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

[Thomas Shey]

The 1977 edition was not clear on whether or not the consequences of wounds are applied immediately. The 1981 edition resolves the uncertainty as I described.

I don't know why it was done that way - perhaps to make it simpler? Or because of the adrenaline phenomenon Thomas Shey describes? Perhaps two considerations mutually reinforced one another?

From memory, a character who has not been severely injure (two stats at zero) has their stats go to the half-way point between injured value and max value after 10 minutes rest. And this rule was in the 1977 version. Maybe there was a view that tracking the full penalty consequences was not only too fiddly but too punitive?

Traveller is an early design itself, and I don't recall Miller ever doing any discussion of why his decisions were as they were, so its likely always going to come down to reading the tea leaves.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I believe that it’s when you state that hit points are full of simulation flaws that you can use it wisely to run a game. If you are confident that hit point are a realistic solution to handle fight that will lead you to endless conflict and frustration.

It is the job of the DM and the players to continually fill the hole opened by the flawed rules of the game. Otherwise if both are continually pin point the flaws and break in the simulation it will collapse every session.

Well, obviously, but the whole point is that if you're having to fill the holes the system lacks in a simulation sense--its not a game that's designed with much simulation in mind. Its like layering over dramatist concerns on a very gamist system with some simulation--you can do it, but it doesn't make the system any more dramatist than it was before, even if you've managed to get it to an acceptable level in this area.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure. That's why I proposed that an RPG is simulationist if

I'm responding to this one rather than your prior one because its a little more concise and I otherwise will tend to sprawl all over it.

1. it intends our real world as a reference, excluding fictions and beliefs,

I don't think it has to entirely do this, if said fictions and beliefs are literally true in the setting. The problem with genre conventions is that the characters are not supposed to acknowledge them, but there's nothing that forbids a simulation acknowledging magic for example, because the characters can be aware of magic.

1. it is granular and prescriptive enough on all included real-world phenomena that interest us,

I think that suggests a greater degree of moving target on the word "enough" than is necessary, though. Its obvious that some people's standards are going to be different than others here, but I think you can still say that if a system doesn't make any efforts in regard to a given thing to give you some idea of process, its not simulationist in that particular area. It doesn't require it to be Phoenix Command. It doesn't even require it to be particularly complex (there are some extremely simple incarnations of BRP that basically just have group hit point per body where you hit a serious wound at half; its not a super sophisticated combat model by any means, but it at least tells you that what's happening is, in fact, wounds, and that at a particular point they became serious. Contrast this with D&D hits and notice that for still a relatively simple process the BRP case tells you considerably more).

1. the results of the mechanics of that RPG include granular descriptions of what we must imagine in the fiction,

Again, as above, a high level of granularity isn't always necessary, but it the less granular you get the less information you're getting out of it (and of course it may give you actual counterfactuals you have to resolve yourself--D&D's elevating hit point model not only doesn't tell you what's happening, if read literally it tells you things that are ridiculous, so you have to use a lot interpretation to not do so. That's why I claim that its a fundamentally minimalist gamist artifact more than anything else).

1. we find ourselves able to suspend disbelief in respect of the results and descriptions of the included phenomena

This is, to be fair, a heavily moving target; its an area where, for example, knowing too much about a subject does you no favors.

1. a reasonable player has and needs no alternative to imagining what is described

Uhm. I'd say more that the information is sufficient if they don't feel a need to, but there may still be cases where it can add to the experience. In most combat systems even if it gives the broad strokes more than adequately, there may be some fine details that will be desirable, but that tends to be more in the color and dramatist desire than that to engage with it on a basic level. The big issue is that it tells you at least enough, and doesn't tell you things that you can't make sense of without extending beyond what you've been told.

This puts the burden on the game system to supply descriptions as output along with numbers, but I think we want to go further than that. I think we probably want to say that the descriptions shape future choices and resolutions otherwise they're empty fluff, which we might as well provide ourselves.

Seems fair.

