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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6960089" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Potential benefits of simulationism:(1) It deepens immersion and therefore enhances the Fantasy aspect of the Eight Kinds of Fun. If living in a fantasy world isn't one of your reasons for playing D&amp;D, this may seem like a net loss for you, &quot;accepting outright boredom.&quot;(2) Deeper systems can also increase opportunities for deep tactics, in an emergent kind of way. If your DM is prone to figuring out WHY certain things work the way they do (e.g. how dragons manage to maintain a minimum viable population despite having so many subspecies), you could argue that that's simulationism for the sake of simulationism--but if you someday manage to leverage that knowledge in a concrete way (e.g. gain access to Starvald Demelain, which dragons use to travel in order to meet mates in other realities) it will no longer seem &quot;outright boring&quot; to you and will hopefully seem kind of awesome actually.A DM can't always predict in advance what factoids will be utilized by players in this way, so all you can really do is measure the richness of the gameworld and hope that players exploit it appropriately.(3) A deeply coherent game system can be easier for the DM to run. Instead of having to remember a bunch of special-case rules, you just remember the underlying causes, and you can re-derive the special cases as necessary. Can also make it easier to determine what happens when the players go off the rails and do something you haven't prepared for. Closely related to #2.Not all implementations will actualize all potential benefits.TL;DR &quot;needless complication&quot; and &quot;outright boring&quot; are value judgments, not objective metrics. Simulationism increases certain kinds of fun.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6960089, member: 6787650"] Potential benefits of simulationism: (1) It deepens immersion and therefore enhances the Fantasy aspect of the Eight Kinds of Fun. If living in a fantasy world isn't one of your reasons for playing D&D, this may seem like a net loss for you, "accepting outright boredom." (2) Deeper systems can also increase opportunities for deep tactics, in an emergent kind of way. If your DM is prone to figuring out WHY certain things work the way they do (e.g. how dragons manage to maintain a minimum viable population despite having so many subspecies), you could argue that that's simulationism for the sake of simulationism--but if you someday manage to leverage that knowledge in a concrete way (e.g. gain access to Starvald Demelain, which dragons use to travel in order to meet mates in other realities) it will no longer seem "outright boring" to you and will hopefully seem kind of awesome actually. A DM can't always predict in advance what factoids will be utilized by players in this way, so all you can really do is measure the richness of the gameworld and hope that players exploit it appropriately. (3) A deeply coherent game system can be easier for the DM to run. Instead of having to remember a bunch of special-case rules, you just remember the underlying causes, and you can re-derive the special cases as necessary. Can also make it easier to determine what happens when the players go off the rails and do something you haven't prepared for. Closely related to #2. Not all implementations will actualize all potential benefits. [B]TL;DR[/B] "needless complication" and "outright boring" are value judgments, not objective metrics. Simulationism increases certain kinds of fun. [/QUOTE]

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