Why do RPGs have rules?

[hawkeyefan]

(A) To be honest with you I find that whole discussion about bears and goldilocks confusing. "Is this story about a bear a simulation?" is a question which makes about as much sense to me as "how tall is blue?" I was trying to explain to you what simulation means from my perspective (which I believe is the GDS perspective), but I can't talk about bears and Goldilocks. If that's what you're interested in I have to bow out.

I would agree that the bear example is a poor one. I'd much rather read an actual play example that helps illustrate what folks are trying to say. But folks seem reluctant to share those.

It seems like a bit of color and nothing more. It didn't become meaningful in any way. I don't see how such a detail couldn't be narrated as part of setting the scene. On its own, it feels pointless and incomplete regardless of play priority.

(B) If you ever have the opportunity to play or run a couple of sessions, I would encourage you to take it. It helped me understand what people like about non-action-oriented RPGs, it helped me understand some of the distinctions between iconic and dramatic heroes in fiction, it clarified my thinking on scene framing, and it changed the way I build NPCs (it's now more network-based with more frequent "fraught relationships"). It also helped me understand some phenomena I see in real life, like the emotional kick some people get out of being the one to deny an emotional petition, even if they don't really want the other results of denying it.

I would certainly give it a try if the opportunity comes up. I'm pretty open to new games. I have a bit of a backlog of games I want to get to the table, though, so I don't see it happening anytime soon.

(C) The emphasis on plausibility comes from you, not from me. Per GDS, I have been emphasizing intent to extrapolate. Plausibility is a metric of how good the simulation is, but plausible situations can arise through G or D as well as S. Does that unblock you or need I elaborate? I don't want to insult you by stating the obvious here. Edit: I guess I explained anyway, see following post.

I don't think the emphasis on plausibility comes from me... it came from @Maxperson and his example. I was questioning it because plausibility was the only element I could see at play. And narration. The GM narrated something because it was plausible. I don't think that is enough for simulation purposes, but I'm not sure what else people might think would make it so. I'm not sure your elaboration below does much to help.

In GDS, "simulationism" basically means "absence of metagame-driven motives." You're not having the princess's execution scheduled for a time that will provide a fair challenge to the players sitting around the kitchen table, or for a time that will give the players sitting around the kitchen table a certain kind of emotional satisfaction associated with well-constructed narratives. You're scheduling it exclusively based on your judgment about what is logical and reasonable based on factors within the gameworld, like how eager the orcs are to have her dead vs. how much they enjoy gloating to her face. "What would really happen?"

Given that the orcs' temperament and all other related factors are traits interpreted and likely determined by the GM, I don't see what is added beyond plausibility. What's the starting point of simulation for the orcs? What is the GM simulating when he decides the orcs will kill the princess at sundown? The emotions of orcs? What's the method of determining these things?

Also, I don't know if "absence of metagame-driven motives" is all that feasible. Certainly all of this is happening because it's a game.

I'm not trying to dismiss simulation as a goal, or a mindset... I'm trying to understand what it involves. Because I think it has to be something beyond mere plausibility because that's present in non-simulation focused games.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Also, (A) I don't know if "absence of metagame-driven motives" is all that feasible. Certainly all of this is happening because it's a game.

I'm not trying to dismiss simulation as a goal, or a mindset... I'm trying to understand what it involves. Because I think it has to be (B) something beyond mere plausibility because that's present in non-simulation focused games.

I think we're at an impasse here. You're reverting to (B) because you think (A) is impossible, and I have nothing to say about (B) beyond the obvious.

You're looking for addition, I'm telling you it's subtraction. You're still looking for addition. [helpless shrug] Sorry I can't be of more use to you at this time.

Edit: maybe you could explain why you're still looking for addition?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Dumb question: am I included in "you all", and if so what is it exactly that I object to? I don't even remember railroads being mentioned in this thread.

