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When I watched Quantumania, one of the things that made Kang seem not particularly compelling is that technology is just technology. It's replicable. Why wouldn't someone from the 41st century or beyond be more formidable than Kang? (This is essentially the plot of Keith Laumer's Dinosaur Beach...

This is a really good point. In retrospect, the number of people who were surprised when it turned out to be a decent movie probably isn't an indication of marketing success. Yeah, that 30 second commercial is downright awful, doesn't even match the actual tone of the movie. I think the final...

And that in turn aids roleplaying, because you can better use your natural intuitions as a human being for problem solving.

Not to me. To me "fits" seems to be an informal metric, and "gives priority" appears to apply to a decision which uses that metric as one of several inputs to (ultimately) decide whether the bolt of lightning strikes the house or elsewhere. I would say you're attributing opinions to me, again...

False. You have a model (the gameworld) and may have a principled procedure for updating it using itself and some set of inputs (stochastic inputs and/or player inputs). To the extent that these principled procedures are the source of model updates, that's a simulation. It's not a high fidelity...

No it doesn't. You are imagining subtext that I didn't author. I mentioned GURPS falling rules in the context of how having prewritten rules and tables (and more importantly, people who have already sanity checked those rules against known LD50: RPG reality check: Are falls deadly enough in...

I note that you're asking "what is a simulation?" but drawing on quotes about gaming and GDS simulationism, which is odd because it implies that you think adding additional things to the basic concept of "simulation" is key to understand GDS "simulationism" despite being told repeatedly that the...

Pemerton, I'm sure you've gotten the answer to this question numerous times in this thread already, including from me. I don't have a lot of desire to add another answer to the pile. I'm trying to stick to saying things that haven't been said a thousand times before. Discussing exactly what kind...

Okay, so it was a legal requirement. In gaming, GMs don't have the legal requirement, so the benefits of high fidelity (e.g. for falling damage) take a back seat to usability (being able to actually compute what happens to Bob after falling off a 30' siege ladder without stopping the flow of...

This isn't even really a spellcaster vs. warrior issue either. It's a fundamental dramatic flaw in the attrition-based model: people are fascinated by fair fights, not attrition. Nobody wants to hear the story of how Conan killed the mighty Heracles because Heracles had already been poisoned by...

In 5E, having two wizards and two clerics at high level really means having two wizards, two clerics, and potentially a pile of bound air elementals, nycaloths, and couatls or generic "celestials" from Summon Celestial. In 5E, wizards and clerics can make warriors, but warriors can't make...

You didn't answer the question. What business requirement drove the need for exacting fidelity in your airplane simulation? You don't need to hide the ball here. Just answer the question.

Your other choice is to remove those 5 spells from the game so the adventure and others like it can be played as written. That's what they did to GURPS: Magic in order to create the spell system for Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

I wish I had ten billion dollars so I could buy Lucasfilm and then watch nerds on the Internet "have to" accept my views on Star Wars as so-called canon. As if art were a matter of corporate ownership...

Why was simulation fidelity so important to your application? What business impact did lack of fidelity have? I assume you were probably training pilots or something. You keep denigrating simulations that aren't as detailed as the ones your business used, but in that case the real takeaway is...

I have trouble getting into that headspace: it always makes me wonder, "Why isn't this character already dead?!" Ironic, I know, since as a GM practically every enemy needs to be in essentially that headspace. "Let's attack a group of heavily armed strangers whom we outnumber by less than 3 to...

I was speaking for myself. I don't mind "losing" a game (if it did I would be a terrible GM, because my job is basically to lose over and over), but I dislike having to roleplay incoherently. As GM I have enough control over scenarios that I can give my NPCs reasons to do what I need them to do...

It's a consequence of what Steve Jackson said to Sean Punch as reported at Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Advantages Are Not Utility Priced "To be fair, I know as a fact that in GURPS, First Edition, advantages were indeed priced for desired rarity in the game, not for their...

I am generally positive towards all things dungeon-crawley; and the concept of spirit weapons with advantages and disadvantages from the creature whose spirit is in the item looks interesting. The one that really grabbed my attention was the concept of a helmet with a pit fiend's spirit in it...

Because that's putting an unfair amount of psychic stress on players: you're asking them to roleplay characters, but to do it in a way that doesn't break the challenge of the game. They have to constantly hold the Idiot Ball and do illogical things. It's unpleasant. Would you rather play a...