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

[Thomas Shey]

But don't all fictional mechanisms start with some goal of "how can I make this fit"? People don't just say "magic works this way for my novel" for abstract reasons. It's "magic works this way because it works better for my plot and world building." Star Trek had teleporters because it was cheaper, not because there was some over-arching logic.

There's a big difference between "It works better for my world building" (which is almost the definition of simulation) and "It works better in play" however. The latter is pretty much the textbook for a gamist design decision, which is why I claim that's how D&D magic started out. Same with almost all its mechanical decisions.

 

[Oofta]

There's a big difference between "It works better for my world building" (which is almost the definition of simulation) and "It works better in play" however. The latter is pretty much the textbook for a gamist design decision, which is why I claim that's how D&D magic started out. Same with almost all its mechanical decisions.

Poh-tae-toe poh-tah-toe. Both are authors making up something that suits their goal.

 

[FrogReaver]

That is genre emulation, a specific and natrativist concept. The kind of simulation most are discussing here is reality simulation (by certain standards of reality relative to the setting).

What’s the difference in emulating a genre vs simulating a genre?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Poh-tae-toe poh-tah-toe. Both are authors making up something that suits their goal.

If you're just going to play the "there's no difference" card anything anyone tries to make distinctions in this thread, I'm just going to stop responding to you; its pointless.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What’s the difference in emulating a genre vs simulating a genre?

It depends on the genre. There are genres that are simply clusters of setting and interest elements that otherwise don't say anything super distinct. Then there are genres that have strong conventions; and many of those conventions (and this is important) are not acknowledged by people in the setting. You can't really "simulate" those because they're essentially metaworld structures; they don't have any existence that people in the setting can acknowledge without grossly altering the setting. Superhero settings are full of these, but they aren't the only one.

(A really simple one for the latter you see quite a lot of the history of comics is that an energy blast that blows a hole through a concrete wall will only KO or at worst injure an opponent who is avowedly not of superhuman toughness. How much attention this is paid to varies, but its common enough that people generally just accept it as part of the gig. Its presence in a game isn't really simulating anything about the setting; its a rule that exists above the setting because no one within it will ever acknowledge it barring fourth-wall breaking and the like.)

 

[Micah Sweet]

What’s the difference in emulating a genre vs simulating a genre?

Nothing. But there is a big difference between emulating a genre vs. emulating a world.

 

[FrogReaver]

It depends on the genre. There are genres that are simply clusters of setting and interest elements that otherwise don't say anything super distinct. Then there are genres that have strong conventions; and many of those conventions (and this is important) are not acknowledged by people in the setting. You can't really "simulate" those because they're essentially metaworld structures; they don't have any existence that people in the setting can acknowledge without grossly altering the setting. Superhero settings are full of these, but they aren't the only one.

(A really simple one for the latter you see quite a lot of the history of comics is that an energy blast that blows a hole through a concrete wall will only KO or at worst injure an opponent who is avowedly not of superhuman toughness. How much attention this is paid to varies, but its common enough that people generally just accept it as part of the gig. Its presence in a game isn't really simulating anything about the setting; its a rule that exists above the setting because no one within it will ever acknowledge it barring fourth-wall breaking and the like.)

So to simulate a comic genre wouldn’t we just have energy beams blow through concrete but not through people? I don’t understand why you say that doesn’t constitute a simulation?

 

[FrogReaver]

Nothing. But there is a big difference between emulating a genre vs. emulating a world.

What about simulating a genre vs simulating a world?

 

[Micah Sweet]

What about simulating a genre vs simulating a world?

I am using emulation and simulation as synonyms here. Sorry if that's confusing.

 

[Oofta]

If you're just going to play the "there's no difference" card anything anyone tries to make distinctions in this thread, I'm just going to stop responding to you; its pointless.

You're trying to make a narrow focused discrimination based on motivation and thought process for the origin of fiction. I don't see the point, it's still total fiction. In addition D&D's magic is called Vancian magic because Jack Vance came up with the concept first. Gygax and Arneson may or may not have picked it because it also served their purposes, but they did not invent the idea.

Most authors up to that time didn't really explain all that much how magic work or what limitations there were. Magic was generally dangerous and only used by the bad guys who had virtually unlimited power or by novices who endangered others and themselves with their mistakes. Like many things in any game, it was a combination of borrowing from preexisting work and adjusting it to suit the needs at hand. Very few fictional tropes are created completely from scratch, whether for a novel or a game.

In a more general sense, because D&D grew out of war games magic was viewed as ammunition. So you could say that memorizing spells was simply modeled after the closest real world analogy making it more "reality based" than some other systems. I personally prefer more of a mana based, finite resource capability, but that's kind of where we've gotten with 5E. Also not particularly pertinent.

I think D&D does a lot of simulation of the real world. Everything from armor to weapons to exhaustion to how long you last in a fight to how far you can jump are all trying to simulate the real world. Whether you believe they're good or accurate simulations is a different issue. But making up new things for a work of fiction for things that do not exist? That's just kind of how it works. Even if there was some accepted fiction established at the time other than Vance that detailed how magic worked for ordinary humans (Gandalf for example isn't human) they had to invent all sorts of things. Is D&D less of a simulation because we have beholders?