Of Mooks, Plot Armor, and ttRPGs

[Micah Sweet]

As an addendum, and still recognizing that Simulationism is a pretty well established term in RPG discourse, might I suggest that Naturalism or Realism is closer to what some strains of Simulationism (particularly Purist for System) are about? There are areas where the literary use of those terms seems apropos, and others where it does not.

This is perhaps straying too far from the OP topic, though.

Edit: Added Realism! Such an oversight.

As soon as you call it "realism", the phrase, "magical elf-game" comes out, and someone claims your entire argument is irrelevant.

I really don't understand why this attack on the concept of simulation as a hamestyle is happening. What exactly did the bad simulationists ever do to deserve being told what they want is impossible? I don't recall anyone trying to argue that narrative concerns were a pipe dream and should be abandoned.

 

[The Shadow]

Illusionism is nearly always used pejoratively, to describe GM failures of simulation.

To be clear, I definitely did not mean it in this way! I was referring to how one wants, as I said above, a 'sufficient illusion' of the world to immerse oneself in. Maybe 'Imaginism' is better, despite being an ugly word, but the problem with that one is imagination is part of all roleplaying games whatsoever!

Likewise, describing it as 'Immersive' feels right, but immersion is certainly not limited to sim games or players.

I like this a lot. I would definitely be curious how you handled magic or rituals as per the sort that, for example, Elric of Melniboné would perform.

In that game, magic revolved around interacting with spirits in some way. We were very clear from day one that none of the spirits are nice. Some of them are more palatable than others, but all of them were at minimum alien and uncaring. The usual set in our local area were actually known as "the Demon Gods".

There were two forms of magic, Sorcery and Wizardry. Sorcery involved having a pact with a spirit. (It required a stunt.) You could use magic in that spirit's spheres of influence, of which there were generally three that were loosely connected. You spent an action activating your power (which caused you to light up like a Christmas tree to anyone with magical sight) on a given occasion. You described to the GM what you wanted to do, he set a target to reach, and you rolled Sorcery skill to reach it. Not making the roll meant Very Bad Things could happen. (A little further on, we experimented with one of those Very Bad Things being a Doom Point - a kind of Fate point the GM could use against you at the worst possible moment.)

The other kind of magic was Wizardry. This involved stealthily siphoning power from the spirit of your choice to produce an effect. It was considerably weaker than Sorcery - Wizardry skill could only be used to create advantages - but much broader. Also, spirits HATE wizards with a passion! It is impossible to be both a sorcerer and a wizard.

One of my favorite moments was when my character Shade, who had a (rather uniquely weird!) pact with a Nakhmirite (ie, very foreign to the area) Shadow Demon, but had just found out that Shaprenka, the Demon God of Secrets, was the traditional choice in his family, and that the magic ring he'd been carrying around was actually attuned to Shaprenka.

He's mulling over switching his pact to Shaprenka, and the shadow demon is trying to talk him out of it.

Shade, dubiously: "I dunno. I think I'll talk it over with Iskander, he's studied this stuff." (Iskander, another PC and a scholar, is a wizard.)

Demon, outraged: "You would seek counsel from a thief?!"

Shade: "Well, I can't get too high-minded on the subject, I'm a thief myself!"

Demon: "YOU ARE NOT!! Oh... You mean of material things. Your priorities are all wrong, mortal!"

Oh, finally, wizards and sorcerers were capable of mental combat (using Will), but only against other wizards and sorcerers (and spirits). (Basically, learning magic 'opens your mind up' to attack.) The Sorcery stunt gives a +1 to such combat, so sorcerers have a distinct advantage against wizards. Mental combat was not a use of magic per se, so you didn't have to activate your power to do it.

Our current game, the Renaissance Italy one I mentioned earlier, also has a strong S&S vibe, but magic works quite differently. Once again, there are two kinds, Ritual Magic and Sorcery.

Ritual magic is just what it says on the tin. It uses bog-standard Lore skill to produce effects, though you need a stunt to lead a ritual. (Anyone with Lore can participate in a ritual, provided they have an aspect that supports that in some way. Also, the stunt gives a +1 bonus to a particular type of ritual, of which there are six.) There are fixed numbers of participants that give bonuses, ie 3 people gives +2, 7 gives +4, 13 gives +6. The consequences of failure depend on what exactly you're trying to do.

