Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5457314" data-attributes="member: 42582">Prof Cirno, great posts but I already XPed you in another thread!I liked you world, but to keep vaguely on topic I'll skip the interesting stuff and move onto the simulation thing. Here's my take:Those who talk about 3E (or Rolemaster, or Runequest) being simulationist are mostly focusing on the action resolution mechanics, and secondarily on the character build mechanics. In particular, they're noticing that in each case these mechanics are intended to reflect actual causal processes in the gameworld.An example from character build: these games all begin with "pick a race, then pick a class" because logically a person is born into a race before s/he enters into a profession. In fact, however, in character building one almost always choose a race that suits the class one wants to play. 4e Essentials has, finally, broken from the simulationist mindset and put character class info in the book ahead of race info.Another example from character build: people discuss the illogic of looting giving XP (because why would a person get self-improvement from looting?); a lot of people love RQ's improve-in-skill-you-use mechanic, because it makes sense; a lot of people dislike 4e's all-skills-improve-with-level mechanic because they can't see what it is that the high level wizard is actually doing to achieve self-improvement in swimming.An example from action resolution: 3E's grapple rules, which begin with the grab, then the hold, then the pull.Another example from action resolution: a lot of people don't like Come and Get It, because they (rightly) can't identify something that the fighter PC is doing to make the monsters come closer (the trick to Come and Get It is that the first half of the power is pure metagame - it's as if the player of the fighter played a "Your enemies make a tactical blunder" card, a bit like an anti-fate point).On these mechanical points, I will strongly defend the line that 3E is more simulationist than either 4e or AD&D, but less so than RM or RQ (in particular, hit points are a problem for 3E - the most natural simulationist reading is that they are meat, but this is obviously absurd when a dwarf, however tough, has as much meat as a dragon).But the examples you have given are examples where the sociological/economic/cultural simulation breaks down (or, more accurately, doesn't even get off the ground). In this dimension of simulations, which D&D has never really tried to model mechanically (other than the stronghold rules in earlier editions, which really only cover a very small part of the world as a whole), I would say that no edition of D&D has ever had simulationist aspirations. It's a marked contrast with Classic Traveller, for example, which does try to take a simulationist approach to at least some of this stuff, by having planet building rules right alongside the character building rules.So, when you say:I think you are just misinterpreting. The simulations is in the mechanics, and D&D doesn't have world-building mechanics.Why is there no demand for world-level simulationist mechanics in fantasy RPGs? Well, first, there is some (eg Magical Medieval Society). But second, I think most fantasy RPGers don't have such strong intuitions about how society should be modelled as how personal development or interaction should be modelled. And third, the world stuff is mostly in the hands of the GM, so from the point of view of the players, whether the GM does it via simulationist techniques or just makes it up off the cuff based on pure metagame considerations is opaque to them. So this sort of simulation moslty isn't going to be part of the shared gaming experience.Where I think there is a demand for simulationism on the world side of things, and what I'm trying to get at in my description of "just in time" GMing and 4e's suitability for it, is what we might call the "reality" of the world, not in the sense of its resemblance to the actual world, but in the sense of its existence independent of actual playing the game, as a self-standing entity that it makes sense for the players to envisage exploring.I think there is a lot of demand for this sort of simulation, even when there is complete indifference to Traveller-style world-building simulation. In my view, the poster child for "not interested in Traveller-style sociological simulations, but I insist upon there being a world independent of my game table that I, as a player, can explore" is the Forgotten Realms. In my view that world has less than zero credibility or interest from the point of view of sociology or history (contrasting very markedly with, for example, Tolkein's Middle Earth with it's interesting theory of linguistic development, or with Stafford's Glorantha and it's interesting theory of sociology of religion). But there seems to me to be little doubt that it's fans really do regard it as having an existence in some sense independent of its authorship, and certainly independent of their RPGing in it, so that for them the pleasure of RPGing really can come from exploring the Realms.</blockquote>

Verification