D&D General On simulating things: what, why, and how?

[Micah Sweet]

Has it though? Isn’t it a premise of OSR play that you really don’t want to go toe-to-toe in a fair fight? I would expect a party that tries to fight a dragon head-on in B/X to get obliterated. What seems to have happened is D&D shifted away from swords and sorcery to high and epic fantasy. But if you still run those old games or run new ones in that style, some of the old “simulation” (I prefer verisimilitude) can be preserved.

Of course, many players don’t want that, and hence the shift in play, but that’s a separate issue.

Another good point. OSR games do tend toward battle avoidance and dirty tricks, and to me that's a good thing. My favorite game is an OSR creation.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't see how you can make this claim while building a world that includes dragons. The impact of a realistically simulated dragon (massive, supernaturally agile, nearly invulnerable, insanely powerful, flies, has magic on top of this) on a world would be staggering. That silly Christian Bale movie about dragons (Reign of Fire, I think) is a credible attempt to portray what D&D-alike dragons would do to a world. Is this what you're doing?

Nah. Like it has been mentioned, humans have been taking down megafauna since the stone age. Sure, dragons are somewhat more dangerous than mammoths, but we are also talking about late medieval/renaissance tech level backed with magic.

I agree with your point about D&D being inconsistent with how and when it chooses to apply simulation, but I don't think this "but dragons!" angle is very compelling.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Sure, but you limited your argument to hitpoints, and totally ignored everything else.

I'm at work. I can only do so much on a break.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not attacking your argument, I'm making an observation. Being a 4e fan doesn't make your claim better or worse, but liking 4e and pushing for gamism (and especially fighting the Wizard/Fighter Wars) as the primary consideration do often seem to go together.

No one's made this argument in this thread. Except you, seemingly in an attempt to discredit the arguments actually being made. Hence why I noted it as an interesting tack.

I have no issues with sim. I happen to think games like Stonetop, a PbtA Dungeon World hack, do a more consistent job of it than D&D does because D&D has those hard and strange toggles. Pointing out those toggles in how D&D does the sim stuff and what it means isn't an argument for gamism -- it's just pointing out how it works and what has to be reconciled.

I'm just a fan of simulation when I can, fake simulation when I can't, and gamist conceits when I must. That's where I stand. I don't agree with your and other's stance, but you're certainly entitled to it. In fact, things have been looking more your way for at least a few years now.

You seem to be acknowledging my stance -- there's hard toggles that have to be navigated. It can't all be 'normal human' sim time because the game doesn't allow for that. I'm not sure what, past that, you think I'm advocating as a stance. I'm leaning into this thread's definition of simulation as being "like the real world" as a goal. I disagree that's a useful definition of simulation, because you can absolutely simulate genre which doesn't look like the real world. This is when 'action movie' sim comes in. But, I'm trying to stick to the thread premise.

And a couple people have claimed simulation isn't possible in a fantasy game.

Yeah, if you're going with the thread premise definition of simulation, you literally cannot do this because you're just making stuff up that doesn't exist in the real world at all. You can't use the thread definition of simulation as 'like the real world' for things that don't and can't exist/happen in the real world. That's just making stuff up. And there isn't a 'spectrum' here, it's a toggle -- you're making it up or trying to model the real world. It's not both for the same thing (although you could be both modeling the real world for this aspect and, at the same time, making stuff up for this other aspect). Really, the point here is to be honest about the process of play -- what is it we're doing. It's not saying that this or that is bad, or wrong, or unnecessary, just that it is. Once you move away from simulation only ever being modelling the real world, then simulation works just fine in fantasy because what you're simulating is genre tropes and genre logic. You're creating a coherent and consistent set of cause and effect, just one not at all based on the real world. That's the point being made.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Nah. Like it has been mentioned, humans have been taking down megafauna since the stone age. Sure, dragons are somewhat more dangerous than mammoths, but we are also talking about late medieval/renaissance tech level backed with magic.

I agree with your point about D&D being inconsistent with how and when it chooses to apply simulation, but I don't think this "but dragons!" angle is very compelling.

Okay, let's unpack this canard. Humans have group hunted mastodons by setting up and driving herds into kill boxes, where the mastodon could be immobilized, and then a dozen or a dozens of men threw spears at it from safe distances until it succumbed. And it wasn't always successful (but not having enough numbers makes it very tricky and it's hard to immobilize an angry mastodon). They did not fight it toe-to-toe, and most certainly not small group or mano-e-mastodon. This is a fairly specious argument to make, one that tries to un-realistically model how things actually did happen in the real world to justify un-realistic modeling of make believe stuff.

 

[Manbearcat]

Has it though? Isn’t it a premise of OSR play that you really don’t want to go toe-to-toe in a fair fight? I would expect a party that tries to fight a dragon head-on in B/X to get obliterated. What seems to have happened is D&D shifted away from swords and sorcery to high and epic fantasy. But if you still run those old games or run new ones in that style, some of the old “simulation” (I prefer verisimilitude) can be preserved.

Of course, many players don’t want that, and hence the shift in play, but that’s a separate issue.

Yup. Exactly.

But its unclear to me what is happening in these conversation exchanges.

1) D&D Fighter closes to melee with the dragon (a prerequisite to deploy their atttacks).

2) D&D Fighter deploys their attack(s).

3) D&D Dragon deploys their melee suite of attacks onto D&D Fighter.

4) D&D Fighter somehow survives.

5) Rinse and repeat until D&D Fighter somehow slays the D&D dragon.