One kind of ritual is Summoning. Pretty much the only thing that can be summoned is demons, so it's incredibly dangerous. But one thing you can bargain with demons for is magical power for you and perhaps even your descendants, which is where sorcery comes from.

(The other kinds are Blessings, Curses, Healing, Warding, and Divination. Blessings and Curses take up a consequence slot. ie, if you have a +4 Blessing, that ties up your Moderate consequence, but you get a +4 to anything relevant to the exact blessing you have. It "heal" at the same rate as an ordinary consequence, and this can't really be sped up.)

There are seven sorcery bloodlines known to exist in the local area, based on the Seven Deadly Sins. They were bargained for by seven Roman-equivalent Senators in a Great Ritual over a thousand years ago. Each has one area it can do things in: For example, teleportation. Or predicting the future. Or producing fire. And so on. There is a distinction between being "Halfblood" or "Fullblood" in a particular line. They're both a stunt, but Fullblood also needs an aspect related to the sin. Fullbloods have significantly more ability, but have to roll higher on Sorcery to produce effects (3 as opposed to 1). Halfbloods aren't allowed to buy Sorcery higher than +2.

My character Ludovico is different, though. About three hundred years ago, three master spies secretly enacted a ritual of their own for power. In their case, though, it doesn't descend by bloodline but by apprenticeship. They basically have a built-in Hat of Disguise - they can alter their features at will. (Master "Faces" can go a little closer to full shapeshifting - they can do things like grow gills to breathe underwater, convincingly take on the shape of the opposite sex, and so on.)

Ludovico and Chloe are Faces, apprentices of different masters, which is why they address each other (not very sincerely) as 'cousin'. Two interesting twists: Faces can spot each other pretty easily. And the one face they can't take on is their real one. (This was Ludovico's original Trouble - he was obsessed with finding out what he really looked like, as he'd become a Face at a very young age and couldn't remember. I've gone in some detail in the 'Five Word Summary' commentary thread about what happened when he found out!)

I had a good game going for Venture City. In hindsight, however, Masks would have been a more appropriate game for the tone and sub-genre we were going for. I do think that Cortex would work well, but I have an easier time grokking superhero powers in Fate than I am with SFX in Cortex. I have heard good things about Sentinel Comics as well.

I really, really want to try Masks at some point! But my current group isn't hugely interested, and in any case we're very involved in our Fate game at the moment.

 

[niklinna]

As soon as you call it "realism", the phrase, "magical elf-game" comes out, and someone claims your entire argument is irrelevant.

I have definitely seen that happen. But I was referring to the literary movement, in this particular context (not that context matters much to Those People).

I really don't understand why this attack on the concept of simulation as a hamestyle is happening. What exactly did the bad simulationists ever do to deserve being told what they want is impossible? I don't recall anyone trying to argue that narrative concerns were a pipe dream and should be abandoned.

I hope my posts aren't coming across as an attack on the concept of simulation!

 

[The Shadow]

I hope my posts aren't coming across as an attack on the concept of simulation!

Ditto! I've got nothing against it at all! Heck, I spent two decades happily Sim!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have definitely seen that happen. But I was referring to the literary movement, in this particular context (not that context matters much to Those People).


I hope my posts aren't coming across as an attack on the concept of simulation!

They aren't. You're not one of the posters I was referencing.

 

[The Shadow]

In that game, magic revolved around interacting with spirits in some way.

I forgot to mention that in that game, Sorcery carried the death penalty! That's a pretty important factor. (In the Italian one, it's feared but not illegal.)

300 years before the campaign, the Church of the Logos became the official religion of the local continental Empire - a religion based on Reason, Enlightenment, and Virtue. It's a mostly positive cultural force, but 1) there is absolutely no supernatural power behind it whatever, and 2) they despise sorcery and spirits with a passion. (Not without reason. Some of the spirits have cults that are downright nasty.)

