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What are you simulating? Nothing that I can see. I mean, if people were made of bricks, and each hp was a brick, and you were gradually knocking out the bricks, then I could see it. But otherwise, as I said, it's just an intricate countdown clock. I mean, my Fighter takes 5 hp of fire damage...

Quantum ridge! Quantum wind! (On top of the regularly-scheduled quantum wolf.) @Maxperson, @AlViking: notice how the ridge is introduced here by the GM as part of narrating the encounter. The ridge was not noted on the map. The players weren't told about the ridge prior to the roll of the...

So now we have more hit points because we're tough and get a saving throw because we're tough? Why doesn't my tough character get a save to reduce the damage from being stabbed or bitten? As I just posted, these are decisions about game design - I don't know Chainmail that well, but I'm...

See, from the point of view of common sense, this doesn't make sense to me. Either the sword cuts me, or it doesn't. (But even if it doesn't cut me, I might hurt or strain myself avoiding it.) Either the fire burns me, or it doesn't. (But even if it doesn't burn me, I might hurt or strain...

Your last sentence contains an ambiguity: you use "causes the cook to be there" without clarifying whether you mean causes, in the fiction, the cook to be there or causes, at the table, the GM to narrate the presence of a cook. No one thinks the first thing is true, in any RPGing other than...

I've run two free-form murder mysteries. One I adapted from an old Traveller module; I wrote up the 3 player characters and played the three or so important NPCs. The other I wrote myself, and wrote up about 12 character backstories with various interconnections to one another. I also wrote the...

I stated my view: that D&D surprise rules, from AD&D and from 5e, involve retrofitting a fictional explanation of a situation whose narration is prompted purely mechanically (ie by the outcome of dice rolls).

Schroedinger's wind? Instead there is quantum colour-blending; quantum sun-reflecting; and quantum sneezing.

For what? I'm talking about the role of the GM in creating, guiding, etc the fiction. It captures that well enough.

No. White Plume Mountain is GM-created. (Or analogous to.) But play in WPM using classic D&D need not be GM-driven/GM-centred play. It's a type of puzzle-solving play (with some light wargame-y combat interspersed). I think it's fairly easy for the play of WPM to derail, because the...

But a burglary check clearly does involve other people - all the people who are in, or might be in, the place being burgled. As I posted upthread, if your RPG system can't distinguish between a skilled burglar and a skilled locksmith, that's a limitation of your system. But it doesn't...

It's nothing to do with a straw man. I'm simply pointing out that, as many RPGers in the late 70s and early 80s noticed, that D&D is replete with resolution systems that do not simulate anything.

In the same way that critical discussion of Hamlet often begins with a consideration of Shakespeare's text, so my critical discussion of surprise rules in D&D begins with a consideration of one of the pre-eminent D&D texts. I didn't know that discussion of rules and texts is now considered a...

Your second thing is a characteristic of all RPGing. It is what Edwards calls exploration. Your first thing is an overly narrow account of "simulationism": Pendragon is a RPG intended for simulationist play, and it doesn't lose that character if the participants in a game prioritise character...

Huh? Competence is all about what a person says and does. You seem to think that an amateur burglar is just as likely to blunder into a situation unprepared and unawares as a competent one. I don't agree.

None of this speaks to my point. Hit-point based combat is (i) quite granular, and (ii) not a simulation of anything. It's a way of turning a weighted coin-toss (this being is tougher than this other being, so more likely to win) into a more protracted, intricate race between countdown clocks...

It's hardly arbitrary for me to compare two sorts of GM-driven/GM-centred play to a well-known approach to RPGing which (i) is not GM-driven/GM-centred and (ii) is one that I adopt quite a bit in my own RPGing.

If you don't like the fiction, don't narrate it. I mean, you're coming up with fiction that you think is silly, then presenting it as an example of "fail forward" resolution, and then concluding that "fail forward" resolution leads to silly fiction! When I play and GM, I do my best to come up...

A competent thief doesn't wake sleeping people.

In AD&D, a thief has a chance to pick pockets, that goes up with level but goes down with the level of their target. Clearly this doesn't just reflect the thief's ability to move their fingers. It also reflects the thief's ability to judge well, to hold back at the moment where acting would be...