D&D General D&D isn't a simulation game, so what is???

[DND_Reborn]

Well, given all this back-and-forth I'll chime in again on what being more "simulation" means to me with an example:

Long jumping in 5E says you can jump a distance equal to your Strength score with only a 10-foot run up. First, yes, it is simple. I get that (again) is the design goal for 5E, but it is frankly ridiculously simple. It falls apart on so many levels:

• The run-up is not nearly long enough. And the Athlete feat reduces it to just 5 feet!
• There is no rule for jumping further, which is most certainly possible, even if you don't consider professional jumping/records.
• This is nothing about jumping while unencumbered, encumbered, heavily encumbered or anything, and how that should modify the jump distance/difficulty.
• And more...

Now, the only basis I have is humans because those are the only common factors between real-life and the fantasy game.

For instance, when carrying my backpack (about 20 lb.) in high school I could "leap" over a 15-foot ditch near my school with about a 40-foot run up. My Strength was probably a normal 10, but I certainly had proficiency in Athletics with all the sports I did and working out.

There is simply no way using the super-simple RAW for long jumping to model that. The DM has to make up rulings on the fly, and most DMs would approach it differently, despite all using the same base RAW for it. Or the DM just says you can't do it because the PC has STR 10 and it is a 15-foot distance.

So, D&D or another game with "better" rules geared towards simulating action, combat, and other factors is what I was looking for.

EDIT: I will grant that at least under the Athletics skill it stipulates you can use Strength (Athletics) to "try to jump unusually long distance", but fails to specify what qualifies as that or how you would do it.

 

[Oofta]

Well, given all this back-and-forth I'll chime in again on what being more "simulation" means to me with an example:

Long jumping in 5E says you can jump a distance equal to your Strength score with only a 10-foot run up. First, yes, it is simple. I get that (again) is the design goal for 5E, but it is frankly ridiculously simple. It falls apart on so many levels:

• The run-up is not nearly long enough. And the Athlete feat reduces it to just 5 feet!
• There is no rule for jumping further, which is most certainly possible, even if you don't consider professional jumping/records.
• This is nothing about jumping while unencumbered, encumbered, heavily encumbered or anything, and how that should modify the jump distance/difficulty.
• And more...

Now, the only basis I have is humans because those are the only common factors between real-life and the fantasy game.

For instance, when carrying my backpack (about 20 lb.) in high school I could "leap" over a 15-foot ditch near my school with about a 40-foot run up. My Strength was probably a normal 10, but I certainly had proficiency in Athletics with all the sports I did and working out.

There is simply no way using the super-simple RAW for long jumping to model that. The DM has to make up rulings on the fly, and most DMs would approach it differently, despite all using the same base RAW for it. Or the DM just says you can't do it because the PC has STR 10 and it is a 15-foot distance.

So, D&D or another game with "better" rules geared towards simulating action, combat, and other factors is what I was looking for.

EDIT: I will grant that at least under the Athletics skill it stipulates you can use Strength (Athletics) to "try to jump unusually long distance", but fails to specify what qualifies as that or how you would do it.

But there's a difference between an oversimplified rule and the game not being a simulation. It may just not be a good enough simulation for you. On the other hand, we know if a PC is jumping that ... wait for it ... their jumping. If someone is bit by a giant ant and as a consequence dies, we know they died of a giant ant bite.

D&D isn't a particularly accurate simulation, very few games are. Asking a game, any game to have realistic jumping rules for every possible permutation of aptitude, training, weight, surface, whether or not you're being chased by an angry grizzly bear to be accurate to qualify as a simulation means no game will ever be a simulation.

On a scale of 1-10 I rank D&D a 3 on the accuracy scale. Close enough that it works for a casual game. The player and the DM fill in details or make rulings on how far a person can jump if they need to do so. Accounting for your scenarios? It would have to be an 8 or higher for just that one minor rule. So where does it stop? Does a game have to have accurate rules for everything a PC could possibly do?

 

[DND_Reborn]

But there's a difference between an oversimplified rule and the game not being a simulation. It may just not be a good enough simulation for you.

Agreed. That was why in my post I said "more" simulation.