There's a branch of Logite priests called 'Greycloaks' who learn wizardry to sniff out and take down sorcerers - and boy, are they annoying! Though one of their local leaders actually became something of a friend to Shade - not realizing he was a sorcerer, of course. Good guy - very brave, capable, and decent. Just... single-minded on the topic of magic. (Thankfully, the power of the Demon God of Secrets lends itself rather well to hiding one's magic from detection.)

During the campaign, we learned an explosive secret: That the Church of the Logos had been secretly started by the serpentfolk (the unknown ancient menace I mentioned in another post) to suppress sorcery in the Empire and thus weaken it for future conquest. (Though I must say, they probably didn't intend the Greycloaks, who wouldn't have been easy for even them to deal with.)

Shade's patron Shaprenka tried to manipulate him into releasing that secret to the world, which, while it probably would have eventually ended with sorcery in better odor in the area, also would have caused tremendous upheaval and perhaps even civil war. Thankfully, he resisted the temptation and we used the information on the down-low to help force the Empire to oppose the serpentfolk behind the scenes.

 

[pemerton]

If you go back to early sources, you see pretty quickly that some folks advocating Simulationism weren't trying to model the whole world, but were trying to have play unfold without the influence of narrative/dramatic tropes or demands

Yes. As I've posted upthread, purist-for-system simulationist RPGing is not about simulating a world. It's about a particular approach to resolution:

What distinguishes Rolemaster from Burning Wheel is nothing to do with the "reality" of the setting. Certainly not its depth.

What distinguishes them is the principles that govern how what happens next is decided.

Rolemaster does not really purport to simulate a world.

<snip>

a system like RM or RQ - and also at least some approaches to Classic Traveller - prioritises system, a mechanical process of resolution which itself establishes colour and "theme" in the sense of focusing on those issues of scale, kinetics etc that are mentioned. The goal isn't to model a world: it's to make certain elements of the fiction salient, and to then have a mechanical resolution process that can take those as inputs and generate appropriate outputs. If the system breaks down when the parameters are varied even within reasonable limits, or if it needs intervention from a human operator to ensure that results "make sense", then the game is not doing what it is mean to do.

 

[pemerton]

As an addendum, and still recognizing that Simulationism is a pretty well established term in RPG discourse, might I suggest that Naturalism or Realism is closer to what some strains of Simulationism (particularly Purist for System) are about? There are areas where the literary use of those terms seems apropos, and others where it does not.

This on the other hand I don't agree with. Rolemaster is not more aimed at realism or naturalism than is Burning Wheel. What makes it simulationist, whereas BW is not, is the process of resolution and the principles that govern that. As per your post I replied to just upthread.

 

[pemerton]

Yes, again, even though Edwards pointedly distinguished Purist for System and High Concept Simulationism, he still put them both under Simulationism, and that really rubs some people the wrong way. They are both simulating things, but they are simulating very different things!

There is no mystery as to Edwards's choice of nomenclature: he uses simulationism to refer to RPGing that prioritises exploration over metagame goals. And both purist-for-system and high concept simulationism do this.

The paradigms of the first are RQ, RM, C&S, or a certain approach to Classic Traveller. Exploration is focused on the systems, and what it tells us about characters and/or setting.

The paradigms of the second are CoC, much AD&D 2nd ed, much original WoD, etc. Exploration is focused on the characters, situations and GM story/metaplot.

 

[pemerton]

I really don't understand why this attack on the concept of simulation as a hamestyle is happening. What exactly did the bad simulationists ever do to deserve being told what they want is impossible?

No one is attacking simulationism as a playstyle.

A particular thing - simulating a world - has been said to be impossible. And @Thomas Shey has more or less agreed with this, accepting that many parts of the world (eg who is at the bottom of the cliff) just have to be made up, and also agreeing that most of the world will just be ignored in RPGing.

(Also, and contra @Thomas Shey, Classic Traveller doesn't try and simulate economics. It has a simple system for determining the purchase and resale prices of trade goods, but no attempt is made to model economic phenomena such as supply, demand, inflation, employment, demographic changes, migration, etc - all of which are in principle relevant to a game of interstellar trade.)