't too concerned with any putative "realism" based on our real world. It was a fantasy world.

The matter of scale is important. In tabletop wargames the bound is usually imagined as a longer span - i.e. at a less granular resolution - than the skirmish scale most often seen in RPG. Arneson is describing that a mechanic that suited the zoomed out view, didn't suit the zoomed in one, and he jocularly narrates that players didn't mind that their characters lived longer (just as they ought to have lived for longer - in game turns - at the zoomed in scale.)

 

[Campbell]

Part of the reason I find the insistence (despite countervailing commentary from Gygax and Arneson) that D&D was first and foremost designed to simulate a fantasy world or whatever is that it dramatically undersells the intentional game design at the center of our hobby. Dungeons and Dragons is a seminal work of overall game design whose influence extends far beyond our hobby. The vast majority of video games (not just in the roleplaying category either) produced today implement its reward loop and utilize incredibly similar mechanical structures as D&D. A fair number of board games as well. As a work of intentional game design few games match it.

 

[clearstream]

Part of the reason I find the insistence (despite countervailing commentary from Gygax and Arneson) that D&D was first and foremost designed to simulate a fantasy world or whatever

It was designed to afford play in a fantasy world. That world was its reference. The rules made the compromises needed to afford play in that world.

is that it dramatically undersells the intentional game design at the center of our hobby. Dungeons and Dragons is a seminal work of overall game design whose influence extends far beyond our hobby. The vast majority of video games (not just in the roleplaying category either) produced today implement its reward loop and utilize incredibly similar mechanical structures as D&D. A fair number of board games as well. As a work of intentional game design few games match it.

It doesn't undersell anything. The impact is untouched by whether or not we see it as being inspired by an idea of actually entering a fantastical world, or inspired by some kind of abstract parsing of gamespace (who knew Gary and Arneson were intending to design fantasy-Chess!)

 

[Oofta]

When discussing things like HP people keep posting things like "HP aren't real" or some variation. Which is true. HP are a simulation and simplification of many factors that are going to vary by individual and the type of damage taken. But HP aren't a thing in and of themselves, they are just a measurement of a large grouping of other nebulous things that determine how much damage an individual can absorb or ablate before they are no longer able to fight.

What factors? Well, if you have a fuel gauge, what is that gauge? It's not the fuel itself, it's a measurement of how much fuel you have left. How much fuel? What's the size of your tank? For that matter is it gasoline, diesel, kerosene, propane, hydrogen, electrical capacity left in your battery, some combination? Can anyone not a specialized chemist give details on what gasoline really is? Does it matter?

Knowingly or not we use simulations all the time for things we don't really understand. Heck, there is no scientific consensus on what gravity is, why would we expect consensus on what HP represent? Engineers and scientists use simplified simulations all the time, because most of the time the simplification works well enough. We know that if you put two fighters in an arena and they fight each other, one will eventually no longer be able to fight. Mike Tyson would last far longer in that fight than some regular Joe off the street even if they were fighting exactly the same opponent and not fighting back. You have to have some way of representing that.

When it comes to how spells or scrolls work, since magic isn't real there is either no way to simulate it or we are simulating some established fiction. I don't think the former while valid is particularly useful, with the latter it doesn't matter how or where the fiction was established. Which, yes, in the case of D&D can be quite self referential. That doesn't make it wrong, many simulations are based on things we don't really understand.

I know some people have a definition of simulation based on granularity, charts and basis on some external source. But the word doesn't mean that. It just means that we are modeling something, that we are using a system of rules to represent behavior and results of a fantasy world. Something can be both gamist and simulationist, all TTRPGs are some combination.