Honestly, I don't keep a list of exactly who maintains which objections to each other poster. Most of the same people who are posting in this thread were in the one that Bloodtide started, and IIRC there was a lot of very strong pushback on Pemerton's use of 'railroad'. I'm entirely sure Max was doing a bit of that. It was OK, I only bring it up in the context of people expecting their specific, fairly non-standard, definitions to prevail and then pushing on anyone else for wanting to do something similar. Its kind of a double standard. Since we all read and posted in that other thread, and it only ended a few days ago, I don't think its particularly a stretch to bring it up. Anyway, this is all fairly friendly discussion. Feel free to consider yourself not part of 'you all'. Its not like I'm keeping score.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not poo pooing anything at all. I think its actually important, in order to understand a thing and thus appreciate that thing in the best way to analyze it objectively and look at what it really is. You all claim to object to @pemerton's use of the term 'railroad' for the EXACT SAME REASON. Its just a different foot, different shoe... And I don't agree that we should entirely use words in a completely different sense just because we're talking about RPGs. 'Depict' and 'Simulate' are simply not the same thing, and it behooves nobody to call a bear a fish. You will just have a very smelly experience if you do!

It's too late. Railroad in RPGs already means something other than how @pemerton is using it, and both simulation informed in RPGs already mean something other than how you are trying to use them. These aren't things that I'm making up.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm confused... how is the forest less a simulation of what than the river with the bear in it? As simulations of places with bears in them? Easy the river you know... is showing an actual bear doing bear things... the forest doesn't.

Here are some definitions for you, though you seem to be solely concerned with the last one... which others have already said is not whats being talked about in this thread.

sim·u·la·tion
/ˌsimyəˈlāSH(ə)n/
noun
imitation of a situation or process.
"simulation of blood flowing through arteries and veins"
the action of pretending; deception.
"clever simulation that's good enough to trick you"
the production of a computer model of something, especially for the purpose of study.
"the method was tested by computer simulation"

I am just trying to understand. You said that a depiction of a bear fishing in a river was a simulation, but when the outcome of people going into a forest is depicted as some of their friends/allies/something are attacked by a bear, that depiction of bear activity is not a simulation. I'm honestly confused, I see no substantive difference between the two, except in the forest case the bear was only described second-hand (the PCs only saw the NPCs that saw the bear). In none of the definitions above do I see anything about how the situation was depicted or by whom. I mean, its also rather confusing in that I don't see an 'imitation of a situation or process', I see a telling about one. A simulation of blood flowing would presumably involve some sort of fluid flowing in something, not people talking at a table about it.

In terms of "the act of pretending" being a simulation, yes people say they 'simulated an activity' of some sort, lets say playing boffers is simulating a sword fight. But again, I'm not seeing that. I see people talking about bears.

I think we can dismiss the computer simulation (or anything in the same general category like mathematical models).

I honestly remain puzzled. I mean, I get that imagining bears in various situations in a shared fictional depiction is being equated with something real, but that's the problem here. The boffers, or lets say a model of human circulation using straws and water, those can at least claim to hold some of the properties of the thing simulated, ACTUALLY hold those properties. A story of a bear is not a bear, or even a simulacrum of a bear, its just a story. It holds NONE of the properties of a bear, whatsoever. And that is the heart of my objection, every definition of simulation has the concept of properties or relationships that both the simulation and the thing simulated have in common, but RPGs never have that (well, maybe LARPs).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not speaking to coherent fiction and I've already addressed why earlier in the thread... you can have a coherent narrative without simulating any particular thing.

I utterly agree with you! In fact I am of the opinion that RPGs simulate things only in a very abstract sense, at all. I'm not totally averse to the use of the term in a few limited cases in games, after all computer simulations aren't ACTUALLY much like the things they simulate either, except in a logical sense.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Its a depiction. It may be 'naturalistic' in that it depicts activities which people with knowledge of bears might expect of an actual bear. It doesn't 'simulate' anything at all. And yes, simulations include a model (a mathematical/logical description of how the state of a system evolves over time) and an initial state (which the model takes as input to produce states at times t+1, t+2, etc.). What you have instead is a STORY depicting the actions of a fictional bear. These are entirely different things. Calling a story a simulation, and attributing to it attributes of simulation is a category error.

