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

[pemerton]

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.

I think I mentioned upthread that I enjoy RM more than RQ. One reason for that is that its implementation of attacking and defending is different from RQ's.

In RQ you have a to-hit percentage and a parry percentage for each melee fighting technique. When an attacker succeeds on their roll to hit, the defender then has to check for their parry.

In RM, though, you have a pool - equal to your skill bonus in the melee attack form in question - and you have to allocate the pool to attack and to defence. This means that a player can choose to risk it all on a big attack, or to approach a combat cautiously, or anything in between. It's not the most narrativist/"story now"/dramatic needs mechanic of all time, but it does offer the opportunity for the player to inject "stakes" in a way that RQ doesn't.

Spell casters have a somewhat similar sort of choice they can make around how quickly they cast a spell, how powerful a spell to cast, etc. And both for melee and casting, there are additional bells and whistles (found in various Rolemaster Companions) that elaborate on what I've mentioned, that allow more player control over the risk the PC takes to achieve their goal.

Archery doesn't have anything comparable, which is why it's relatively boring in RM compared to melee or casting.

I mention all this not to contradict your post, but to show that mechanics designed for one purpose can find themselves drifted, sometimes without much difficulty, to a different purpose. To me the somewhat-narrativist drift of RM seemed very natural. On the other hand, as I've posted not too far upthread, I can't really countenance the simulationist drifting of hit points that some in this thread seem to be suggesting!

 

[pemerton]

It was designed to afford play in a fantasy world.

That does not entail that it was intended to be simulationist.

Tunnels & Trolls is designed to afford play in a fantasy world. Is anyone really asserting that T&T's rules for combat resolution simulate anything?

 

[pemerton]

Something can be both gamist and simulationist, all TTRPGs are some combination.

That last claim seems obviously false. What aspect of HeroQuest Revised, or Maelstrom Storytelling, or Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic is simulation?

 

[Oofta]

That last claim seems obviously false. What aspect of HeroQuest Revised, or Maelstrom Storytelling, or Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic is simulation?

Said that wrong. All TTRPGs are going to contain gamist elements and simplifications for playability.

 

[Ovinomancer]

A lot of these discussions seem to boil down to point of view. Kinda like art. You can climb into art and look at techniques and media and discuss the differences in precise details -- how this technique works to evoke this effect, what the difference is between this and that technique, what you can do with one technique that you cannot do with another, etc. On the other hand, you could be looking at art as an infrequent patron in a museum where you're only looking at a distance to see if you generally like or dislike a particular piece. And here we have these discussions which seem to be about people interested in the techniques vs people that want to talk about what art that they like. The technique people are passionate about sharing how art is made, but lots of people just don't really care if there's a difference between, say, watercolors and oil painting and what you can do with them. To them it's paint, and it's the final conglomerate that has merit or doesn't. To the technique people, liking the final product is really not of interest, because any art has technique that can be analyzed and borrowed to suit purpose.

Only, there also seems to be a group that just wants to be clear that what art you like is entirely subjective and therefore not something that can be really discussed, and that since what art you like is subjective, there's no point at all to discussing technique because, ultimately, it doesn't matter, you like what you like, shrug emoticon. This really reads as an attempt to shut down conversations instead of engage with them.

 

[pemerton]

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

I guess so. My knowledge is very far short of comprehensive. Some wizards in REH's Conan stories sometimes seem to be taxed by their magic use. Ged in the Earthsea stories sometimes finds his magic draining to use. I think this sort of thing is what lies behind the Burning Wheel approach.

 

[pemerton]

We could take the minions to be unlucky and without will to live

We could. As I said, in my view that creates an absurd imagined world.

For me personally, 1 hit point minions were never part of a world I wanted to imagine.

I also don't imagine such worlds, as a special case of not imagining worlds in which anyone has hit points. I regard hit points as a game device, primarily a pacing one, for regulating the introduction of fiction by the participants. Not as a model of ingame causal processes that generate fiction just by being allowed to run.

I'm reasonably happy with my definition,
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.

I don't know what the "its" refers to in the final clause. The imagined inhabitants of the World of Greyhawk can, I assume, know its rules, but they can't know the rules of Torchbearer which is the system I am currently using to run games set in GH.

I also don't find the notion of "say what follows" very applicable to simulationist resolution processes. The process tells you what follows, so there is no need for an additional injunction to say what follows.

