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

[Hussar]

The only alternatives I've seen people actually explain simply break up HP into categories, which honestly I don't think is much better just different. Unless I missed it you have yet to explain what would be better.

You keep insisting on normative language here that is not the point. It's not about better or worse. There's nothing wrong with a system that isn't based in simulation. That's perfectly fine. It works and it's fun. So, questions of better or worse don't come into it.

 

[Hussar]

How do you map that to a game? A simple solution like yours isn't going to cut it - they both have entirely different fighting styles, defenses and injuries. Actual damage for BB is completely different from actual damage to PG. The types of injuries they sustain makes a difference and I'm not even mentioning the mental game, something which many people familiar with the topic will tell you is just as important.

Which means all this just comes down to preference, expectations and what will work for you and your group. I don't think categorizing HP or applying penalties makes enough of a difference to make it worth my while. YMMV, I think HP (and AC and damage) is a significant simplification but I'm not sure other options are much better.

This is a slightly different argument.

You are arguing now that simulation simply doesn't exist. That because we can never make a system detailed enough, that nothing can be considered a simulation.

It's an opinion I suppose. Not one I agree with, but, it does seem to be what you are saying. Am I missing something?

 

[Hussar]

This is getting inordinately silly. Hit points are a natural outgrowth of war game mechanics meant to model the gradual attrition of military units as they lose men. This slow attrition over the course of multiple combat encounters in no way is reflective of the fiction or any work of genre fiction / action movies. John McClane is never running low on hit points.

What it does is create a compelling gameplay experience that encourages players to make decisions about how to properly utilize their resources. There is a really good reason the vast majority of video games use similar systems - they are easy to understand and provide a good framework for gameplay decisions. There's no shame in the game.

This is spot on and needs to be called out.

HP are a fantastic system. Easy to understand, produces fun gameplay, easy to implement and track, easy to use. I mean, there's a very, very good reason why so many games use a HP system. Absolutely.

But, what they aren't is a simulation. That doesn't make them bad, or mean that I hate HP or that I even want to play a game that doesn't have HP. I mean, I've played D&D for a very long time. I'm obviously pretty happy with HP. So, arguments about "many people don't have problems with them" completely miss the point. Most people aren't terribly interested in simulation. They really aren't. That's why the most popular video games aren't strongly simulation games. Rag doll physics and maybe some damage locations and that's about it, despite modern computers being able to do far, far more.

But, no one cares. No one really cares that the ballistics in your Halo game don't make any sense. I just want to shoot stuff and make it blow up in pretty colors. Not being a simulation is not a bad thing at all. Nor is being a simulation a good thing. None of this has anything to do with preferences or trying to argue one thing being superior to another.

 

[clearstream]

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.

From RuneQuest 2

JUMPING The ability to jump for height or distance or over obstacles, such as bodies in melee. Generally speaking, a successful roll on D100 allows the character to jump twice his height horizontally or up to his height vertically with a running start. Armor, heavy loads, or a standing start reduce the distance jumped. An unsuccessful roll means that the distance was not traveled. A system for using the SIZ of a character to determine his height is given in Chapter X. Referees may wish to devise their own system in line with their picture of the usual sizes of people in their worlds.

A falling character whose player makes a successful jumping roll can specify the hit location the character lands on.

[Encumbrance penalizes movement by -10'/combat round, and skills by 5%. per point I couldn't find more on armor hindering jumps other than via that penalty.]

Arms Law and Character Law (excerpts)

Good Tendons: Your legs have tremendous “spring” and you receive a + 10 bonus for all leaping maneuvers. A vertical jump of up to 4', a standing jump of up to 8', or a running jump of up to 20' is routine.

Leaping (MM): This allows the character to automatically increase the distance he can successfully leap from either a standing or a running start. Table 10-03 can be used, with the skill rank bonus being added. 100% would indicate a normal leap and results above that a longer leap.