On the other hand, we know if a PC is jumping that ... wait for it ... their jumping.

Correct again, but there is more to it than just that, and there is a lot of information or variables unaccounted for. I know that is the design for 5E, but a failing IMO.

If someone is bit by a giant ant and as a consequence dies, we know they died of a giant ant bite.

But (not to rehash old discussions!) when a giant ant bite as an attack, "hits", and we deduct hit points, the only information we know is the attack was successful and caused a loss of hit points. Narratively in 5E, that might mean the PC just avoided a very bad bite, got grazed, blocked it with their shield (the hp loss being strain on the PC's arm/shoulder), or whatever.

You said if the giant ant bites and the PC dies as a consequence, it must have been they died of giant ant bite. I would argue with the abstract meaning of hit points, you still can't know that. Perhaps the hp loss is them jumping back as the bite just missed their face, but the horror of that experience caused them to have a heart attack and die.

I'll leave it at that.

D&D isn't a particularly accurate simulation, very few games are.

True. I also agree D&D is about a 3 on that scale, but I want a 7.

Asking a game, any game to have realistic jumping rules for every possible permutation of aptitude, training, weight, surface, whether or not you're being chased by an angry grizzly bear to be accurate to qualify as a simulation means no game will ever be a simulation.

No, you will never achieve 100% simulation. But you can certainly have more, which again is what I am after from my OP on.

The player and the DM fill in details or make rulings on how far a person can jump if they need to do so. Accounting for your scenarios? It would have to be an 8 or higher for just that one minor rule.

There we will disagree. To handle the scenario I mentioned would only put D&D at around a 5 or 6, certainly not an 8.

So where does it stop? Does a game have to have accurate rules for everything a PC could possibly do?

That of course is completely subjective. D&D at a 3/10 on the sim-scale is good enough for you (and many others I am sure!). For me obviously not. But the "accurate rules" is also a big issue. Many things in 5E simply are not accurate, either. Is it accurate enough for you and others? Of course! Not for me, so I am looking elsewhere (and frankly having little luck...).

And "everything a PC could possibly do?" No, of course not, the rule mechanics would never end (and you know that). 5E does a nice job of covering many of the things--it is just the rules for much of what it covers is over-simplified and not realistic enough at all for my tastes.

For example, IIRC yourself and others (myself included) have lamented the lack of STR-based rules/mechanics for longbows. And despite numerous historical accounts, forensics, etc. on the use of longbows, 5E still has them associated only with DEX. It has rules to cover longbows, but those rules are not very accurate.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Outside of machines (i.e. mechs), I've never seen a game that did anything other than alive, nearly dead, dead. If there were demand for it, it would be a regular thing in many games.

You have yet to explain how it would work or why it would be anything other than descriptive fluff. If it's just fluff I sometimes throw in specific details that fit the current narration. I don't see how canned narration from some lookup table or rule would be an improvement, how it could always be appropriate for the scene, how it would do anything other than slow down the game.

I’ve been running a campaign of “Spire: The City Must Fall” for the past 7 months or so. And while it isn’t a game I’d describe in any way as simulationist, it has a damage system that does more than alive, nearly dead, and dead. It does this in two key ways.

First, it has five different tracks for Stress, which is kind of like HP in that it is an abstract expression. So a PC can take abstract damage of five different kinds: Blood (physical damage), Mind (mental damage), Reputation (social damage), Shadow (damage to anonymity as the PCs are all members of a covert organization), and Silver (damage to wealth/gear). Whenever you take Stress of some kind, the GM can narrate it however it makes sense to do so based on what’s happening. But it’s all rather vague or loose. Until it becomes Fallout.

That’s the second way the game accomplishes what you’ve described; Fallout. This is when the abstract Stress becomes a specific consequence. There are degrees, but all of them have penalties of one sort or another. When you take Fallout, a certain amount of abstract Stress converts into the specific Fallout. So if you’re in combat and have taken a good amount of Blood Stress, you’ll take a “Broken Arm” Fallout and clear some ofthe Stress. The Broken Arm will impact you going forward.

