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

[Hussar]

HP loss is still non-zero information isn't it? It says how close to death the player is - it just doesn't tell the player how they have to choose to narrate it.

A miss is still non-zero information, isn't it? It says that whatever happened didn't even tax your reserves or health at all.

But, what does "how close to death the player is" actually mean? In what way does it inform any sort of narrative? If you narrate a hit as a scratch, that doesn't make me any closer to death. I've been scratched lots of times but, they aren't making me more likely to die from the next scratch.

A miss is totally non-zero information. Why did you miss? Other than the (completely abstract and largely meaningless) attack was not successful, it tells us nothing. It generates no narrative other than, "fail".

The fact that you can 100% play out D&D combat without a single narration shows how little information is being generated. I mean, if we're going to consider "hit, 5 damage" to be some sort of narration, then well, we're obviously on pretty different pages about what a narration is.

IOW, D&D combat can be Final Fantasy - your character shakes back and forth a couple of times and a bunch of numbers fall out of your opponent. You cannot actually narrate anything using D&D mechanics. And, it gets even more wonky when you try to add in stuff that actually DOES have narrative heft - grappling being a perfect example. An ogre grabs that gnome, but, deals zero damage. Cannot actually deal any damage that way. No matter how strong that ogre is, he cannot actually hurt anything by grabbing it. And, note, the reverse is true as well. The gnome grabs the ogre and gets the same results.

So, what does grappling actually mean in the narrative? In game terms, I know that it reduces the target's speed to zero and the grappler can move at half speed, forcing the grappled to move as well. So our gnome, succeeds in grappling, reduces an ogre's speed to zero and can drag the ogre. How exactly do you narrate that? What happened?

 

[Cadence]

But, what does "how close to death the player is" actually mean? In what way does it inform any sort of narrative? If you narrate a hit as a scratch, that doesn't make me any closer to death. I've been scratched lots of times but, they aren't making me more likely to die from the next scratch.

A miss is totally non-zero information. Why did you miss? Other than the (completely abstract and largely meaningless) attack was not successful, it tells us nothing. It generates no narrative other than, "fail".

The fact that you can 100% play out D&D combat without a single narration shows how little information is being generated. I mean, if we're going to consider "hit, 5 damage" to be some sort of narration, then well, we're obviously on pretty different pages about what a narration is.

IOW, D&D combat can be Final Fantasy - your character shakes back and forth a couple of times and a bunch of numbers fall out of your opponent. You cannot actually narrate anything using D&D mechanics. And, it gets even more wonky when you try to add in stuff that actually DOES have narrative heft - grappling being a perfect example. An ogre grabs that gnome, but, deals zero damage. Cannot actually deal any damage that way. No matter how strong that ogre is, he cannot actually hurt anything by grabbing it. And, note, the reverse is true as well. The gnome grabs the ogre and gets the same results.

So, what does grappling actually mean in the narrative? In game terms, I know that it reduces the target's speed to zero and the grappler can move at half speed, forcing the grappled to move as well. So our gnome, succeeds in grappling, reduces an ogre's speed to zero and can drag the ogre. How exactly do you narrate that? What happened?

Why does simulation require narration?

How is a hit or damage in 4e more simulation at than a hit in a FPS?

 

[Jer]

I find the term simulation to be too overloaded. As an old, "simulation" to me means simulating reality to some degree.

I prefer to use the term "genre emulation" as opposed to simulation because it's less overloaded. 5e gives tools to emulate fantasy stories, it's not really trying to simulate a world beyond the level of reality needed to ground a fantasy story. It also takes a fairly "hands off" approach to telling players how mechanics relate to narrative- it's not trying to emulate the pacing or style of a fantasy novel or movie through narrative mechanics like some games do, it's mechanics are geared toward creating larger-than-life characters and giving "guidelines" for putting them through fantastic stories rather than mechanics, leaving how things get narrated in the hands of the players.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

Something which is mostly medieval "real-life" with a bit of fantasy and magic would appeal to me the most I think. I am certainly not opposed to some abstraction and fly-by-the-moment rulings if the system is robust enough to support those things because the framework is grounded in a more realistic tone.

If medieval real life with a bit of fantasy and magic is what you want, then get the following:

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

 

[DND_Reborn]

I find the term simulation to be too overloaded. As an old, "simulation" to me means simulating reality to some degree.

I prefer to use the term "genre emulation" as opposed to simulation because it's less overloaded. 5e gives tools to emulate fantasy stories, it's not really trying to simulate a world beyond the level of reality needed to ground a fantasy story. It also takes a fairly "hands off" approach to telling players how mechanics relate to narrative- it's not trying to emulate the pacing or style of a fantasy novel or movie through narrative mechanics like some games do, it's mechanics are geared toward creating larger-than-life characters and giving "guidelines" for putting them through fantastic stories rather than mechanics, leaving how things get narrated in the hands of the players.