Demonstration of category error consists of proving that the attributes claimed of the thing cannot possibly be attributed to it because they are inapplicable. I would probably merely point out that the bear in the river story is unconstrained, ANYTHING can happen, and there is no constraint, no limits, on what that is. A dragon could reach up from out of the river and swallow the bear. A pixie could land on the bear's back and magically give it wings so they fly off together. The bear could drown. The bear could eat a good meal of fish. The bear could catch nothing. The bear could be a high level druid using shapechange.

I could go on, literally forever, inventing "and then..." There is no criteria whatsoever you can use that appertain to simulations with which to evaluate those things. Instead the proper evaluation would be of a literary and dramatic nature, did I tell a good story? Do you see how I've shown the nature of the category error here? I'd note that this applies to ALL of these, what I would call Dramatist, stories equally. All of them are fundamentally unconstrained. None of them are simulations.

I'm going to keep asking you what you're trying to accomplish with this push to devalue simulation.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I honestly remain puzzled. I mean, I get that imagining bears in various situations in a shared fictional depiction is being equated with something real, but that's the problem here. The boffers, or lets say a model of human circulation using straws and water, those can at least claim to hold some of the properties of the thing simulated, ACTUALLY hold those properties. A story of a bear is not a bear, or even a simulacrum of a bear, its just a story. It holds NONE of the properties of a bear, whatsoever. And that is the heart of my objection, every definition of simulation has the concept of properties or relationships that both the simulation and the thing simulated have in common, but RPGs never have that (well, maybe LARPs).

A story about a bear ISN'T a simulation, which is why the bear/goldilocks discussion is baffling. However, it can be the output of a simulation, which itself can be built around the mental model of a bear and can therefore have bear-like properties like a sense of smell keener than a bloodhound's.

But you can't necessarily tell from a story what play agenda generated it, especially without any dialogue from those who were generating it.

Story: "The fearsome dragon roared and blew fire at Conan, who barely dodged it and then threw his mighty axe--which embedded itself to the haft right between the dragon's eyes. It fell out of the sky with an enormous crash! Thus ended the days of Treacher Leech, the last of the western dragons."

Is that story the output of a play agenda that's mostly Gamist, mostly Dramatist, or mostly Simulationist? You can't tell. But what if I add a dialogue transcript from the players?

Transcript A:

GM: the dragon blows fire at you! DC 18 Dex save!

Conanist: I use my Inspiration. I've been saving it all session for this fight. [Rolls] 13, 18. Made it! Because I have Evasion from my Rogue levels, I take no damage.

GM: okay, your turn.

Conanist: let me see, I'm 10 squares away and my move would only take me 8 squares, so I couldn't attack this turn. Boromir is making death saves so I can't afford to Dash, and besides that would just give the dragon more attacks on me, so I guess I'll throw my axe. [rolls] Critical hit! [rolls] Brutal critical, plus another 10d8 because I'm spending a 4th level spell slot on a ranged Divine Smite, makes 78 points of damage!

GM: the dragon only had 45 hit points left and is now at zero. The axe embeds itself right between the dragon's eyes. The dragon falls to the ground with a crash!


Transcript B:

GM: the dragon blows fire at you! [rolls] It is aimed squarely at where you're standing!

Conanist: I haven't retreated yet this turn so I'll try a Dodge and Retreat to move to another hex before it gets here. [roll] Success!

GM: Your turn.

Conanist: Well, the dragon is only six yards away and I'm very skilled with an axe (skill 21). Its armor is thick but I was able to damage it before, and usually skull armor isn't THAT much thicker than body armor. And this thing is big, I think you said SM +4, right?

GM: about 50' to 60' long with eyes the size of softballs, SM +4, right.

Conanist: I'm going to throw my axe, aiming for its head, right between the eyes. That would count as a skull hit, right?

GM: right. Let's roll. [both roll]

Conanist: hit!

GM: dodge fails!

Conanist: eat hot iron, dragon! [rolls] 19 damage baby!

GM: DR 9 on the skull makes that... 40 injury to the brain, which is a major wound [roll] and the dragon is knocked unconscious and falls 10' to the ground [rolls] taking another 18 points of falling damage [rolls] and dying!