Mind Stress can become things like Breakdown or Permanently Weird. Reputation Stress can become thinks like Shunned or Feared. Silver Stress can result in Broken Weapons or In Hock. And so on.

There’s a bit more to it than described…tolls and such that determine when it happens…. but it’s really not that complex. It’s a very cool system and allows for a variety of consequences for the PCs to have to deal with, and as a result it feels “more real” than any HP system.

And as I said, this is a game whose goal is not to simulate reality.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Earthdawn isn't simulationist (or if it is, then 5e is). Interesting point about people getting soggy though. Do you mean that if everyone playing D&D would just harden up and say something like - down to CON hit points it's vitality, and after that wounds - or better yet if that was written into the game text, then your view of D&D hit points would change?

I think a fair number of Earthdawn elements are simulationist; its strongly gamist with a big streak of dramatist in how it wants you to view Legend, but how things like its classes, talents and magical effects work are all quite simulationist, they're just focused on the non-real elements of the setting (how magic works, the way adepts function, and so on). They're classes are actually, one and all, things that exist in the setting context; so are their talents and for the most part how they work.

D&D classes are, however, with a few exceptions, a set of terms that are mostly metagame that apply to a range of character types that in many cases may well not even be considered the same thing in-setting. When in use, same for most feats and a lot of special abilities. The classes are almost entirely a game convenience.

Now, that sort of reifying that Earthdawn does only makes sense given the specifics of its settings, and would look very odd ported over to almost any other, so its not a model for how to do such things, but its very much simulationist in a way D&D has not been.

Regarding your question about D&D hit points: it would certainly make a difference. As I mentioned, I don't find it a particularly good or desirable mechanic on the whole, but doing that would at least make it coherent and convey a lot more information without what I can only describe as a great degree of coyness that has plagued the use of them throughout the history of the game. There are even other models than yours that can work (as I've noted, if you view hit points as a kind of backward way to divide damage to represent luck/skill and such, so that 4 hit points of damage means the same thing for someone with 40 hit points as 1 hit point of damage does for someone with 10, at least some of the issues go away; it means any hit actually does involve some real damage, but as the numbers get larger, its less and less. It doesn't solve some of the issues entirely, but it at least is a model that tells you something about what's going on).

 

[Thomas Shey]

That could entail that @Thomas Shey's idea about Earthdawn is right. The designers commit to a construct for hit points and it is then simulationist to model and have rules using that construct as a reference. I propose that simulationist games aren't differentiated from others on the mechanics yielding fiction, rather they are differentiated on having a preexisting reference that the mechanics yield fiction descriptive of.

But see, my view is that setting elements are a preexisting element. If the mechanics actually directly support that they're simulationist. They're simulating an unreal thing, but they're doing so in a consistent and coherent fashion. If you understand the setting, they produce the result you expect with little or no dissonance.

If anything, it can be a more consistent simulation element than trying to simulate some parts of our mundane reality, where people's understanding of things, and thus their expectations can be--fuzzy. That's one of the reasons doing a halfway decent simulationist element in a game can be harder than doing a proper gamist or dramatist element.

 

[clearstream]

But see, my view is that setting elements are a preexisting element. If the mechanics actually directly support that they're simulationist. They're simulating an unreal thing, but they're doing so in a consistent and coherent fashion. If you understand the setting, they produce the result you expect with little or no dissonance.

If anything, it can be a more consistent simulation element than trying to simulate some parts of our mundane reality, where people's understanding of things, and thus their expectations can be--fuzzy. That's one of the reasons doing a halfway decent simulationist element in a game can be harder than doing a proper gamist or dramatist element.

Not sure if you saw the most recent definition that I proposed (based on all our discussion.) It provides for simulating an unreal thing. Here it is again to get your thoughts.

A simulationist design is one whose models and rules take inputs and produce results including fiction correlated with pre-existing references; so that we know when we say what follows that our fiction accords with the reference.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not sure if you saw the most recent definition that I proposed (based on all our discussion.) It provides for simulating an unreal thing. Here it is again to get your thoughts.

A simulationist design is one whose models and rules take inputs and produce results including fiction correlated with pre-existing references; so that we know when we say what follows that our fiction accords with the reference.

