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You speak about "D&D" as if it's a single thing. But it's not. Here is an example of D&D play, that I've already posted in this thread in reply to you; it has exactly the same structure/process as the runes example: To reiterate - in that example the player's action declaration is "I identify...

This is one meaning of "simulation" in RPGing. It's not the only one: see eg @clearstream's posts in this thread. It's not the meaning that Sorensen uses either.

I mean, it can: "I hope you bought me a bicycle for my birthday. Oh, you did? My wish came true!" The significance of "hope" is for action resolution: very roughly, on a success the hope tends to be realised; on a failure, it tends to be dashed. As I've also posted, this is as true for an...

That's good - thank you! Yeah, this is the sort of thing I have in mind in talking about how demanding Sorensen's principles are. Edwards is sensitive to this issue, too, in his simulationism essay (and to be honest that's probably where I learned to think about it clearly in the context of...

Elaborating on my point not far upthread, that inferences like If X is a disputed proposition of physics, and Einstein conjectured it to be true, then it is more likely to be true than one might otherwise suspect are sound: The following counterfactual claims can both be true, of the same...

It's the hope arrived by a Solitary Traveller who is a Cunning Expert. His hopes are likely to be accurate - it's not a punt in the dark. This is why I find this notion of "reality warping", "wishing ability" etc so frustrating. It is projecting something onto the resolution framework that is...

I think the sort of thing you describe - whether generated via the Oracle or via the GM's imagination - is one of the things that Sorensen's principles 3 and 4 are meant to exclude. The magical trap is, after all, very similar (in structural/process terms) to the startled chef. But all creative...

Isn't it just an abstraction/simplification? As in, all locks and traps are about the same in their mechanical complexity. The AD&D DMG does have rules (fairly punitive ones) for adjusting the difficulty of climbs; the level of the intended victim adjusts the difficult of picking a pocket...

Schroedinger's treasure! Sorensen addresses this, in part at least, in principle 3: If the GM is also author, designer, and creator of the fictional world, they must adhere to the fictional world created before play begins. Once at the table, the world cannot be changed except by purely...

But once you introduce "affect" you are brining in something more than mere "diegesis". You are bringing in the Sorensen point about change.

It's not just about degenerate results. It's about audience response. Contrast the following two scenes: In a Superman movie, a baddie shoots at Superman. In a Mission Impossible movie, a baddie shoots at Tom Cruise's character. In both movies, the audience knows - intellectually - that the...

Now the strange runes episode turns out to involve "diegetic mechanics": the mechanic simulates a diegetic event, namely, the making of a happy discovery. There's a reason that the Sorensen manifesto focuses on change to the fiction as well as events within the fiction. It's not just about...

Right. The events of writing the story aren't part of the story; nor is being a member of the audience part of the story. That's all. I think this quickly gets into the metaphysical weeds. The prop qua token is not part of the fiction. But the map-type that it instantiates is also instantiated...

Some mechanical elements are, or at least are intended to be, representational: eg D&D stats; Burning Wheel skill ratings; and the like. Some mechanical processes are supposed to be representative, too. Eg I think that in 3E D&D, rolling a Fort save vs poison is supposed to represent the...

I think you were right the first time!

I want to say - tentatively, perhaps - that the analogue of this in a RPG would be the GM drawing a sketch of what the PCs can see. Or the GM telling the players that their PCs are handed an elaborate map, and handing them a rather plain hand-drawn or simply printed map. That is, the...

My own view - which is based on both aesthetic preference and what I've experienced in RPG play - is that character-focused play becomes more satisfying when it is undertaken in a mode closer to Apocalypse World or Burning Wheel - foregrounding the player's creative act in playing their PC -...

If it can be simulationist for Wolverine's player to declare I met this person in the past, why can't it be simulationist for a character's play to establish, via an appropriate dice roll, that they are reading runes that reveal a way out? These are both instances of players contributing to the...

The authorship of the novel is an event that happens in the real world, and is undertaken by the author. But the story - unless it includes the author somehow (some old Marvel comics use to do this) - is, in itself (to the extent that phrase makes sense for a fiction), independent of the...

I think DL shows the strengths of an integration between scenario and PCs. Doing it DL style, with the same person authoring both elements, makes sense. If the players are going to author the PCs, and the scenario is meant to speak to them, I think there are issues with outsourcing DL-style...