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

[Thomas Shey]

I imagine you're not denying that those magical tales were sources of inspiration for D&D magic, so I suppose what you say amounts to a concern that D&D didn't mirror the magic systems in the books. That is quite explicable because there are no magic systems in books. The authors of static linear stories don't have to contend with the use and reuse of runes etc by endlessly ingenious players. The magic of stories was translated into game mechanics, mutatis mutandis.

I suspect its more that it doesn't say anything about any relationship to the fire-and-forget model. The first is, as said, closer to something like Explosive Rune, and the latter is just, well, a written down spell that the half-trained Mouser could use as a reference. Since it started from a chain where I was noting how very unusual something like fire-and-forget spells are (but as noted, they're very convenient in some gamist senses) it really didn't change my argument in any noticeable way.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Talking about Assetto Corsa and simulation?


Would playing D&D better prepare me to delve into large underground complexes and take the best stuff out of it???

In the Old School sense, where its all about caution and being very careful what you get yourself into? Maybe. But there wasn't much mechanics associated with that, so...

 

[Thomas Shey]

I mean...wasn't that what was already being said?

No one denies that magic writing existed before D&D. For God's sake, we have curse tablets dating back to at least pre-Roman Greece, and that's only the ones I've personally researched. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were heiroglyphic curse tablets from Ancient Egypt that are much, much older.

What I (and, as I understood it, the person you were talking to) was highlighting was very specifically the "consumable" or "destructive" nature of the thing. Other than Jack Vance and D&D, magic never works in that way. And yes, we are quite literally talking about it being mechanicized (mechanized?)--that the very clearly gamist mechanics may have drawn on literary or mythic/historical precedent, but their gamified nature was very intentionally front and center.

Vancian fire-and-literally-forget spells--and their analogues in things like "spell scrolls that crumble to dust when used"--are essentially without precedent anywhere outside of D&D and Vance's own work. The closest you get is potions, and potions are inherently consumable because, y'know, you literally consume them. Making the actual spells themselves consumable, that's a purely gamist D&D invention; it's just become so ingrained that some people no longer notice how openly gamist it is due to familiarity.

Yeah, this was pretty much my point. Given how extremely specific the spell casting is--and how limited the precedent--you have to ask "Was this done to simulate magic, or because it provided a game-convenient way to mechanic it?" Since it basically turned spells into a regenerative consumable, I think its not unreasonable to assume the latter. Scrolls are similar in that they interact with the system in utilitarian sort of way without end-running the limited-resource elements of D&D spellcasting.

I really can't help but think Campbell has mostly the right of it that the mechanic was generated first, and then the rationale after the fact. Its impossible to know, of course, but given the kind of ad-hoc kitbashing that apparently took place during the early development of D&D, its hard to see how it could have been much else.

 

[clearstream]

Yeah, this was pretty much my point. Given how extremely specific the spell casting is--and how limited the precedent--you have to ask "Was this done to simulate magic, or because it provided a game-convenient way to mechanic it?" Since it basically turned spells into a regenerative consumable, I think its not unreasonable to assume the latter. Scrolls are similar in that they interact with the system in utilitarian sort of way without end-running the limited-resource elements of D&D spellcasting.

I really can't help but think Campbell has mostly the right of it that the mechanic was generated first, and then the rationale after the fact. Its impossible to know, of course, but given the kind of ad-hoc kitbashing that apparently took place during the early development of D&D, its hard to see how it could have been much else.

So for you RQ POW sacrifice can't be considered simulationist? How do you feel about the once per day limit on Spell Law scrolls?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Again, your complaint here seems to be that some fiction isn't mirrored in game. I'm not following how that is our razor between simulationist and not simulationist. Are you saying that the mechanical nature of Arms Law look up tables for hit results excludes them from being simulationist? Seeing as they're a game construct (real fights don't use look up tables.)

[EDIT RQ POW sacrifice for rune spells by Rule Lords / Priests might be a good point of comparison. Or investment of points in truestone. I had RQ down as simulationist. No longer?]

Its not so much that some fiction isn't mirrored in it, but that almost no fiction was. If the game wanted to start out to look like a general swath of fictional magic, its waaay overspecific and quirky for the job. What it is, however, is very convenient in a game sense.

Regarding the RQ issue, do remember that Glorantha and how things work predated the creation of the RPG. The specific execution of early RQ in how Power sacrifice worked may not have been quite dead on according to later statements, but it wasn't off by much.

