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

[clearstream]

Which is why you aren't having the same conversation as the rest of us. For us, when the fiction is established is the core of the issue. If you cannot establish the fiction as it occurs, then it's not a simulation. If the fiction can be rewritten after the fact, then it's not a simulation.

Notwithstanding the definition I proposed

A simulationist design is one whose models and rules preponderantly take inputs and produce results including fiction, corelated with pre-existing references; so that we know when we say what follows that our fiction accords with the reference, and the imagined inhabitants of the world can know its rules.

Following the recent thread of debate, for myself I want to drop pre-existing. I don't see it as robust. That is because I believe that the first articulation of a reference a game designer has in mind can be in the form of the game model and rules. Alternatively, we could concede some sort of superior validity to film and writing as forms of imaginative expression; so that what we mean by reference is pre-existing as a film or story. I find that odious as well as indefensible. It's offensive to game designers as creators.

@Thomas Shey who has been in many respects a strong proponent of pre-existing wrote that

Sometimes someone has a system they want to create and just layer a setting to one degree or another around it; sometimes someone wants to represent the setting they have in mind (though there's no assurance the system design to go with it will be ideal for that setting; its not like its unknown for setting and system to be out of sync with each other such that the system seems unlikely or impossible to create some of the fiction you get with the setting).

How should we take this in cases where we don't have access to a designer's conscious and subconscious motives at time of our grasping and enacting their game design; or where said motives might be complex or vague, and coming into focus as they go? I feel that the more robust definition is to assert that the product must include references. The timing of their inclusion isn't at issue. Therefore

A simulationist design is one whose models and rules preponderantly take inputs and produce results including fiction, corelated with pre-existing references; so that we know when we say what follows that our fiction accords with the reference, and the imagined inhabitants of the world can know its rules.

 

[pemerton]

The mistake you're making is in classifying Hit Points as "Durability". I know that Hit Points are often described as durability, and that even if we include other factors like luck and effort and the ability to dodge or render a significant blow into an insignificant one and so on, then durability is still a part of it. But they're not a simulation. There is no real world thing that is, as you put it, a measure of how long someone can survive attempts to kill them.

So much this.

Which relates directly back to my view that the fiction that flows from a simulationist reading of hit points is silly.

 

[pemerton]

As far as narration, I use a little chart for my PCs:

Category	% of HP
Bruised	75-99
Wounded	50-75
Bloodied	25-50
Critical	1-25

HP measures how many attacks that you can endure that aren't outright misses. Every game that simulates combat has to have some way of tracking at what point a person is no longer capable of fighting.

The chart, and the sentences, don't seem consistent to me.

For instance, if I get punched, I will be bruised. If I get punched again, I will be bruised more. If I get punched and punched and punched I will get more and more bruised, perhaps even have bones broken, but I won't become critically injured unless the punches are to particular parts of my body - I'm quite unlikely to be killed if I'm punched repeatedly in the arm or leg.

More generally, a person may be incapable of fighting - because exhausted, dispirited, their limbs are broken or beaten to bloody pulps, etc - and yet not in danger of dying.

Conversely, if I get shot in the head - @hawkeyefan's example - I do not become bruised, then wounded, then bloodied. I got straight to either critical or dead.

 

[pemerton]

the hp system is essential for allowing encounters to simulate heroic fantasy fighting.

Prince Valiant allows encounters to emulate/simulate heroic fantasy fighting. It doesn't use hit points.

Likewise for Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy (ie Marvel Heroic RP adapted for FRPGing).

 

[Oofta]

Which is why you aren't having the same conversation as the rest of us. For us, when the fiction is established is the core of the issue. If you cannot establish the fiction as it occurs, then it's not a simulation. If the fiction can be rewritten after the fact, then it's not a simulation.

You are simply insisting on a definition - as you say, the dictionary definition - that no one else here is using and that's why you can't seem to reconcile what we are saying.

Some people agree with you, some don't. Looking at just the responses on this thread, it's about evenly split. We'd have to do a broader survey to get a more accurate result but "as the rest of us" is easily verified as untrue.

Some people feel like D&D is a fantasy world simulator at least in part. Some people feel like other TTRPGs are simulators but D&D is not one of them. Some people feel that no TTRPG or anything that represents something that is not the real world could ever be considered a simulation. Which one of those camps you fall into is just opinion. What is not opinion is that several people disagree with you.

 

[Mannahnin]

Level limits in AD&D were there as a balancing mechanism between humans and demi-humans. People then incorporated it into the narrative and created worlds where level limits were an actual thing in the world.

