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

[Oofta]

I would agree on that scale D&D 5E would be around 3. I was looking for a RPG where it would be closer to a 7. I don't want it to be too cumbersome or anything like getting out medical journals and such, but something "more" than D&D's 3 would be good for me.

I have started researching some of the suggestions people made, so again thanks to all for the options!

Yeah, we've gotten pretty far off track, but I kind of assumed you had about as many suggestions for alternatives as you were going to get in the first couple of pages.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Which is why I ranked D&D as a 3. I can't imagine a game that didn't require a computer being much higher than a 7 on the simulation of combat scale.

My scale and judgment is obviously pretty arbitrary. I'm just saying that it's a spectrum, what you prefer on that spectrum is a preference. I prefer fast paced, relatively frequent combat, I don't want a lot of overhead during combat and I don't want death spirals. So D&D works for me. Other people, other games will have different preferences.

Preference for simulation as compared to other concerns is a thing anyway; even if it was binary (and of course, like almost everything, it isn't) but I do have to say if D&D combat is a 3 here I'm not sure what a 1 would be.

HP and it's higher level of abstraction, I believe, is one of the main reasons for D&D'Souza continued growth and success. That doesn't mean it's for everyone or that there aren't viable alternatives.

I don't entirely agree with this, but it would be a sideshow to the topic of this thread.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Can you say how this is not simply a statement about concerns or tastes? Both are consistent. Both provide gauges with thresholds triggering constraints. 5e offers additional mechanics for managing constraints in the form of exhaustion and conditions.

As I said, how can one say that a desire for more simulation isn't an issue about concerns or tastes in the first place? That was, after all, the whole point in the old RGFA Threefold; that different people had different priorities, and how they weighed them told you what they'd want in the game design. That it wasn't a value judgment on design overall was the point. It just said that some things worked for or against certain desires, and that getting more of one tended to comprimise getting enough of the others.

Levels of demand for simulation are clearly not unitary; while D&D hit points are a particular egregious example of a mechanic that simulates almost nothing, plenty of other systems also don't bother with things like hit locations because its a level of simulation they don't feel they need. Almost no superhero game does for example (I can count on, I think two, that I know of that do in fact). But that just means that people using them aren't particularly focused on simulation as a concern (in part because that gets harder and harder to do with genres with a high degree of stylization; they virtually demand you ignore more an more real world issues to work).

As an aside, the comment about the same number includes an assumption about the meaning of HP. Better to think in terms of individual gauges as in any system a mouse should die to less force than a person.

But of course historically, that wasn't true in D&D either; its somewhat so in modern versions because the most atomic level is not set at "1 hit point" for humans, but that didn't become so until, what, D&D3e?

 

[Cadence]

Preference for simulation as compared to other concerns is a thing anyway; even if it was binary (and of course, like almost everything, it isn't) but I do have to say if D&D combat is a 3 here I'm not sure what a 1 would be.

To get a 1 - Someone upthread mentioned games where they didn't share the hp total or damage amounts with the players (then even many of those of us who think hp have some information to inform fiction wouldn't). Could also remove the damage types (piercing, bludgeoning, fire, etc... at least hint at what happened a bit and what the higher hp could be skill at turning a bad hit into a less bad one). Add in damage on a miss (so that the word hit means even less).

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah, we've gotten pretty far off track, but I kind of assumed you had about as many suggestions for alternatives as you were going to get in the first couple of pages.

Oh, no, I have plenty of material to look over (and trying to find cheap copies to review LOL) for now.

I just find the general discussion about simulation/non-sim interesting. I never expected the topic to go this long.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To get a 1 - Someone upthread mentioned games where they didn't share the hp total or damage amounts with the players (then even many of those of us who think hp have some information to inform fiction wouldn't). Could also remove the damage types (piercing, bludgeoning, fire, etc... at least hint at what happened a bit and what the higher hp could be skill at turning a bad hit into a less bad one). Add in damage on a miss (so that the word hit means even less).

I might buy that being the difference between a 1 and a 2 (though I should note that the degree of difference damage types has made outside of vulnerabilities and immunities has in the past been pretty minimal). And the "hit" issue is a separate thing, as I was only referring to the information damage itself gives you in the first place (I've never found D&D's method of interacting attack and armor particularly good on any number of grounds, so that's a separate issue to me).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh, no, I have plenty of material to look over (and trying to find cheap copies to review LOL) for now.