I'm not entirely sure I quite understand the way that's constructed, but I think I (mostly) agree with that. The only caveat I have is the thing I've mentioned about genre emulation: there are structures in some settings that are fundamentally meta-setting in their operation, and they for the most part demand that in-character no one acknowledges (or for the most part, is even aware) they exist; while you can change things up so that they're known elements, its hard for that not to actually destroy the genre (that's one reason the Earthdawn model doesn't work for a lot of people; it reifies the D&D tropes in a way that to them is too intrusive).

So a key element to simulationism is that the mechanics it supports are things that, at least in theory, people in the setting can know is a likely or at least possible outcome.

(I know I harp on this, but I tend to want to put it up front to forestall some kinds of counter-argument--and becaue I think lumping it into simulationism in the Forge take on it was a very fundamental mistake).

 

[Oofta]

Agreed. That was why in my post I said "more" simulation.


Correct again, but there is more to it than just that, and there is a lot of information or variables unaccounted for. I know that is the design for 5E, but a failing IMO.


But (not to rehash old discussions!) when a giant ant bite as an attack, "hits", and we deduct hit points, the only information we know is the attack was successful and caused a loss of hit points. Narratively in 5E, that might mean the PC just avoided a very bad bite, got grazed, blocked it with their shield (the hp loss being strain on the PC's arm/shoulder), or whatever.

You said if the giant ant bites and the PC dies as a consequence, it must have been they died of giant ant bite. I would argue with the abstract meaning of hit points, you still can't know that. Perhaps the hp loss is them jumping back as the bite just missed their face, but the horror of that experience caused them to have a heart attack and die.

If someone is shot and they die immediately after, we don't question what killed them. We assume the gunshot killed them. Same with the giant ant bite. Maybe your physical reactions a bit slower because of previous damage that meant the ant got a clean shot it wouldn't have had otherwise and so on. But in a game where you can take multiple hits, I'm not sure how you could get the level of detail you seem to want.

A good approximation in the real world would be boxing. Take the example of a boxing match that ends in a KO. Boxer A connects with a hook and boxer B goes down, out for the count. The way you seem to be defining it, we don't know why boxer B went unconscious. While technically true, we can ascertain with a 99.9% accuracy that it was that left hook. Same way with the ant bite - there was damage that preceded that final blow but we know the blow that took out the target. To say that we can know the ant bite or the left hook ended the fight for the target is really pushing technicalities. You could add more granularity to HP and break it up into different pools, but I don't see how that would be any more "realistic".

I'll leave it at that.


True. I also agree D&D is about a 3 on that scale, but I want a 7.


No, you will never achieve 100% simulation. But you can certainly have more, which again is what I am after from my OP on.


There we will disagree. To handle the scenario I mentioned would only put D&D at around a 5 or 6, certainly not an 8.


That of course is completely subjective. D&D at a 3/10 on the sim-scale is good enough for you (and many others I am sure!). For me obviously not. But the "accurate rules" is also a big issue. Many things in 5E simply are not accurate, either. Is it accurate enough for you and others? Of course! Not for me, so I am looking elsewhere (and frankly having little luck...).

And "everything a PC could possibly do?" No, of course not, the rule mechanics would never end (and you know that). 5E does a nice job of covering many of the things--it is just the rules for much of what it covers is over-simplified and not realistic enough at all for my tastes.

For example, IIRC yourself and others (myself included) have lamented the lack of STR-based rules/mechanics for longbows. And despite numerous historical accounts, forensics, etc. on the use of longbows, 5E still has them associated only with DEX. It has rules to cover longbows, but those rules are not very accurate.

I have no problem with wanting a higher level of simulation or different systems. Different strokes and all. It just doesn't seem there's just a clear definition of what that means, and I disagree with the whole "we don't know that the ant bite caused the damage" thing.

 

[clearstream]

So a key element to simulationism is that the mechanics it supports are things that, at least in theory, people in the setting can know is a likely or at least possible outcome.

I like that. We exclude taking some mechanics to correlate to a reference that is known only by virtue of said mechanics. So as to the mechanics that have preexisting references, characters can know those mechanics (without metagaming).

It's a high bar, but a good one.