I'm not "cancelling anyone's opinion" and I'm not calling people's play badwrongfun (but I sure as hell have had that called against me aplenty in the past!). What I'm curious about is (and I would love if you would answer this @Micah Sweet ), given the above 1-5 and the bolded/italicized in particular, what is happening in the shared imagined space to make this true if not D&D Epic Fighter's athletic profile reveals supernatural explosivity (omnidirectional speed, strength, agility), endurance, coordination, proprioception, and processing speed/efficiency?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This line of reasoning that amounts to "you can't have sim because dragons/skeletons/whatever" is not only insipid, it is entirely beside the point. Normal people can come into contact with the abnormal and supernormal in a world in which those things exist and remain normal.

Now, if you want to argue that 5E as written can't do sim because dragons, I'd disagree only insofar as it's not the dragons that are the problem. but that is a different discussion. This discussion is about when, how and why to do sim.

No, it IS THE POINT, because for 'simulation' to mean something AT ALL, there has to be something to be simulating, some reality that we can point to that says "this thing, this simulation, has greater or lesser similarity to that actual thing." It is UTTERLY NONSENSICAL to talk about simulating something in fantasy like that!

Instead, what we need to talk about is genre emulation! What things make up the necessary and expected elements of the genre we are playing in. What can we alter? What assumptions are key? How do we bring those things into the game and what form do they take? Are they rules of situational adjudication, or do they restrict the allowed action declarations that players can make, or maybe they have some other manifestation (metacurrency, carrots and sticks of various sorts, etc.).

Talking about 'simulating dragons' just doesn't fly! (haha). Talking about making a game in which a dragon has attributes that we would associate with Smaug, that we can do! Anything else just leads down a road of madness, as @Manbearcat so ably pointed out. You end up with magic that isn't magical, and other absurd logically nonsensical things, and you still haven't got a simulation, no matter how hard you try, because it is just not logically possible.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Okay, let's unpack this canard. Humans have group hunted mastodons by setting up and driving herds into kill boxes, where the mastodon could be immobilized, and then a dozen or a dozens of men threw spears at it from safe distances until it succumbed. And it wasn't always successful (but not having enough numbers makes it very tricky and it's hard to immobilize an angry mastodon). They did not fight it toe-to-toe, and most certainly not small group or mano-e-mastodon. This is a fairly specious argument to make, one that tries to un-realistically model how things actually did happen in the real world to justify un-realistic modeling of make believe stuff.

You were one who though that flying, fire-breathing T-Rexes bringing down a modern society armed with missiles, tanks and supersonic aircraft was somehow more realistic. To me that seems way more absurd outcome than that a crack team of super-skilled renaissance badasses having a fighting chance against that giant lizard.

Not that I'd personally assume that any high level D&D characters are "normal people."

 

[Ovinomancer]

Again, this is so aggressive.

It's not at all aggressive. This is effectively trying to impute a negative mental state on me so that my points are more easily dismissed because I'm posting in a negative mental state.

I'm merely pointing out that there are serious discontinuities.

Obviously I want the world to resemble the real one excepting those areas where it explicitly doesn't. I've managed to make it work for me more or less for the last 25 years or so. Apparently that's too much to ask, even of my own game.

Of course not. I'm not the game police. This victimhood game doesn't play. I'm not telling you how to play, or what to do. We're talking about how games work here, and how we do the game things, and that's not at all telling you how you play at home. You're presenting an argument that it's perfectly doable to model the real world in the game. I'm pointing out where that actually doesn't happen. You're dismissing those as irrelevant because you do some modelling in other places and that's good enough. But, at the same time you're explicitly agreeing with what I'm saying, you're trying to say that I'm incorrect! It's a bit weird. Like, you completely acknowledge that you have these discontinuities but then tell me I'm being hostile for pointing out that they exist!

Talk about badwrongfun. I don't recall any argument of mine here fighting this hard to cancel someone's point of view.

As, the victimhood game comes full circle! You can completely dismiss my statements as relevant by saying I'm a bad person doing a bad thing, despite me not actually doing any such thing! I haven't told you once you can't model some things as real world and others as not, or said you shouldn't strive for it. I've merely pointed out that D&D requires hard discontinuities at specific places. You seem to fully agree with this, but then accuse me of being a bad person for pointing it out. So very odd.

The best you might have here is your discussion of worldbuilding being where you value simulation, which, again, you seem to agree with my points made that there's still discontinuities there, so this doesn't even get to your claimed victimhood.

No, if I wanted to actually point out a problem, it would be entirely along the lines of my discussion with @Mannahnin -- that it needs to be clear where you're ruling on your simulation and where you're ruling on your near-sim, and where you're ruling on the game rules. If this isn't clear, then you will have problems. If you make it clear, you won't. Because everyone will be on the same page. That's the actual closest I've gotten to badwrongfunning anyone's game. And I do think it's badwrongfun to gotcha players by switching assumptions of what's controlling a ruling. Totally guilty of this.

 

[Mannahnin]

Has it though? Isn’t it a premise of OSR play that you really don’t want to go toe-to-toe in a fair fight? I would expect a party that tries to fight a dragon head-on in B/X to get obliterated. What seems to have happened is D&D shifted away from swords and sorcery to high and epic fantasy. But if you still run those old games or run new ones in that style, some of the old “simulation” (I prefer verisimilitude) can be preserved.

Yeah, fighting a dragon in B/X tends to come down to who gets the first strike, unless you're really high level and/or have lots of magical protections to help against its breath weapon. Heck, the first few editions specifically randomize its use of the breath weapon, I think in part to make them less deadly.