I just find the general discussion about simulation/non-sim interesting. I never expected the topic to go this long.

It was a portion of a discussion that took up most of rec.games.frp.advocacy back in the day for literally years.

 

[clearstream]

As I said, how can one say that a desire for more simulation isn't an issue about concerns or tastes in the first place?

My concern is really with whether there is any way to define a simulationist game so that one can exclude 5e from that definition without recourse to matters of taste such as the right subjects and descriptions for mechanics.

The OP cares about hawk flight speed. None of the candidates for "simulationist" that I can think of cover hawk natural mating behaviours or the differences in endurance between a merlin and a condor. What is special then, about hawk flight speed?

Levels of demand for simulation are clearly not unitary;

Agreed!

while D&D hit points are a particular egregious example of a mechanic that simulates almost nothing

The formal role of hit points in RPG is to gauge when a participant reaches some hard constraints on further action declarations. They tell players when they are no longer able to contribute to further activity.

, plenty of other systems also don't bother with things like hit locations because its a level of simulation they don't feel they need. Almost no superhero game does for example (I can count on, I think two, that I know of that do in fact). But that just means that people using them aren't particularly focused on simulation as a concern (in part because that gets harder and harder to do with genres with a high degree of stylization; they virtually demand you ignore more an more real world issues to work).

I guess my position is that again, there's no definition put forward yet that excludes superhero games as simulations, except as down to matters of taste.

But of course historically, that wasn't true in D&D either; its somewhat so in modern versions because the most atomic level is not set at "1 hit point" for humans, but that didn't become so until, what, D&D3e?

Are you referring to the granularity, the threshold, something else?

 

[clearstream]

It was a portion of a discussion that took up most of rec.games.frp.advocacy back in the day for literally years.

There was a time when designers were interested in creating games they saw as simulationist, and that passed. I feel it is because in the end no one was really sure what counted as simulation, and what the actual point of simulation was once they were creating imaginative games about extraordinary entities in extraordinary situations, and given other more compelling concerns such as fiction-first and narrativism. What I feel is the miss in the discourse is most around immersionism.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My concern is really with whether there is any way to define a simulationist game so that one can exclude 5e from that definition without recourse to matters of taste such as the right subjects and descriptions for mechanics.

In an absolutist sense I doubt it can, though I think you can (and would be willing to argue) that in matters of degree D&D has throughout its life been very minimalist on a simulationist scale. I'm pretty comfortable using "not simulation" for a game low enough on such a scale even though it isn't true in an absolute sense, and a game I'd call a "simulation" isn't one where that's true on an absolute sense, either.

The formal role of hit points in RPG is to gauge when a participant reaches some hard constraints on further action declarations. They tell players when they are no longer able to contribute to further activity.

Which I'd argue is more a gamist process than a simulationist one; not a particularly good one, but that's a different though not entirely unrelated discussion. As you say, all it really tells you is whether the character can any longer take actions, and not, intrinsically, much else (you can get into some issues that some versions have drawn a line as to whether the process is indefinite or temporary (i.e. whether the target is dead or mearly unconscious, but even that distinction is not true of all incarnations of it).

I guess my position is that again, there's no definition put forward yet that excludes superhero games as simulations, except as down to matters of taste.

They aren't non-simulations in an absolutely sense, but they have elements that only be counted as simulations (i.e. genre emulation) that I think muddies the issue in an extremely unuseful fashion because it makes any element that serves a narrative sense in a consistent fashion "simulation" when I think the urges for the two are vastly different; its why I tend to consistently use the term as it was used by RGFA rather than the Forge because I think their redefinition of simulation damages the utility of the term rather than clarify it. The genre elements in most superhero games (there are cases in what I tend to call the people-with-powers categories where I think this is less true) sprawl across so much of how resolution is done and its assumptions that any simulation is largely an accident.

Are you referring to the granularity, the threshold, something else?

The fact that at some point the first level of hit points became a fixed value, rather than a die roll, and thus made it essentially impossible for characters to have only 1 hit point while healthy.