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

[Thomas Shey]

I ran nearly two decades of Rolemaster without using a grid or combat maps - sketches or notes were sufficient to track position.

To repeat, again, that's fine if you have a good spatial memory and/or the sketch maps has some indication of scale. Frankly, I find sketch maps more trouble than just using a VTT map with a grid.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I ran D&D and AD&D for even longer using ToM, sketches, and notes as well before adopting a grid/miniature system.

D&D had a very low positioning system; you had to have an idea who was near each other for area effects, you had to know if you could close, and you had to know if you were in archery range. Other than that it did not really care about position at all.

And as I posted previously even in 5E I mostly use ToM even now, but that doesn't change the fact that "ToM relies on trusting the DM's 'vision' of the scene. Sketches can give you some of the above, but not all of it."

It doesn't only depend on that, but on your ability to internalize the description. Even if I had a GM who was good at that, he'd probably get awfully tired of me constantly asking for a refresher on it. And this gets worse the more important positioning is in the combat system.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For me, table agreement isn't really sufficient because even with that agreement people's inner eyes see different things or, from earlier in the thread, their Invisible Rulebooks are different. So mechanics about, say, success and survival in tromping through the wilderness to get to the dungeon, help keep everyone on the same page.

Now, just to be clear, exactly what those rules are and how "realistic" they are is something that should be determined by all that agreed upon fiction you talked about.

Sure, but we can deal with that via the conveying of the genre, tone, and conventions of the setting, can't we? I mean, there WILL be some mechanics, because we undoubtedly want to be able to describe in some way that has 'teeth' the idea that X-ray can do such-and-such, Yast can do something-cool, and Zapper can annihilate ever biting insect in 4km. So, I agree that this stuff doesn't just happen by accident, definitely not. I mean, I've constructed quite a few scenarios, mini-campaigns, and etc. where the rules didn't try to lay all of this out entirely for you. Yet it wasn't an issue.

Like, for example I used PACE once to make a sort of fantastical version of a campaign where the PCs enacted basically 'Chansons de Geste'. The system is PACE, which has absolutely no relevant mechanics (few mechanics whatsoever actually). All the relevant stuff is established via the milieu and a bit of initial agreement that this was the desired genre. It worked fine (at least in that sense). Nobody was ever terribly surprised by how anything worked, the stuff the characters did was thematic and appropriate, for the most part, etc. There were times when we were a bit in doubt, as in what exactly is the capability of an Enchantress, and can the knight hope to best the Giant in combat, or can he at least run away fast enough to escape! I don't recall exactly how we resolved those sorts of questions now, but I am quite sure the outcomes were interesting and seemed to be in keeping with what you would expect from that sort of play (I think someone blinded the giant and then everyone ran, but eventually it transpired that it had kidnapped the child because of some grudge or other that the PCs ended up resolving).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agreed.

Again, this isn’t Edwards’ Simulationism nor immersionists’ Sim priorities sufficient to make them feel like their play experience isn’t individually jarring. I’m trying to interact with the lead post in my last two posts (as best as I’m able…it’s a little difficult to tease out the boundaries so I wrote my own).

Following from my premise in that post, the “D&D” (a prerequisite of the post) I’ve run of late that meets those parameters I set out (primarily a game engine language that achieves playability through elegance, rigor, robustness and being comprehensible) is Torchbearer and Stonetop. Blades in the Dark would also fit all of those parameters, though it’s clearly not D&D.

TB2 is definitely pretty explicit in terms of what it is trying to do and how it does it. The genre and tone is conveyed in a very unequivocal fashion! Like you could run over the players with a dumptruck kind of fashion! While there isn't a TON of actual sim as a priority in it, the relation between your inventory and the rest of the fiction (for example) is pretty obvious and uncomplicated. OTOH the more Narrativist thrust of the game employs elements that have no real relationship to fiction (fate and persona) but definitely do tie into how things evolve, fictionally. Since they are entirely abstract, there's not really anything like the "Oh, its a daily power" sort of thing going on that some complain about with A/E/D/U 4e. (Although, honestly, if your 4e play is also Narrativist in fashion you shouldn't have a problem with that either).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In this particular case - maybe flipping a car is his maximum strength output - that is, his max-out power lift. It isn't something he can sustain for a dozen or more reps. He won't be able to flip a car again until he has a chance to rest and recover.

Th trick it to make it clear that this isn't a combat-only feat of strength, which is a thing I've seen some dms do.

Right, and this was the other way that people chose to color things in 4e sometimes, that use rates were simply a way of portraying waning internal character resources. I still prefer to just think of that sort of thing as a narrative regulator myself though. Cap can flip a car once a day because that's what Cap does, he SELDOM flips cars or brutally butchers human opponents with sheer physical strength. He can, he just seldom does it and the player is privileged to determine when that 'seldom' comes up!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Perhaps, though I'm not quite sure what even is being represented here. If it is some sort of magic/scifi tech, then it doesn't necessary need to follow how I would imagine physical extortion working. But ignoring that and assuming we are modelling some sort of physical feats, yes, I find the shared pool less jarring. And sure, if the said pool is so stingy that it effectively is just one use anyway, it doesn't much matter, but I was thinking more of "encounter power" level of things.

