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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alex319" data-source="post: 4743171" data-attributes="member: 45678">Anyway, let me get to the post I promised to make about how this whole thing helps illuminate many of the common issues regarding "simulationism" etc. Here are some common claims made, and how to interpret them in this framework."Game element X is 'gamist' and not 'simulationist', because I can't think of a logical reason why it should work that way."Many claims that one game or another is "unsimulationist" references specific game elements. For example, it is commonly claimed that the 4e paradigm of some martial powers being only usable once per day or once per encounter is "gamist" because in 'real life' martial maneuvers wouldn't have those kinds of restrictions.However, when interpreted according to the natural law interpretation, this is not "unsimulationist" at all. True, real-life martial maneuvers don't work like that, but the game works differently from real life, and as long as it works in a consistent way as defined by the rules it is still "simulating" a self-consistent world. Thus this kind of complaint does not reflect a desire for "simulationism" in general, but rather the desire to "simulate" a specific kind of world - one in which certain elements are labeled as "magic" and can thus ignore realism-based restrictions, while other elements are not so labeled and are thus bound by realism-based restrictions. Another example of this is a post where the poster claimed that 3e magical healing was superior to 4e auto-self-healing during extended rests because the magic provided a "non-gamist reason" why people could heal so fast. But again, if it is possible to accept the existence of magical healing, then how is saying that everyone can generate whatever force is necessary to heal more "gamist?" Certainly not by comparison to real life, because the "magical healing force" doesn't exist in real life in the first place."We need realism because that makes it easier for players to predict the effects of their actions."One justification I have heard for the "double standard" described above  is that it is necessary to minimize the number of game elements that deviate from reality because if the game world is the same as reality except for a small number of defined changes (such as magic) than players can understand the world better because they can use their knowledge of real life. For example, in the game world, gravity always pulls things down, since that's how it is in real life, absent any special effect like a spell. It is important to realize, however, that this principle applies only for things where there is not an explicit rule. If there is an explicit rule, then that rule being close to "reality" is irrelevant for player understanding - if the rule is written down, players know about it, and so there's no need to being in real-life information to fill in the gap. For example, if certain martial powers can only be used once per day, then players know that - the lack of a "realistic" explanation does not in any way impede players' ability to understand what's going on. This is the problem with moving from a natural law interpretation to one of the other two interpretations because you think that "natural law" produces less "realistic" results. Even if the imperfect model or gameplay convenience hypothesis produce results more realistic, they are less self-consistent, because the rules can be overridden at will. So if realism is desired as a means to consistency, it makes no sense to sacrifice consistency for realism."System X is more/less gamist/simulationist than System Y."Usually, when people refer to a system as being more "gamist", they mean that it was designed under the game based design principle. However, as described above, if you define "simulation" as simply describing a self-consistent world, then even a game-based design will do that if intepreted the right way. Thus if all you care about is simulating a self-consistent world, you can use game-based design and the natural law interpretation to gain all the benefits of game-based design as well as avoid the drawbacks of inconsistent rule interpretation. However you may instead want to simulate a particular world that is not the same as the one you get from the game. This is where world-based design comes in - if the world you want to simulate is the same one that the game designer set up the system to simulate, then you can use the system and it works fine. But if not, you will have to tweak a world-based designed game just like you woul dhave to tweak a game-based designed game.</blockquote>

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