D&D is, of course, fine for what it does--it is what it fails to do that I am looking for.

 

[DND_Reborn]

If medieval real life with a bit of fantasy and magic is what you want, then get the following:

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

Cool and thanks! I'll add them to the list.

 

[Charlaquin]

But, it is a useful thing to be able to categorize, even if the categories are a bit fuzzy.

I would differentiate between a video game like Halo and Civilization. 4X games tend to lean pretty hard into simulation territory since each instance of play begins from a small kernel and then expands using a set of specific rules. And, everything along the way is visible to the player. I can tell you what happened in a 4X game much easier than in a FPS. You could argue that an FPS is a simulation game, but, most people aren't going to think about it that way.

I’m not arguing against the concept of categorization, I just don’t think “simulationist” and “not simulationist” are useful categories to sort RPGs into. It would be more useful to divide them by what they simulate.

I find that most people who are trying to argue that D&D is a simulationist game have a very strong agenda to try to gatekeep the game and ensure that the game stays "pure", separated from mechanics where the fact that D&D isn't a simulation of anything becomes highlighted.

That is consistent with my observation of how the term has been used in the RPG space as well, and in regards to D&D in particular. It (gatekeeping) seems to me to be the only real use for “simulationist” as a category of RPG, which is part of why I’m arguing against it.

 

[Hussar]

Why does simulation require narration?

How is a hit or damage in 4e more simulation at than a hit in a FPS?

4e? Oh, you mean 4X game - Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate. Games like Civilization, or Stellaris.

But, your first question is much more pertinent. If the simulation cannot actually tell you any information about what is being simulated - ie generate some form of narrative - then in what way is it a simulation? The whole point of simulation is to tell you something about the thing that is being simulated. Otherwise, it's not a simulation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I find the term simulation to be too overloaded. As an old, "simulation" to me means simulating reality to some degree.

I prefer to use the term "genre emulation" as opposed to simulation because it's less overloaded. 5e gives tools to emulate fantasy stories, it's not really trying to simulate a world beyond the level of reality needed to ground a fantasy story. It also takes a fairly "hands off" approach to telling players how mechanics relate to narrative- it's not trying to emulate the pacing or style of a fantasy novel or movie through narrative mechanics like some games do, it's mechanics are geared toward creating larger-than-life characters and giving "guidelines" for putting them through fantastic stories rather than mechanics, leaving how things get narrated in the hands of the players.

Well, it depends. When you say simulation, do you really mean, "genre sinulation"? To me those are two different things, and some degree of reality simulation is what I'm looking for, and what my house rules for 5e work toward.

Genre simulation is a completely different kettle of sahuagin.

 

[Hussar]

I’m not arguing against the concept of categorization, I just don’t think “simulationist” and “not simulationist” are useful categories to sort RPGs into. It would be more useful to divide them by what they simulate.

That is consistent with my observation of how the term has been used in the RPG space as well, and in regards to D&D in particular. It (gatekeeping) seems to me to be the only real use for “simulationist” as a category of RPG, which is part of why I’m arguing against it.

For me, I have no problem with the term. A game like the above mentioned HarnWorld is very much leaning towards being able to tell the players something about the in game fiction when you invoke the mechanics. In other words, it's actually simulating something. Doesn't have to be something real at all. The point of a simulation isn't to simulate reality - it's to tell you what happens when you input specific parameters. You tell the simulation that X and Y are true, and it tells you that Z happens because of that.

That's kinda where I tripped earlier and talked about how. How would be answered by a more detailed simulation. The more detailed the simulation, the more How gets answered. But, at the very basic level, a simulation has to answer what.

((Note, this isn't specifically addressed to you @Charlequin - I'm just riffing off of this hereafter))

We could simply flip a coin for combat. Heads you win tails you lose. Now, no one would call that a simulation. Why not? After all, it has all the same results as D&D combat. The only difference is granularity. In D&D combat, you have a few more coin flips (with a rather funny looking coin ) but, you arrive at the same level of information as a simple coin flip. Nothing in the system actually tells you anything about what happens.

Compare to a system with hit locations. Now, at the very least, you can say where an attack hit. But, then you run into the next problem - one attack doesn't track 1:1 to 1 swing of the sword. It's meant as an abstraction of any number of actions that could occur in a round. But, let's ignore that. At least with hit locations, we can at the very least have mechanics that kinda/sorta tell us what happened in that round.

But, as it stands, when you enter the D&D combat mini-game, from the time initiative is rolled to the time the combat ends, every character in that combat, PC or NPC, exists as a sort of cloud of possibilities without any real form. No narrative can be generated during play that can't be immediately contradicted in the next round. There's nothing actually being simulated.