Like if you have a character with powers:
1) Hit one foe really hard
2) Hit one foe, then run to another foe and hit them too.
3) Toss a foe at another foe
4) Hit all nearby foes

If these all are independent it is weird. If I am too tired to to do #1 (because I already did it once) why am I not too tired to do #3? I would much prefer a model where you have four power uses (between rests or whatever) and you can use them on these powers any way you want.

And beyond verisimilitude, I think it is just better design too, and easier to balance. If the characters are balanced to use four powers (at that level,) look what happens when our guy faces one tough foe instead of a group of foes. In "one of each" model 3/4 of their power budget is unusable!
In the pool model they can just use power #1 four times on that big monster, which sure, is a bit boring, but definitely way less a "feels bad" situation.

As I've said though, why does it have to be explained IN THE FICTION, it is not a constraint of the character, it is a constraint on the PLAYER. I have a certain number of 'plot coupons' which are my 4e character powers. Some are just 'stock in trade' and don't need to be regulated (Twin Strike). Some are more bad-ass moves and generally the situation only arises where I try to pull them off once per fight (Precise Assault), and then there's the really bad assed one that I am able to expend once a day (Split the Tree). That's just the 'rules of the game', it isn't any sort of anything that is inherent to the character. Technically he could Split the Tree 42 times a day under perfect ideal circumstances, they just never come up (and there are, to be fair, ways to get recharges on stuff too, though they are pretty hard to get, or else require a rare consumable, etc. for obvious reasons). The point being, lots of ink was spilled on this for ages and it really never made sense.

 

[Hussar]

Specific details in simulation are glossed over all the time because the only thing that matters is the resulting impact on the systems being simulated.

Not really. We don't generally do simulations simply to get a final answer. Typically, a simulation has to tell you how that result was achieved to be of any use.

To use a wind tunnel example, it doesn't really matter that that air molecule finishes at the other end of the wind tunnel. The path that wind stream took through the tunnel and how it interacted with the object placed in the wind tunnel, is the point of the simulation. A closed box isn't a simulation, it's a Schrodinger's Cat Box.

But, this explains a lot about why you insist that you want simulation. You simply are using a definitioni of simulation that no one else is actually using. Want you actually want is a system that gives you results. How it achieves those results doesn't matter. That's not a simulation, but, it's a perfectly valid system.

 

[Manbearcat]

So I was recalling the Collosal-sized Ancient Red Wyrm vs lone warrior on the ramparts that was the staple photo for D&D Beyond during the playtest.

And so I figured I’d do a little more looking into dimensions. My brain said DC9 aircraft from memory. However, it’s actually larger. More like a Boeing 727-100 series. The weight isn't even close however (the weight of the Ancient Dragon - at bottom - is in line with a max takeoff weight for a 727-100 series).

Wingspan: 150 ft (46m)
Length (head to tail): 120 ft (37m)
Height (ground to top of shoulder): 40 ft (12 m)
Weight: 1.28 million lbs (640 tons).

In 5e, that Ancient Red Wyrm appears to be the upper limit for dragons. HOWEVER, beyond the picture above, here is the picture for the scale of the FR Ancient Wyrm Klauth vs the stock 5e MM Scale. I don't even know what the hell that scaling would be to be honest. That is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more massive than the 5e Gargantuan Ancient Dragon. But that picture above looks a lot closer to Klauth's scaled dimensions below.

So the smallest Ancient Reds (Dragons, not Wyrms, and Gargantuan, not Colossal) in 5e appear to be something like:

Wingspan: 100 ft (31 m)
Length (head to the tail): 88 ft (27 m)
Height (ground to top of shoulder): 18 ft (6 m)
Weight: 165000 lbs (83 tons).

---

TLDR - Ancient Reds are big. Real big. And some just keep embiggenating beyond that.

EDIT - Are some of you guys thinking that the entire Ancient Red is supposed to fit in the battlegrid's (completely abstracted) squares rather than just the scapula to the sacrum (if even that!)?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The problem here is quite often the table isn't in agreement to how these kinds of things work. That's the whole point in mechanics, to give everyone a common ground of how they'll expect things to work in a given case. That doesn't technically need to have any resemblance to reality, but unless there's an active reason to do otherwise, why not?

I keep hearing this, but I'm not sure I believe it actually happens much. I mean, OK, if you get together 5 random people with limited or no RPG experience, kids, whatever. But really, several people who are at all knowledgeable and have played some? I think they can easily settle on a concept. Things that they may not agree on, those are unlikely to be magically settled by some sim mechanics.

 

[Hussar]

To be completely fair, this is something that D&D has really gotten weird about. 1e dragons were a LOT smaller. More the St. George type, so, it was a bit more plausible that dude with a pointy metal stick could conceivably kill it. But, yeah, when your dragons are kaiju sized, the notion that I can kill Godzilla with a sword is just so laughable. And it gets even weirder in that a large group of dudes with bows and arrows can kill that dragon.