The GM may assign an additional modification to the maneuver roll (e.g. an unassisted running leap across a 40’ chasm for a human might be given a difficulty of “absurd –10” since the world record is only around 28’). Assigning difficulty requires a familiarity with the Maneuver/Movement Table 10-03 and a subjective decision by the GM (practice and experience will help. Example: Suppose a combatant attempts to leap 15’ over a chasm 11’ wide. The GM assigns the leap a degree of difficulty of “Medium”. If the combatant does not cancel his maneuver, his roll will be modified by -10 for wearing a chain shirt (AT 13; see Table 07-05), by +25 for an excellent Agility, and by -10 for being wounded (over 25% of hits). He rolls a 91 for a net maneuver roll of 96 (91 -10 + 25 -10). Cross-indexing on Table 10- 03, we get a result of “80”. This means that the combatant has leaped 12’ (15’x80%) and therefore has crossed the chasm safely.

Some actions are better performed with a running start, such a jumping, leaping, or certain acrobatic/tumbling maneuvers. For these skills it is recommended that movement Paces of up to Dash be allowed.

From 5e

Your movement can include jumping, c1imbing, and swimming. These different modes of movement can be combined with walking, ar they can constitute your entire move. However you're moving, you deduct the distance of each part of your move fram your speed until it is used up ar until you are dane moving.

JUMPING Your Strength determines how far you can jump. Long Jump. When you make a long jump you cover a number of feet up to your Strength score if you move at least 10 feet on foot immedialely before the jump. When you make a standing long jump, you can leap only half that distance. Eilher way, each foot you clear on the jump costs a foot of movement. This rule assumes that the height of your jump doesn't matter, such as a jump across a stream or chasm. At your DM's option, you must succeed on a DC 10 Strength (Athletics) check to clear a low obstacle (no taller than a quarter of the jump's distance), such as a hedge or low wall. Otherwise, you hit it. When you land in difficult terrain, you must succeed on a DC 10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to land on your feet. Otherwise, you land prone.
High Jump. When you make a high jump, you leap into the air a number of feet equal to 3 + your Strength modifier ifyou move at least 10 feet on foot immediately before the jump. When you make a standing high jump, you can jump only half that distance. Either way, each foot you clear on the jump costs a foot of movement. In some circumstances. your DM might allow you to make a Strength (Athletics) check to jump higher than you normally can. You can extend your arms half your height above yourself during the jump. Thus, you can reach above you a distance equal to the height of the jump plus 1/2 times your height.

Strength ability check: You try lo jump an unusually long distance or pull off a stunt midjump.

On surface, I think these all have the same reference: a person likely in armor or burdened, jumping in a world with something akin to gravity. The ICE rules appear to me most strongly correlated with their reference. RuneQuest is near to 5e in terms of what the mechanics do (jump a fixed distance with a running start, anything more is up to GM.)

From examples like this, it feels like simulationist isn't a quality games either have or don't have. One might picture a scale where on general approach and balance of mechanics its ICE=8, RQ=5, 5e=3. Even though for jumping specifically it's perhaps ICE 6, RQ 3, 5e 3.

I still can't help feeling there is something more to it. Some fundamental design intent that games might be differentiated on. I've read the debate on hit points and sadly still don't really see how one demonstrates 5e hit points aren't on the same spectrum as RQ and ICE. Even though I would love to get to a point where I could show that 5e hit points have a fundamentally non-simulationist purpose! In all cases, the reference is a person being harmed in a vast variety of ways and tracking when to limit their further declarations. It's interesting to look at how each game deals with a person being smothered by a pillow who chooses not to fight back.

Compartmentalisation, knock-on constraints, pre-authored fiction, doesn't change that fundamentally. It certainly does change where the mechanic sits on the spectrum, but it's very, very difficult to see how one shows it to be an ontologically separate class of thing.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, I absolutely agree that it's a spectrum. And, I think part of it is intent of the game. Looking at mechanics in isolation doesn't particularly help in judging the game's intent as a whole.