As a historical note, in the 70s Gygax explained demi-human level limits more from the angle of simulating the fantasy fiction which inspired D&D. As a reason why humans predominate as protagonists. He noted that if, for example, Elves could advance to any level, that combined with their long lifespans would mean that elves would most likely rule the world and humans would not be the most important or significant species in game worlds.

 

[pemerton]

as far as I know every every game limits magic in one form or another

Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic treats magic like any other ability. It doesn't use D&D-style recovery-on-a-rest at all, really. In D&D terms, this would be treating magic as an ability/skill check.

HeroQuest revised is similar. Whether an ability is magical or "mundane" is an aspect of the fiction, but doesn't generally affect how it is declared and resolved.

In Burning Wheel, when a magician casts a spell they have to test for Tax: each spell has a Tax rating, and you roll your Forte dice pool and take tax equal to your margin of failure (or no tax if you succeed). If your tax equals your Forte you fall unconscious; it it exceeds it you also take wounds. You recover Forte by resting, with the amount recovered determined by a Health check. In D&D this would be (very roughly) like having to make a CON check when you cast a spell, and losing hit points if you fail.

The idea of magic being rationed as its own distinct resource pool - whether D&D-style fire-and-forget, or power points (which is what RM uses, and kind-of what RQ uses, and what Classic Traveller uses for psionics) - seems first-and-foremost like a gameplay device.

 

[Mannahnin]

In Burning Wheel, when a magician casts a spell they have to test for Tax: each spell has a Tax rating, and you roll your Forte dice pool and take tax equal to your margin of failure (or no tax if you succeed). If your tax equals your Forte you fall unconscious; it it exceeds it you also take wounds. You recover Forte by resting, with the amount recovered determined by a Health check. In D&D this would be (very roughly) like having to make a CON check when you cast a spell, and losing hit points if you fail.

The idea of magic being rationed as its own distinct resource pool - whether D&D-style fire-and-forget, or power points (which is what RM uses, and kind-of what RQ uses, and what Classic Traveller uses for psionics) - seems first-and-foremost like a gameplay device.

Is there not fantasy fiction generally limiting the use of magic powers via exhaustion prior to the publication of D&D?

I agree that power points and other totally independent resource tracks separate from exhaustion seem to derive purely from game mechanics. (Spell memorization being an special exception via Vance).

 

[Oofta]

The chart, and the sentences, don't seem consistent to me.

For instance, if I get punched, I will be bruised. If I get punched again, I will be bruised more. If I get punched and punched and punched I will get more and more bruised

If I got punched by a heavyweight boxer it would likely be one and done. If Mike Tyson, or a guy that I knew that went semi-pro in MM were punched, they'd likely last longer. The factors that go into that are far too varied. HP, like my chart, are just one way to measure all those innumerable factors. HP is a fuel gauge, not the fuel.

, perhaps even have bones broken, but I won't become critically injured unless the punches are to particular parts of my body - I'm quite unlikely to be killed if I'm punched repeatedly in the arm or leg.

Are you saying people don't get beaten to death? Assuming you are not, there is not precise hit location in D&D so it's not relevant.

More generally, a person may be incapable of fighting - because exhausted, dispirited, their limbs are broken or beaten to bloody pulps, etc - and yet not in danger of dying.

Yep, D&D has many simplifications. On the other hand in a fight to the death, assuming that if you are too exhausted to continue fighting, the next blow certainly will kill you. I don't see much of a conflict.

Conversely, if I get shot in the head - @hawkeyefan's example - I do not become bruised, then wounded, then bloodied. I got straight to either critical or dead.

Really? No bullet ever grazed someone's skull leaving only a scratch?

 

[Oofta]

Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic treats magic like any other ability. It doesn't use D&D-style recovery-on-a-rest at all, really. In D&D terms, this would be treating magic as an ability/skill check.

HeroQuest revised is similar. Whether an ability is magical or "mundane" is an aspect of the fiction, but doesn't generally affect how it is declared and resolved.

In Burning Wheel, when a magician casts a spell they have to test for Tax: each spell has a Tax rating, and you roll your Forte dice pool and take tax equal to your margin of failure (or no tax if you succeed). If your tax equals your Forte you fall unconscious; it it exceeds it you also take wounds. You recover Forte by resting, with the amount recovered determined by a Health check. In D&D this would be (very roughly) like having to make a CON check when you cast a spell, and losing hit points if you fail.

The idea of magic being rationed as its own distinct resource pool - whether D&D-style fire-and-forget, or power points (which is what RM uses, and kind-of what RQ uses, and what Classic Traveller uses for psionics) - seems first-and-foremost like a gameplay device.

Magic is all make believe. One fictional justification is no more "real" than another.