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The character in the fiction doesn't know that they are in no danger. The player in D&D does know that. Hence, not "diegetic". EDIT: See just above: it's not only about genre emulation. The status of hp as sim/"diegetic" depends upon what bits of it are part of the fiction, and what are not...

That sort of conflict can be fairly straightforwardly analysed: There's a reason that this is a known thing that happens in D&D play - nobody is shocked to read that example of play - whereas it doesn't come up in other RPGs.

Yes. @Don Durito said as much. But what is that "diegetic" reason, in D&D play?

Is this supposed to me my fault? Or prove that I'm a "sim hater"? Or what? I'm not really sure what your goal is for this thread, if you're not interested in talking about some of the regularly observed features of D&D play, and understanding what cultural, systemic etc factors give rise to them.

I neither agreed nor disagreed with your post. I simply pointed out that Traveller has a feature that you didn't mention. As best I recall, in 45 years I've never seen anyone else but me mention it. Rolemaster likewise has a crucial avenue for player metagame decision-making, in the resolution...

Just focusing on what you say about characters: (1) I do that - and have done that - with Marvel Heroic RP. I have built Marvel heroes using the system. I have built superheroes dreamed up by my kids using the system. I have built Gandalf using the system: Middle Earth/LotR RPGing using Cortex+...

I just made a long post about this. But I'm not a poster who talks about a "sim" group vs "sim haters".

Do you think the degree of metagaming possible in Traveller combat, that arises from its rule for allocating damage dice against physical stats, is greater or less than the amount of meta-gaming that is possible in D&D by making decisions based on how many hp a PC has remaining?

Edwards has plenty of discussion about various approaches to D&D play, and the influence on D&D design (over time) of various play priorities. I'm happy to point you to it if you're curious. But I don't think it will tell anyone anything they didn't already know to read, for instance, that...

Would they? Have you ever even seen that metagame aspect of Traveller mentioned by anyone before me in the post you quoted? I mean, I never have - and I've read quite a bit about Traveller, and first played it around 1980. Upthread, you liked this post: That poster doesn't seem to have noticed...

Which is why I find the "I'm a sim fan so I don't like it" argument, coming from people who mostly play D&D or D&D variants, pretty unpersuasive - as in, I believe that they don't like it (whatever the "it" is) but can't really credit the idea that it is their commitment to simulationism that...

I don't judge wargames. I do, sometimes, judge moots - simulated arguments in an appeals court. the significance of my expertise is that the participants, by improving their expertise, can ensure that I will judge them favourably. Having an amateur judge a moot makes it little different from a...

This is all true. But while Pendragon doesn't have hit locations, it does have simultaneous resolution (although only approximately simultaneous for movement). And it doesn't have D&D style hit points either - hit point depletion corresponds straightforwardly to physical set-back and injury...

I'm prepared to accept that, in most D&D play, there are broad genre conventions and table understandings that rule out the "pixies stabbed you" hypothesis. But otherwise I fully agree (as per my "heart" reaction to your post). When I discovered Rolemaster, in early 1990, what blew me away was...

To me, it seems highly relevant to understanding free kriegsspiel that the referee is (or is intended to be) an expert in the activity they are adjudicating (ie the command of units in battle, and whether the commands are effective). This straight away establishes a stark contrast with most...

It's nothing to do with whether or not I like it. Sequentiality is not an abstraction of simultaneity. It's an alternative to it. Simultaneous combat resolution doesn't have to be complex: Classic Traveller is one example. Tunnels & Trolls is another. I don't dispute that many RPGers find D&D...

I haven't said anything about whether or not I care for them. I'm saying that they're not simulationist. The action economy in D&D, the turn-by-turn initiative system, hit points - none of them represents or models or stands in for any in-game process. This isn't "diegetic". It's you reading the...

So why does everyone stand around while others act, according to the repeated ticking of some weird 6-second metronome?

But they're not necessary. That's the point!

And as I've posted, D&D's combat resolution rules contradict that manifesto at multiple points: they are not "diegetic" and they don't preserve the correlation between in-fiction causation and at-the-table causation.