Thinking about HP though, I'd say that HP are probably one of the most successful game mechanics ever designed. I mean, think about it this way. Pretty much any game, board game, RPG, video game, you name it, that features single person combat against other individuals uses HP. Everything from FPS and RTS games, loads of RPG's, both table and CRPG's, on and on. You see HP (or some variant of them) used all over the place. I honestly am struggling to think of a more universally popular mechanic that has spread across so many different games.

So, I mean, its undeniable that HP are a fantastic mechanic. If they didn't work, you wouldn't see them all over the place.

OTOH, you know where you don't see HP mechanics? Simulation games. I don't recall any sort of HP mechanics in my Flight Simulator games. Or driving sim games (although more combat oriented driving games might) and that sort of thing. I don't measure wing stress on my F-22 raptor in a high-G turn in terms of HP - although I can certainly rip the wings off the plane if I want to.

HP are fantastic at what they do - give you just enough to make it interesting without bogging down in too many details. And, most people are quite happy making horsey noises while their knight takes the pawn. We all narrate combat. I've never been to a D&D table that didn't narrate hits to some degree. Watch any Live Play and you'll see the same thing. We all do it. And, by and large, we ignore the inconsistencies, because it's fun.

So, it's absolutely not necessary to have HP be a sim mechanic. They really aren't meant to be sim mechanics. Games that lean on the sim side generally don't use them, or use more complex versions of them because you need that complexity to generate enough information to be able to definitively state X and not Y. As far as D&D goes, no one cares. That I can narrate combat damage one way and you can narrate the exact same circumstances completely differently, and even contradictorily doesn't matter. The table is happy and we move on. You can either generate information or you can have speed of play. You can't have both.

 

[clearstream]

Oh, I absolutely agree that it's a spectrum. And, I think part of it is intent of the game. Looking at mechanics in isolation doesn't particularly help in judging the game's intent as a whole.

For sure. I believe that simulationist games can readily be identified as games whose designers intended to be simulationist, that tend to be adopted by those interested in or encourage simulationist play.

OTOH, you know where you don't see HP mechanics? Simulation games. I don't recall any sort of HP mechanics in my Flight Simulator games. Or driving sim games (although more combat oriented driving games might) and that sort of thing. I don't measure wing stress on my F-22 raptor in a high-G turn in terms of HP - although I can certainly rip the wings off the plane if I want to.

That's normally not quite true. We do compartmentalise - say to wings or even parts of wings - and we nuance the mechanic significantly. But in the end, your wing normally has some hit points that are decremented in some circumstances and at some threshold the wings dynamically change.

The design pattern is something like this. Set a variable. Let sub-systems send decrements to the variable. Typical cases are intersections of collision boxes, or of particles or lines through a bounded volume. With each decrement assess the variable against some rules, possibly sending updates throughout the system. If necessary, we can assign HP to each nut and bolt in the wing.

Genuine alternatives include something like a stress-and-shock dynamic, where say a collision tests a set of variables and sends updates based on static and dynamic parameters. This is not something we will see in an RPG because it is far too effortful for a human to manage multiple times in a game session. It's possible some Flight Simulators use that. One reason why it's not so common is that ensuring the models predictably produce reasonable results is hard.

So, it's absolutely not necessary to have HP be a sim mechanic. They really aren't meant to be sim mechanics. Games that lean on the sim side generally don't use them, or use more complex versions of them because you need that complexity to generate enough information to be able to definitively state X and not Y. As far as D&D goes, no one cares. That I can narrate combat damage one way and you can narrate the exact same circumstances completely differently, and even contradictorily doesn't matter. The table is happy and we move on. You can either generate information or you can have speed of play. You can't have both.

To me there is a strong difference between saying "not a mechanic that prioritises sim concerns" and "not a sim mechanic". 5e HP has a known reference (how tough a person of tier is to take out), and does some kind of a job simulating that reference. 5e HP isn't detailed. When I think about the game text @DND_Reborn located

DESCRIBING THE EFFECTS OF DAMAGE Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious.

