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This touches on perhaps a key element: DMing isn't necessarily hard as in difficult to learn or do but aspects of it - mapping a setting or adventure, referencing and writing out statblocks, maintaining a decent game journal or log, etc. - can certainly be or become tedious and boring and a slog...

I wonder if it's more that existing players are less tolerant of new DMs. If everyone at the table is new, including the DM, then they all learn together. But if some of the players have played before, it's on them to put up with the rookie DM's mistakes; and some people maybe aren't as...

The damage caused by a Mind Flayer still exists, only it's internal and thus not visible to an observer. The damage caused by a Red Dragon's breath weapon might not be "cuts and bruises" specifically, but the burns and singes and and char marks would be pretty much the same as. And the answer...

The game could use more meat-grinder in its theme, even without it becoming primary. More to the point, death-spiral mechanics would force players to think twice before engaging in combat and look for other solutions first. Such mechanics would also force parties to be more cautious (which is...

IMO death spirals should very much be a thing. The most important hit point to preserve shouldn't be the last one you lose, it should be the first one you lose: going from full to one less than full should have impact.

Yet when NPC adventurers of the same capabilities are the PCs' foes those NPCs should be easy to kill? No. What works for one works for the other. Applicable vs. PC and NPC alike, sure. This is one really good 3e idea that subsequent editions abandoned in their quest to have nothing ever...

The problem isn't that you're quoting the rules and using them to defend your position. The problem is that the rules you're quoting are themselves awful, which completely undermines your position before you start.

That, or some sort of wound-vitality or body-fatigue points system where your wound/body points (everyone has these) are mostly meat and your vitality/fatigue points (that you get by gaining levels) are mostly not-meat. Then, certain attacks could go straight to body points, bypassing fatigues.

To make it work, certain attacks need to be able to bypass hit points and go direct to some other effect. Example: slitting the throat of a defenseless humanoid-ish target with a sharp implement should kill it outright even if the target's otherwise at full hit points, regardless of how many...

I'm tempted to say that a simulation mechanic is more of an underlying feature of the setting independent of whatever abstractions might be in use, while an abstraction is a rules-based attempt to model something in the fiction that the players can't do at the table (physical combat being the...

This... ...and this... ...only serve to tell me that the "Fantasy Combat" system being used is in serious need of repair.

Various people upthread have done a fine job of defining simulation in the same (or better!) terms that I'd use, which means I don't have to type it all out. :) In short (yeah, right!) and in summary, then, simulation to me represents a collection of elements mostly around relatability: ---...

I'd put it more that the GM found a major flaw in the simulation and corrected it on the spot. "On the spot", however, isn't exactly the best time to be making corrections to how the simulation works. Ideally, big things like this get caught and fixed well ahead of time.

TSR tried putting out various D&D-adjacent pieces - boardgames, some memorabilia, etc., not sure about mugs - in the 80s and 90s and if memory serves they collectively went over like a bunch of lead balloons. Hardly surprising that WotC doesn't want to go the same route.

To expand on this a bit - and to (gasp!) bring it back toward the thread topic - setting lore is far more likely to matter to the players in a simulationist type of game than it would in a gamist type of game, because the lore is an integral part of the world they're trying to simulate.

Yeah, that's the difference in how we view this. You roll the dice to change the situation. I roll the dice to see if the situation changes. That, and if "nothing happens" can be a legitiamte result then I can also throw in dummy rolls, in order to disguise rolls that matter and not give away...

Modern D&D? No. Some versions of TSR D&D could certainly be used for simulation without too much tweaking, and 3e in its hamfisted way tried its best. 4e went full-on gamist, and 5e kept some of that. You're right in that in any version the higher the PC levels get, the worse things become...

The PCs search the west wall for a secret door. On success the DM narrates they find a secret door, and where it is, and maybe some details about it. On failure the DM narrates nothing happens.

Because it's uncertain whether the Thief can open the door. He only has a 60% chance, remember? Oh, and I should point out there's no such thing as re-rolls. Your roll represents the best you can do in however long you have, as do your initial odds. Here it's because the players don't know...

You misread me. The situation doesn't have to change on both results but it does have to change on one, where "nothing happens" can be the other. What's being promoted is that the situation always has to change on any result, and I think that's a misreading of what 5e is trying to say with...