But D&D wasn't a setting-specific game system with a predesigned setting that had strong rules about how magic worked in-setting. Its inspiration for magic were avowedly fueled by multiple sources, where is its magic system looks like (and only somewhat) one of them. It would have been entirely possible to have a system that would have looked a bit more like a broad swath of them, but that's not the route it took. As I said, the "why" can't be but speculative, but given what we know of the history of the game, the likeliest case is that a convenient and strategically interesting magic system was more of a priority than representing anything in specific (this is in contrast to the spells, which are, like a lot of things in D&D, clearly derived from multiple fictional sources, though how precisely they work and certainly how they were levelled was again almost certainly a gamist decision).

 

[Thomas Shey]

So for you RQ POW sacrifice can't be considered simulationist? How do you feel about the once per day limit on Spell Law scrolls?

To the former, yes. I'm not familiar enough with the latter to want to answer authoritatively, but given the time frame my instinct is to assume it was a gamist decision.

 

[clearstream]

To the former, yes. I'm not familiar enough with the latter to want to answer authoritatively, but given the time frame my instinct is to assume it was a gamist decision.

Seeing as you categorise design choices as "gamist", what is the definition you would put forward for a gamist RPG system?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Whether an invention of the game or someone in pre-D&D literature came up with the idea first, what does that matter?

Because the question you have to ask if you're looking for something in a simulationist light is, "what is it trying to simulate?" When OD&D came out, there was no strong setting data which was being worked from. Greyhawk and to some extent Blackmoor were just setting created to run D&D games in (the latter is a little more complex in history, but that's how it evolved pretty quickly). So if you're going to do a magic system for a game based on a wide range of fantasy tropes, you either are going to try and hit as many of those with your magic system as is practical, or you just do something mechanically convenient, because it serves your game purpose, and move on. There's no great evil in doing the latter; most generic games with a magic system just did that, and its okay. What it isn't, is simulationist, because you had nothing in particular you were simulating when you started (and again, to be clear, this doesn't have to be the case with a game with fantasy elements and a magic system; but you have to have a set of solid setting assumptions about how your fantasy elements work going out the gate. Otherwise, again, you're just doing what Campbell suggests and filling in the setting after the fact to make sense with your fundamentally gamist magic system--which again, is not any kind of evil, but it doesn't make the magic system retroactively simulationist.)

A game doesn't need a precedence for a mechanic to be valid. The idea is very reasonable IMO. You "write" symbols or runes of magic (which have been around in real life forever) with magical ink to store power which is released later, or you learn to study/pray/etc. to imprint those runes on your mind--to be released when the spell is cast.

It seems like you are putting value on something just because someone else thought of it first and used it in fiction, which frankly really has no bearing on anything as I see it.

Again, I think you're conflating "value" and "simulation" here. I don't consider them one to one correspondences. I'm not a big fan of the D&D magic system, but that has nothing to do with this; there are other just as gamist magic systems I like much better. But they aren't simulations either, because they came first and were designed heavily for game balance and utility, and any simulation elements were distinctly secondary concerns. I realize my dislike of a lot of D&D mechanics can confuse this, but I really am trying to separate the two out, and its a good idea when reading my responses that simulation is a pretty small part of what I look for in a game these days--if you have to put a thumb on what part of a game I favor most, I'm still probably a gamist more than anything else.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Seeing as you categorise design choices as "gamist", what is the definition you would put forward for a gamist RPG system?

A gamist RPG element is primarily designed to make easy and/or engaging play (those aren't always easy to combine--OD&D was easy but not particularly engaging in and of itself on a gamist level to me; that's the biggest reason I left it behind, though back in those days I was also more simulationist and OD&D wasn't much help there). I'm aware "engaging" is doing some heavy lifting in this sentence, so to make it clear what I mean by it is it makes the play element interesting to do, whether or not you're immersing well or connecting with the story of the game. Also note I mention "element". You can have a game that is very simulationist or dramatist in some areas, and very gamist in others. As I noted, most true generic game systems have paranormal systems that lean toward the gamist because they don't have a setting model to work off of, so the magic/psi/whatever system is essentially going to be made up ex nihilo anyway (they sometimes are attempting to aim at a broad swath of fictional usage, but you can only do so much simulation doing that since fictional sources vary so much).

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

I think if you're not willing to accept "simulation" in this kind of discussion is a term-of-art you're going to keep finding them frustrating, Oofta.