Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8610888" data-attributes="member: 71699">When I use a grid it doesn't bother me, because I understand the representation to be symbolic or impressionistic. These creatures are roughly here and here. That one can get to roughly there. I don't take measured distances between miniatures on a gridded playmat to be actual distances in the game world. Rather I count them as statements about relative positioning sufficiently good that we can focus on whatever our other motives for play might be.I liked [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER]'s concept that &quot;The key feature of simulationist mechanics is that they model/express the in-fiction causal processes.&quot; Although my take-away from that is probably more to deny that simulationism is an agenda of play at all, and say it is rather a means or methodology. I feel morally certain many will disagree.It's worth noting that a simulation is not a simulation just because it has fewer or more dimensions and variables. It's a simulation because it represents X well enough that a prediction about X based on the simulation is likely to be true of X in a way that matters to our interests. A simulation's greatest value lies in how effectively it reduces in the work to compute the prediction without harming the accuracy (or usefulness) of the prediction beyond some tolerance. That's true of games too, and one reason I believe that simulationist RPG titles didn't ultimately dominate.What would bother me is if diagonals were 1:1 for some creatures, and correctly ratio'd for others, with no context to account for it. That would fail as a simulation because predictions about X will turn out to be only sometimes true of X, and given no context to account for it we have no way to distinguish between the cases.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="clearstream, post: 8610888, member: 71699"] When I use a grid it doesn't bother me, because I understand the representation to be symbolic or impressionistic. These creatures are roughly [I]here [/I]and [I]here[/I]. That one can get to roughly [I]there[/I]. I don't take measured distances between miniatures on a gridded playmat to be actual distances in the game world. Rather I count them as statements about relative positioning sufficiently good that we can focus on whatever our other motives for play might be. I liked [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER]'s concept that "The key feature of simulationist mechanics is that they model/express the in-fiction causal processes." Although my take-away from that is probably more to deny that simulationism is an agenda of play at all, and say it is rather a means or methodology. I feel morally certain many will disagree. It's worth noting that a simulation is not a simulation just because it has fewer or more dimensions and variables. It's a simulation because it represents X well enough that a prediction about X based on the simulation is likely to be true of X in a way that matters to our interests. A simulation's greatest value lies in how effectively it reduces in the work to compute the prediction without harming the accuracy (or usefulness) of the prediction beyond some tolerance. That's true of games too, and one reason I believe that simulationist RPG titles didn't ultimately dominate. What would bother me is if diagonals were 1:1 for some creatures, and correctly ratio'd for others, with no context to account for it. That would fail as a simulation because predictions about X will turn out to be only sometimes true of X, and given no context to account for it we have no way to distinguish between the cases. [/QUOTE]

Verification