Aldarc
Legend
This is not the sort of debate over semantics that I am interested in. You told me your sense, and I told you mine.
Contemporary Simulationist TTRPGs [+]
- Thread starter Aldarc
- Start date
The Soloist
Hero
Carry on then. Have a good day sir!
TwoSix
Programs in KOBOLD
To my mind, if a game is still being republished/revised into new editions and corebooks, it's still relevant in terms of showing interest of its features.
Revision X of a 40 year old sim-type game that's popular shows that sim elements are still relevant to people. If we're not seeing iteration of those games, than that might just show that the older takes have actual at-table utility.
Aldarc
Legend
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
The Soloist
Hero
My list for a new simulationist contemporary Fantasy RPG of 10 years or less. All these points should be ideally in the core rules, not in the optional rules. Does it exist?
Combat Pillar:
Combat Pillar:
- Permanent combat injury, maiming
- Fatal blows
- Unarmed combat
- Simultaneous combat attacks and parry
- Combat fatigue
- Slow body injury healing
- Body part targeting
- Armor damage prevention
- Equipment and armor deterioration, breakage
- Non-lethal damage (stun damage)
- Rank and Status social behavioural modifiers
- Enforced system of justice and criminal code
- Fear of constabulary force
- Post-combat mental trauma
- Supernatural belief system
- Education, literacy
- Fatigue and travel injuries
- Mount injuries and vehicule breakage
- Hunting, foraging, meals
- Wilderness orientation
- Sleeping in the wilderness effects
- Contracting diseases
Burning Wheel and Torchbearer come pretty close in terms of rules elements, and have versions/editions that fall within the time span.
The Soloist
Hero
Interesting, is it a modern game or an OSR reiteration of old D&D?
Burning Wheel has its first version a bit over 20 years ago - I don't have a copy. The version that brought it to prominence is Revised (2004). But since then there have been two more iterations - Gold (2011) and Gold Revised (2019). It's that last version that falls within a modern/contemporary timespan.
Torchbearer - by the same authors/designers, and a close cousin in terms of system - has its first version around 2012 or so (I don't have a copy, and my Google skills let me down a bit) and its 2e in 2021.
They are not d20 games. The underlying design concepts come mostly out of The Forge. But they have detailed skill systems (BW is more detailed than TB), social precedence/hierarchies (implemented a bit differently in each), combat resolution with blind declaration and simultaneous resolution that includes choices between attack and defence, hit locations (in BW; TB is a bit more abstract in this respect, but does have debilitating conditions in the form of Exhausted, Injured and Sick), armour wear-and-tear, exhaustion from spell casting, fatigue from travel (this is a bit more abstract in BW, but very procedural in TB - TB is the only game I know where fairly simple rules lead to PCs wearing out their shoes while travelling), rules for training, etc. TB also has weather rules (that integrate with its travel rules), rules for economic development of settlements, and very important rules for loadout and consumption of equipment/supplies.
In terms of overall tone, BW is - in my experience - more serious and intense; TB is not always a laugh in play (in my session last Sunday one player had his head in his hands, saying over to himself "It's just a game" - as his PC was being hosed by something-or-other), but the overall tone is a bit more light-hearted and ironic than BW (I think of it as The Hobbit compared to BW's LotR or Silmarillion).
I've got a lengthy TB2e actual play thread here: Torchbearer 2e - actual play of this AWESOME system! (+)
And you can read some BW actual play here <Burning Wheel actual play>, here <Burning Wheel actual play> and here <Played Burning Wheel today>. (The game in that second and third link is a bit of a departure from the norm, in that me and my friend are both players and GMs - during the session I take the job of framing the scenes/adversity for his PC, and vice versa. Because BW doesn't rely very much on GM prep and "secrets", this works more smoothly than it probably would in typical D&D play.)
There are aspects of BW and TB that are different from classic simulationist RPGs (like RM and RQ) - for instance, there are "meta-currencies" (Fate and Persona) that are fully integrated into the play of the game. Why I think of them as having meaningful simulationist aspects is (i) all the rules elements I mentioned above, and (ii) the way the game uses these rules elements to make the fiction come to life in vivid, and often also gritty, detail. I already mentioned the shoes in Torchbearer, just as one example from that game; one of the links above to BW play has my PC Aedhros finding a burning brand in the fireplace so he can sneak through the tavern in the night, and that process of resolution makes the fireplace in the tavern (an otherwise minor detail) have a salience that is different and more "intimate" to play than just the GM narrating the colour but it not actually mattering to play.
Hopefully this all makes some sense!
Old Fezziwig
hell yes bro
I do have a copy of the original. I've not read it cover to cover, but what I have read felt far more simulationist than and meaningfully different from Revised or Gold, IIRC. It feels a little more traditional (small t) and less subversive than BWR.