Transcript C:

Okay, doing a good job of writing a FATE- or Dungeon-World-style transcript is beyond me. But I assert, without proof, that not only could both these games do a dragon-slaying fight, but that they wouldn't look like A or B. Prove me wrong!


Can you tell what the people in A, B, and C value in their games?

 

[loverdrive]

In the context of AD&D play, I've met people who are noticeably better or worse at choosing spell load-out, and choosing when and how to use spells to "beat the dungeon".

And I've been a player who has turned up to a drop-in table, built a MU or a cleric within the specified permitted parameters, and with that build utterly dominated play.

I can see how it can be the case in the AD&D days, I'm not sure if it's applicable now, when the internets exist, AND the current edition is "mature", with more or less established meta.

There's a concept of "knowledge check", things that work if and only if the opponent has no clue how to deal with them. From the GM side of things, something like animated armour or gelatinous cube can be seen as knowledge checks.

But from the player side of things, everything is a knowledge check. You can catch the GM off-guard and win an encounter, sure, but if she is determined to beat you into a bloody pulp and counter your every move, she will, because the ultimate deciding factor determining success or failure in a game like dnd isn't the player skill, it's GM's willingness to crush them underfoot.

 

[clearstream]

OK, let's make up some answers:

*A bear is the sort of thing that I see on TV and read about in books that is called a bear. And it lives in a house and sleeps on a bed much like an idealised 19th century European villager.
*A morning is when the sun comes up.
*Thirst is the desire to drink, which is why I and everyone else feels the need to take a drink.
*Wells are holes in the ground, typically with brick or stone walls about them, with water at the bottom (unless they're "dry" wells, which are a type of deficient or defective well).
*Water quenches thirst.
*Bears walk on four legs in real life (but sometimes on two), and on two legs in my story,
*Walking is the mode of getting to places, such that one can do things at places (like get water out of wells).

That's not a model! That's just me having read Goldilocks. Four years olds can do what I just did: I know, I use to live with some of them, and read and listen to their stories.

You have in mind a model of what amounts to the scene you described. The model consists of things you are able to say about bears etc, and the relationships bears may have with buckets, wells, and so on. That model allows you to have intuitions as to what might normally unfold. You're able to categorise some unfoldings as supernatural etc.

Now, let's put some pressure on the story: how does the bear (or the pig, in my Three Little Pigs supplement) build a house? What industry produces the building materials, sinks the wells, produces the clothes my bear (and pigs) are depicted as wearing, etc? How does the bear, with a bear's brain and a bear's mouth and throat, speak? Why does the sun rise? (Any explanation in terms of real world celestial phenomena is probably going to entail fact that are contradicted by my walking, talking, bears and pigs.)

Your model is incomplete, necessarily.

Making stuff up is not a simulation. There's no model. It's just authorship.

But that would be a false description.

JRRT doesn't have a model of Middle Earth from which he extrapolates. He has ideas about Middle Earth which he adds to, writes down, changes from time to time, etc.

What is possibly gained by turning all our nouns into mush, so that "model" = "idea', "simulation" = "imagination", etc?

Acceptance that it is possible to take a sincerely simulationist approach to RPG. That there may be an effort not solely to make stuff up, but to make that stuff up in a certain way.

The first (from Imaro) implies that narration, in a RPG, becomes simulation if it has no point other than producing the narration for the other participants to take in. On this account, players as well as GMs can engage in simulation.

As I've noted, it's likely that for each facet of the models in play, the group must consent to one participant controlling that facet. They can also externalise their models and functions, such as when they parameterise some aspect of their world models and write out some functions governing it.

The second (from FormerlyHemlock) implies that narration, in a RPG, becomes simulation if it (an attempt at) dispassionate extrapolation on the part of the GM, that will be experienced by the other participants as realistic. On this account, only the GM can engage in simulation. And on this account, a lot of classic dungeon crawling counts as simulation; while what makes Apocalypse World count as non-simulation is not the nature of the fiction (which is extrapolation) but the GM's motivation (which is not dispassionate).

In this mode, revisions to game state should be projected impartially. GM as referee has built into their attitude and role the exercise of that impartiality. Players are anticipated to find themselves in conflicts with their attitudes and roles. I've said all of this up thread.