I can see that I ought to have narrated that M was able to shift about the cage and avoid injury until below half HP. (IIRC M was a low level bard so perhaps I didn't err egregiously.) Here, the world reference is a familiar fiction one in which heroes can sustain that for a time. Then bites start landing and I should have (and did) narrate signs of wear. Here the reference is that hero being worn down and shaken or bleeding. The final blow should (and was) narrated as striking directly, leaving trauma.

We could say that we discount as a reference a world in which heroes can sustain attacks without visible injury for a time. Okay, but then are we forced to discount all magic systems, psionics, unproven technologies, supernatural creatures, etc? Once we admit some fictions as references, it's hard to see how we aren't picking-and-choosing by discounting one in which heroes are Achillean. We could say that no game is simulationist if it has sysems with fictional references, or that all such systems are discounted from being valid references for simulation (and thus we look to other systems to see how they stand.) On that basis, we could discount what I've dubbed Achillean HP.

Having written that, I feel like that's our best approach. We discount fictions as valid references for simulationist mechanics. We can then say that considering its non-simulationist mechanics (HP, levels, etc) and its simulationist-to-a-degree other mechanics (abilities, exhaustion, etc) we classify 5e as non-simulationist because it doesn't appear to prioritise sim concerns and would not be obviously adopted for or encouraging of simulationist play.

 

[Oofta]

This is a slightly different argument.

You are arguing now that simulation simply doesn't exist. That because we can never make a system detailed enough, that nothing can be considered a simulation.

It's an opinion I suppose. Not one I agree with, but, it does seem to be what you are saying. Am I missing something?

Two things. First, I don't really care if we have a simulation or emulation. To me D&D feels like an action movie in more ways than one, so HP just fits into the theme.

Second, yes I think tracking damage in a fight is far too varied to ever do a good job without encyclopedic set of rules. People talk about breaking up HP into physical and non-physical damage for example. But different individuals will have different ratios, any ratio we come up with will be just as arbitrary as HP. I gave my example a while back of two fighters that endured several rounds of a fight using completely different philosophies, and that didn't even mention different types of (potential) damage.

It's not that we couldn't come up with alternatives (and I'm sure some work quite well for their game's goals), just that the alternatives aren't particularly better at simulation of the real world. In addition I don't think they add to D&D as a game.

Ultimately I guess I simply don't care about the philosophical underpinnings of HP. Any tracking of durability in a fight is going to be chock full of compromise. HP works reasonably well, simulates one type of real world injury, mimics action movie logic, and no one has presented options that are better for D&D. It's not that I haven't thought about it, I simply haven't seen anything better.

P.S. If you think a different system is better, it doesn't add to the conversation to just say Game System X does it better with no explanation of what the system or the goals are.

 

[Umbran]

And if that's insulting, so be it.

Mod Note:

Oh, really?

The time you no longer care if you insult people is the time where you'll find yourself faced with red text. On this site, we care if you are insulting people, even if you do not. So, at least for your own sake, maybe you should reconsider that position.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is spot on and needs to be called out.

HP are a fantastic system. Easy to understand, produces fun gameplay, easy to implement and track, easy to use. I mean, there's a very, very good reason why so many games use a HP system. Absolutely.

Actually, unless you're using hit points rather more broadly than some of us have been, I'd question whether "so many games" use them; among other things, we've been primarily talking about them in terms of D&D style elevating-by-level hit points, and that requires, well, levels. Other than games that in other ways are also clear D&D derivatives, I don't see that model much; even some games with something like character classes don't always use levels.

 

[Thomas Shey]

From examples like this, it feels like simulationist isn't a quality games either have or don't have. One might picture a scale where on general approach and balance of mechanics its ICE=8, RQ=5, 5e=3. Even though for jumping specifically it's perhaps ICE 6, RQ 3, 5e 3.

Well, its absolutely clear a game can be aimed at simulation in many areas while simply failing at some. Process limits are not any less true here than with any other agenda.