Of Mooks, Plot Armor, and ttRPGs

[pemerton]

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

I spent two decades happily GMing RM. Our play drifted back-and-forth between purist for system simulationism, and vanilla narrativism with a focus on character and situation.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

This ignores my argument that not all that is required to simulate a world.

(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.)

The only part of that that is economics relevant to the PC is supply and demand, and you could emulate that easily enough if you found it useful (and I'm about 75% sure that one or the other Traveler edition did).

 

[pemerton]

The only part of that that is economics relevant to the PC is supply and demand, and you could emulate that easily enough if you found it useful (and I'm about 75% sure that one or the other Traveler edition did).

Given that the hundreds of thousands of economists in our real world struggle to do this for one planet, I'm not sure what you mean when you say this could be "easily enough" emulated in the context of Traveller.

Of course one can right a set of rules that take certain inputs and generate certain outputs, and some of those can be labelled "supply" and "demand", but what is it actually simulating? All it is a process that replaces participant decision-making.

EDIT: I mean, interest rates in Traveller (which sit just above 5%, as can be calculated from the starship mortgage rules and the Travellers' Aid Society membership fee) never change. What is that a simulation of?

It creates a rule, which allows certain other matters to be calculated without the need for participant decision-making. But it's not modelling anything. I could just as easily stipulate interest rates of 5% (or whatever) as part of the narration of a Business-specialty action in a session of Marvel Heroic RP, and as far as simulating anything is concerned there would be no difference from Traveller.

Of course the resolution processes of MHRP and Traveller are very different, but that difference - as I've been at some paints to point out - doesn't need (or benefit from) the concept of "simulation" to explain. Simulationism is just a label for a certain sort of RPGing process.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The concept goes back even further than that - I remember discussions (and arguments!) within our crew over reality-simulation vs gameplay concerns back in the early-to-mid-80s; the specific terms "simulationist" and "gamist" may have come later but the ideas behind them - and conflicts between them - go back a long way.

As with many (most?) of the terms which arose in the '70s and '80s pretty much all evidence of their early use has vanished. There might have been uses in BBSes and such back in the '80s of some terms, but VERY little of that era survives today. Technically USENET started in 1980, but relatively few people had access before the mid-90s. In any case there are a lot of commonly used terms today which I am pretty certain were in circulation back then, but for which no documentation exists even in the '90s. Obviously 'GDS' dates things back that far, but I do not think those terms were pulled out of thin air. OTOH I don't think they were so much applied to GAMES in the early days as to ELEMENTS of games. Certainly at the very least it was understood that there was a game, and that making it playable was in contrast to a degree with making it realistic. In fact to quote from the 1e DMG:

" Of the two approaches to
hobby games today, one is best defined as the realism-simulation school
and the other as the game school. AD&D is assuredly on adherent of the
latter school. It does not stress any realism (in the author’s opinion an
absurd effort at best considering the topic!). It does little to attempt to
simulate anything either."
--Page 9 AD&D DMG

So, I guess that kinda clinches it really, c1978 Gygax was using these terms in essentially their modern form. BTW, I have always loved Gary's short sentences.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

(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.)

Right, this is basically a version of what I call light process simulation, or 'emulation'. You model the FORM of the thing, that is in this case some pattern of buying and selling with the result being the possibility of 'profit' but the SUBSTANCE is not there to drive it.

Now, in the case of Traveller the system is 'closed', you can simply keep running it again and again, you buy, sell, buy, sell, etc. and can go on doing that. Thus it has a completeness of experience from the player side. Other sorts of these systems are more 'open', like the reaction system of 1e AD&D. Once you input all the factors and throw the dice, it just spits out a result, which you then have to go forward with in the fiction by other means. Neither is what I would really call a simulation, as they don't really deal in cause and effect. D&D Combat is more of a model in that it does attempt to explain things, to a degree (IE you were stronger, you did more damage, you had better armor, you didn't get hit so much). ALL of these things are, whatever else, very narrowly bounded to a specific domain.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Given that the hundreds of thousands of economists in our real world struggle to do this for one planet, I'm not sure what you mean when you say this could be "easily enough" emulated in the context of Traveller.