 

[Oofta]

If detailed mechanics on what an attack does doesn't lead to mechanical penalties, why bother? If it's just extra fluff I think a people would ignore it because it would add too much overhead for no intrinsic value. It would also likely lead to head scratching results on a fairly regular basis. How do you come up with a system that both gives details while also accounting for every possible mode of damage? If a spear does piercing damage to your torso is the result different from damage to your leg? Does it matter if it's a spear or if you're being swiped by a Stegosaurus's Thagomizers? How do you describe the difference between a giant crab's compressive bludgeoning damage versus getting hit by a ogres club? In reality they should be quite different, so where do you draw the line? What's good enough?

 

[Krachek]

Well, obviously, but the whole point is that if you're having to fill the holes the system lacks in a simulation sense--its not a game that's designed with much simulation in mind. Its like layering over dramatist concerns on a very gamist system with some simulation--you can do it, but it doesn't make the system any more dramatist than it was before, even if you've managed to get it to an acceptable level in this area.

Until we get simulator like in sci-fi show as the holo deck or the matrix, we don’t have other choices than patch the holes. And even then if the user is aware of the simulation he still need to play the game and enter in the simulation process.
Adding 100+ pages of charts and rules, or manage new concept won’t solve all holes.
It is the players and the DM that create the drama, rules only provide and more or less efficient framework.

 

[Krachek]

If detailed mechanics on what an attack does doesn't lead to mechanical penalties, why bother? If it's just extra fluff I think a people would ignore it because it would add too much overhead for no intrinsic value. It would also likely lead to head scratching results on a fairly regular basis. How do you come up with a system that both gives details while also accounting for every possible mode of damage? If a spear does piercing damage to your torso is the result different from damage to your leg? Does it matter if it's a spear or if you're being swiped by a Stegosaurus's Thagomizers? How do you describe the difference between a giant crab's compressive bludgeoning damage versus getting hit by a ogres club? In reality they should be quite different, so where do you draw the line? What's good enough?

The rules are made with game concern, not simulation concern.
Having death blow, or wound death spiral is realistic, but unwise and unfun in a RPG.
But such mechanics are fun for short skirmish game.

We cant say it too loud, but the rules are made to make the PCs succeed, survive and have a long successful career as adventurer.
if a dm want to put more pressure and burden on PCs, he is out of the scopes of the game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Until we get simulator like in sci-fi show as the holo deck or the matrix, we don’t have other choices than patch the holes.

You can absolutely have less holes if that's a priority for you, however.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If detailed mechanics on what an attack does doesn't lead to mechanical penalties, why bother? If it's just extra fluff I think a people would ignore it because it would add too much overhead for no intrinsic value. It would also likely lead to head scratching results on a fairly regular basis. How do you come up with a system that both gives details while also accounting for every possible mode of damage? If a spear does piercing damage to your torso is the result different from damage to your leg? Does it matter if it's a spear or if you're being swiped by a Stegosaurus's Thagomizers? How do you describe the difference between a giant crab's compressive bludgeoning damage versus getting hit by a ogres club? In reality they should be quite different, so where do you draw the line? What's good enough?

Something well beyond nothing? As noted, plenty of other games still manage to have considerably beyond "well, you iterated them toward death."

 

[dave2008]

Armor as DR and a wounds/vitality system are on my homebrew bucket list.

For what system?

 

[Micah Sweet]

The rules are made with game concern, not simulation concern.
Having death blow, or wound death spiral is realistic, but unwise and unfun in a RPG.
But such mechanics are fun for short skirmish game.

We cant say it too loud, but the rules are made to make the PCs succeed, survive and have a long successful career as adventurer.
if a dm want to put more pressure and burden on PCs, he is out of the scopes of the game.

I really can't disagree more. I've played several games with a death spiral (most versions of L5R and all versions of Cyberpunk are good examples) and at no point did that mechanic make the game less fun for the players, or the GM. It does make you more careful, since getting hit actually matters in the moment and moving forward, but I view that as an unequivocal good thing. The rules are made with whatever concern the designers wanted to make them with. Narrative, gamism, simulation, it all depends on what the rules are what the designers wanted to do.

D&D does lean toward what you're describing, but that's actually one of my problems with it.