I think that Edwards' characterisation of simulationism is sound: internal cause - the imagined cosmos in action - is king, and the mechanics model, or correlate, to this. The "input" in the fiction yields mechanical parameters (eg a bonus to hit) and the mechanics then generate an "output" (eg an injury to a victim), and the mechanical procedure corresponds to the in-fiction procedure. If the mechanical procedure includes dice rolls, those correlate to the vagaries of fortune or minor variables in the fiction (the crucial variables are set as part of the input - we learns something about a simulationist RPG by seeing what variables it treats as crucial - see eg Pendragon's treatment of personality, compared to RM's). If the mechanical procedure includes player insertion of "luck" or "fate", this has to correspond - in a simulationist system - to something the character is doing in the fiction.

(I'm focusing above, as I have throughout this thread, on what Edwards calls purist-for-system simulation. He also has a notion of high concept simulation that is closer to what @Thomas Shey calls "dramatism" and what @EzekielRaiden calls "narrativism". Edwards also has a notion of narrativism, but it differs from the aforementioned dramatism and narrativism.)

 

[pemerton]

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.

I said that people don't get beaten to death by blows to their limbs. They get beaten to death by blows to their body (torso). Or their head.

And of course being attacked by someone with a sword or spear probably isn't much like being beaten to death at all. Even a heavy blade like an axe will hurt someone in a different sort of way from being beaten to death.

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.

In real life, not every defeat in hand-to-hand combat is a result of being too exhausted to continue fighting. If you're saying that all D&D combat has that character, that's already a significant departure from what I regard as plausible and genre appropriate.

For instance, REH's Conan regularly kills foes who are not too exhausted to continue fighting.

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

We wouldn't normally say that someone whose skull was grazed by a bullet was shot in the head. As the post you quoted said, I was picking up on @hawkeyefan's example, which was not an example of a person being grazed by a bullet.

Again, if you're saying that every gunfight in D&D begins with several exchanges of merely grazing fire before finally a serious injury occurs, and that that's a simulation of how the fantasy world works, well you're positing something that I find too silly to incorporate into my own RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

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

I don't understand what this has to do with my post, which was a reply to a suggestion that every RPG limits magic in some form or another. I pointed to some RPGs that don't limit it in any form, and to one that "limits" it purely by a stochastic exhaustion mechanic. If you get lucky, there's no limit.

 

[Oofta]

I said that people don't get beaten to death by blows to their limbs. They get beaten to death by blows to their body (torso). Or their head.'

Cool. Good thing that nobody is talking about a game where we repeatedly bludgeon people with a dull instrument on their legs. I still disagree of course - you can easily die from a badly broken limb, but that's a separate issue.

And of course being attacked by someone with a sword or spear probably isn't much like being beaten to death at all. Even a heavy blade like an axe will hurt someone in a different sort of way from being beaten to death.

In real life, not every defeat in hand-to-hand combat is a result of being too exhausted to continue fighting. If you're saying that all D&D combat has that character, that's already a significant departure from what I regard as plausible and genre appropriate.

I never said it did. It was one example of many. Before that last blow lands the target is so exhausted they can't effectively dodge/parry/absorb the hit and what would have been merely damaging before is now deadly.

For instance, REH's Conan regularly kills foes who are not to exhausted to continue fighting.

Yep. Which is why exhaustion is one example that I happened to pick from your list, not a comprehensive itemization.

We wouldn't normally say that someone whose skull was grazed by a bullet was shot in the head. As the post you quoted said, I was picking up on @hawkeyefan's example, which was not an example of a person being grazed by a bullet.

Many people survive being shot in the head. Some people report feeling a sting and headache only to find out later they were shot in the head. In any case, the example (a deadly shot to the head) is leading the conclusion. I mean, I could also say that a blow to the neck that severs the head is fatal so why isn't every nick that touches someone's neck deadly.

Again, if you're saying that every gunfight in D&D begins with several exchanges of merely grazing fire before finally a serious injury occurs, and that that's a simulation of how the fantasy world works, well you're positing something that I find too silly to incorporate into my own RPGing.

There was recently someone that was shot 21 times and survived. Determining ballistics of a bullet and how deadly it will be is incredibly complex. There are other stories of a single hit to the shoulder where the bullet bounced off the scapula and hit the heart. That's why all games simplify it. But I also don't think D&D tries to be realistic, it's a fantasy world simulating action movie logic.