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.
That's right, these 'prices' are just, at most, random numbers, or even numbers invented by the GM. Lets say the GM decides a war starts with the Azlan Hierate, then maybe he says "Oh, pharmaceuticals are being bought up by the Imperial Marines for use in military hospitals." This is not some sort of example of the "law of supply and demand" operating, even in a simulation. It may be an ILLUSTRATION of what the law of supply and demand MIGHT produce, but it is ACTUALLY just a ruling by the GM. We can then ask "why did the GM introduce this fiction, and thus this ruling?" but that answer CANNOT BE "the natural laws of the setting produced this outcome." At best the descriptions of the Imperium, the Azlan Hierate, the political situation in the Spinward Marches, etc. indicates that such a ruling by the GM is commensurate with the fiction.
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.
I just argue that the word 'simulation' is a misnomer here, entirely. Calling a couple rolls on a random table 'simulation' deprives the term of any substantive meaning at all.
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.
What I am arguing is that most of the factors which would go into a substantive simulation, one that is not merely a string of random numbers, are entirely unspecified. We don't know, in Traveller, even the most basic facts about the economies of any of the worlds in the Spinward Marches (or any other classic Traveller setting). For that matter, even assuming we know a few facts, your random tables don't even take those into account!
Assuming participant decision making is liable to produce a more correct output. That's a big "if".
My point is there isn't any correct or incorrect output, given the lack of any knowledge whatsoever of the economic factors involved there simply IS no right or wrong answer! Again, this tells me that the term 'simulation' is somehow not appropriate. A simulation must simulate something, it is an analogy of an actual system to which it bears some sort of, however passing, resemblance. Here we have a complete void of detail, an absence of the thing to be simulated. So this is my contribution to the "what word should we use instead of 'simulationist'" debate. I'm not sure, but I think we do need a word. Even 'emulate' seems odd, as it implies there is something to copy the characteristics 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).
Exactly! This is my point entirely. There is an underlying agenda. I simply propose that, given the weakness of any concept of simulation of an imagined world, such an agenda MUST have controlling force on what the results are (or else you simply have a system with no design at all, which I guess is possible).
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.
We understand you don't find the conclusion, and I agree wholeheartedly with
@pemerton's analysis here, agreeable. I am, however, not seeing any actual substantive counter-argument.
I mean, technically, I could imagine someone with enough wealth buying the supercomputer time required to run some sort of geological plate-tectonic simulation algorithm to develop a map of a fantasy world. I could see them then further employing the use of a fairly competent climate simulation, and I suppose there may even be ecological simulations that can take some plausible array of species and tell you how they might be distributed and describe the energy flow across their ecosystems, producing a fairly naturalistic world, etc. To some degree this world could then be said to have the character of a simulation. If the GM then runs some weather forecasting model and says "its raining today" I am fully prepared to call that simulationist. Heck, I'm not that much of a stickler, I'll agree its fairly simulationist if they just randomly pick a weather result from a table derived from typical outcomes suggested by the climate simulation for that area, season, etc.
My question then becomes, what would actually be gained in terms of play by doing this? I mean, I once created a fairly realistic-sounding weather table for parts of my campaign world. It just wasn't that interesting! I even generated a bunch of weather for a whole year and whenever the PCs went outside I'd look up the weather, but basically it was boring and trivial after about 3 sessions of play. It would matter to real people, but it didn't serve the purposes of game play very well. I don't think my hypothesized realistic geology, ecology, and climate proposed above would particularly suite game play better than 'World of Greyhawk' or whatever either. In fact it might be worse!
