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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8607661" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I hope that I have not given that impression with my posts. I understand that a simulation need not conform only to the rules of our own reality. Rather, as I have understood the term, simulation requires that it have rules--whatever those rules are--and those rules are ultimately never violated. The &quot;ultimately&quot; can be important. In our world, Newtonian mechanics were thought to be pretty much infallible for a long time, until we discovered the &quot;deeper magic&quot; of general relativity; so too could a fantastical simulation have rules that seem to be universal and infallible but actually end up being a finite (but commonplace) subset of more general (but rarely invoked or &quot;needed&quot;) rules. In general, though, such &quot;deeper rules&quot; moments need to be very rare and momentous (a point where simulation touches on narrative ideas), otherwise it just feels like the rules are merely ever-evolving guidelines and the &quot;feel&quot; of simulation is lost. As a result, the rules need to either change very rarely (and always with justification) or never change at all--and, ideally, those rules need to either be explained very well up front, or they need to be so intuitive that there is no need to explain them until you run into the few non-intuitive bits. That is where simulation gets is association with &quot;realism,&quot; or rather groundedness, to use my not-quite-identical term. A game (or any medium) that fails to be sufficiently grounded, either by failing to resemble the audience's perception of the real world (&quot;realism&quot;) or failing to explain itself sufficiently so we develop an intuitive awareness of its rules, will fail to be a simulation. Even if it is otherwise very good at establishing the chain of material causation (or &quot;more detailed,&quot; as you put it), a lack of groundedness is a fatal flaw from a simulation standpoint, and &quot;like the real world&quot; is the low-hanging-fruit of writing grounded things. Hence, in the absence of anything more specific, people will almost always assume that the game stays grounded specifically by resembling the physical world we actually occupy, except in the places where it explicitly doesn't, which will be explained to the reader in sufficient detail.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8607661, member: 6790260"] I hope that I have not given that impression with my posts. I understand that a simulation need not conform only to the rules of our own reality. Rather, as I have understood the term, simulation requires that it [I]have[/I] rules--whatever those rules are--and those rules are [I]ultimately[/I] never violated. The "ultimately" can be important. In our world, Newtonian mechanics were [I]thought[/I] to be pretty much infallible for a long time, until we discovered the "deeper magic" of general relativity; so too could a fantastical simulation have rules that [I]seem[/I] to be universal and infallible but actually end up being a finite (but commonplace) subset of more general (but rarely invoked or "needed") rules. In general, though, such "deeper rules" moments need to be very rare and momentous (a point where simulation touches on narrative ideas), otherwise it just feels like the rules are merely ever-evolving guidelines and the "feel" of simulation is lost. As a result, the rules need to either change very rarely (and always with [I]justification[/I]) or never change at all--and, ideally, those rules need to either be explained very well up front, or they need to be so intuitive that there is no need to explain them until you run into the few non-intuitive bits. [I]That[/I] is where simulation gets is association with "realism," or rather [I]groundedness[/I], to use my not-quite-identical term. A game (or any medium) that fails to be sufficiently [I]grounded[/I], either by failing to resemble the audience's perception of the real world ("realism") or failing to explain itself sufficiently so we develop an intuitive awareness of its rules, will fail to be a simulation. Even if it is otherwise very good at establishing the chain of material causation (or "more detailed," as you put it), a lack of groundedness is a fatal flaw from a simulation standpoint, and "like the real world" is the low-hanging-fruit of writing grounded things. Hence, in the absence of anything more specific, people will almost always assume that the game stays grounded specifically [I]by[/I] resembling the physical world we actually occupy, except in the places where it explicitly doesn't, which will be explained to the reader in sufficient detail. [/QUOTE]

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