The key words there were "emulated". Because, again, for the level the PCs are operating which are usually one-ship personal trading vessels, most of the data that would matter at a higher level is, functionally, invisible. It might be a different story if the PCs were monitoring economic trends across their trade area and had the skills to analyze what those trends meant, but beyond "Currently pharmaceuticals are in surplus on Planet A and are in demand on Planet Z", neither of those is true. It might as well just be a table because the cause an effect are beyond their ability to perceive and/or utilize it.

This is the thing I keep arguing; certain depths of simulation are only relevant to the degree that a PC group can interact with it in some meaningful fashion. Past that random tables do a good a job of meaningful simulation as a far more detailed simulation would, because the latter would be functionally invisible.

Its why I say it makes an enormous difference what level the PCs are operating at. I just reject characterizing the parts of the setting PCs are able to interact with as a "tiny part". Its not. Its as big as any simulation anyone does, because they're always ignoring things that are irrelevant or abstracting them heavily.

Of course one can right a set of rules that take certain inputs and generate certain outputs, and some of those can be labelled "supply" and "demand", but what is it actually simulating? All it is a process that replaces participant decision-making.

Assuming participant decision making is liable to produce a more correct output. That's a big "if".

EDIT: I mean, interest rates in Traveller (which sit just above 5%, as can be calculated from the starship mortgage rules and the Travellers' Aid Society membership fee) never change. What is that a simulation of?

Averaging over time? Again, you could have a variation roll, but is it serving an actual purpose given the scope of play?

(Mind you, the way the economics of Trav is set up is deliberately broken to make trade by itself unfeasible without secondary income, but that part is very clearly a gamist artifact to make sure the trade game is part of a more broad style campaign rather than just a simple trade game).

It creates a rule, which allows certain other matters to be calculated without the need for participant decision-making. But it's not modelling anything. I could just as easily stipulate interest rates of 5% (or whatever) as part of the narration of a Business-specialty action in a session of Marvel Heroic RP, and as far as simulating anything is concerned there would be no difference from Traveller.

Of course the resolution processes of MHRP and Traveller are very different, but that difference - as I've been at some paints to point out - doesn't need (or benefit from) the concept of "simulation" to explain. Simulationism is just a label for a certain sort of RPGing process.

What can I tell you, man? I disagree with your premises (at least enough of them), so I disagree with your conclusion. And I haven't been focused heavily on simulationism for 35 years now.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Now, in the case of Traveller the system is 'closed', you can simply keep running it again and again, you buy, sell, buy, sell, etc. and can go on doing that.

Actually, as I noted, in most versions you really can't; you can't reliably keep up with the payments on your ship just trading. Its a good supplement to other things you do while trading, but trading by itself is almost impossible to make a go of, unless you find an open-ended triangle trade (and that's usually not easy to do).

 

[pemerton]

The key words there were "emulated". Because, again, for the level the PCs are operating which are usually one-ship personal trading vessels, most of the data that would matter at a higher level is, functionally, invisible. It might be a different story if the PCs were monitoring economic trends across their trade area and had the skills to analyze what those trends meant, but beyond "Currently pharmaceuticals are in surplus on Planet A and are in demand on Planet Z", neither of those is true. It might as well just be a table because the cause an effect are beyond their ability to perceive and/or utilize it.

This is the thing I keep arguing; certain depths of simulation are only relevant to the degree that a PC group can interact with it in some meaningful fashion. Past that random tables do a good a job of meaningful simulation as a far more detailed simulation would, because the latter would be functionally invisible.

But now it's not a simulation! It's not a model of anything. It's just a process that takes inputs and generates outputs - a closed process, to use @AbdulAlhzard's term.

Which is just what I posted way upthread.

(I mean, Torchbearer uses a lot of random tables to determine camp events, town events, tavern rumours, etc. That doesn't make it a simulation of anything - it just means that at certain points it is a mechanical process rather than participant decision that determines what happens next.)

I disagree with your premises (at least enough of them), so I disagree with your conclusion. And I haven't been focused heavily on simulationism for 35 years now.

I've done as much purist-for-system simulationist RPGing as anyone posting in these threads, overwhelmingly Rolemaster.

The difference between resolving a Climb check in RM, and resolving a Climb check in Burning Wheel, is marked. That difference is what reveals that one of them is a simulationist RPG and the other is not, even though the two PCs sheets look very similar (heaps of stats, heaps of derived stats, long skill lists with ranks, very similar equipment lists, etc).

But the difference consists in the process. Resolving a Climb check in RM is very close to a closed process. In BW it is not closed at all.

To try and add to this by saying, eg, that RM tries to simulate a world, just generates obfuscation and invites @AbdulAlhzared to reiterate his point that the model is woefully inadequate for anything but combat, and even when it comes to combat far from perfect - just as one example, the most recurrent in our RM play, the purely artificial split of activity into rounds with initiative at the top end can effect resolution (especially the interaction between (i) movement, and hence position and (ii) active defence, and hence liability to be harmed).

 

[pemerton]

As I understand it, for process X to be a simulation of process Y, there has to be some more-or-less given Y that X is then related to in some fashion (typically by some sort of structural and/or causal resemblance, I think). But in the case of RPGing, there is no Y that we can compare X to, once we get beyond very narrow bounds.

This is what I take to be @AbdulAlhazred's point, with which I am in agreement.

It doesn't mean that there is no difference between (say) RQ and D&D, or RM and Burning Wheel. I've repeatedly stated that the differences are obvious and fairly deep.

But the differences don't consist in RM and RQ being simulations of worlds, or even of significant parts of worlds. At best they set out to simulate some aspects of hand-to-hand combat and some aspects of athletic endeavour.

The difference consists in the action resolution processes, and also in some aspects of scene framing/content introduction that are connected to those processes. The action resolution processes aspire to be closed (in AbdulAlhazred's sense), hence requiring no decision-making from the participants once they are set in motion; and closely related to this, from the action resolution processes you can read off salient elements of the fiction on the way through. (This contrasts, obviously, with "fortune in the middle" resolution and also with "say 'yes' or roll the dice", "fail forward" and "let it ride".)

It only obscures these fundamental elements of these RPGs to describe them as in any literal sense "world simulations".

 

[loverdrive]

If main character death isn't a thing in the fiction, what makes the combat interesting?

I'm just gonna quote Baker here:

Suspense doesn't come from uncertain outcomes.

I have no doubt, not one shread of measly doubt, that Babe the pig is going to wow the sheepdog trial audience. Neither do you. But we're on the edge of our seats! What's up with that?

Suspense comes from putting off the inevitable.

What's up with that is, we know that Babe is going to win, but we don't know what it will cost.

Everybody with me still? If you're not, give it a try: watch a movie. Notice how the movie builds suspense: by putting complications between the protagonist and what we all know is coming. The protagonist has to buy victory, it's as straightforward as that. That's why the payoff at the end of the suspense is satisfying, after all, too: we're like ah, finally.

What about RPGs?

Yes, it can be suspenseful to not know whether your character will succeed or fail. I'm not going to dispute that. But what I absolutely do dispute is that that's the only or best way to get suspense in your gaming. In fact, and check this out, when GMs fudge die rolls in order to preserve or create suspense, it shows that suspense and uncertain outcomes are, in those circumstances, incompatible.

So here's a better way to get suspense in gaming: put off the inevitable.

Acknowledge up front that the PCs are going to win, and never sweat it. Then use the dice to escalate, escalate, escalate. We all know the PCs are going to win. What will it cost them?