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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8612646" data-attributes="member: 42582">Right. I've given examples of this upthread: manoeuvring in a vacc suit, in Traveller, is not resolved in a simulationist fashion. Nor is using Streetwise to find a corrupt official.&nbsp; In Rolemaster, PC build is not simulationist in the way it is in BW or Traveller (lifepaths) or RQ (cultures and occupations).In Burning Wheel, although PC build is simulationist, and setting obstacles for action resolution is, framing and narrating failure - which together drive the game - are not.What follows, in RM, is not always up to the group. Often it's determined by a roll on a table. The contrast with (say) Dungeon World, or failure in Burning Wheel, is marked.How much fiction does a successful simulationist system have to prescribe? The salient fiction. What is salient is up for grabs, but there are some traditions as far as RPG combat is concerned: hit locations, damage to armour, etc.But the other feature of a successful simulationist system is that it doesn't have &quot;free-spinning&quot; mechanics, or mechanics that are triggered by events in the fiction but don't settle what is happening in the fiction. Spending artha in BW, or calling on a trait, is the first sort of thing: it is free-spinning relative to the fiction. [USER=22779]@Hussar[/USER]'s example of D&amp;D combat is an instance of the second: characters move, and attack one another, and (presumably) hurt one another, but the hit point loss doesn't model that hurt in any obvious sense. T&amp;T combat is similar.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8612646, member: 42582"] Right. I've given examples of this upthread: manoeuvring in a vacc suit, in Traveller, is not resolved in a simulationist fashion. Nor is using Streetwise to find a corrupt official. In Rolemaster, PC build is not simulationist in the way it is in BW or Traveller (lifepaths) or RQ (cultures and occupations). In Burning Wheel, although PC build is simulationist, and setting obstacles for action resolution is, framing and narrating failure - which together drive the game - are not. What follows, in RM, is not always up to the group. Often it's determined by a roll on a table. The contrast with (say) Dungeon World, or failure in Burning Wheel, is marked. How much fiction does a [i]successful[/i] simulationist system have to prescribe? The salient fiction. What is salient is up for grabs, but there are some traditions as far as RPG combat is concerned: hit locations, damage to armour, etc. But the other feature of a successful simulationist system is that it doesn't have "free-spinning" mechanics, or mechanics that are triggered by events in the fiction but don't settle what is happening in the fiction. Spending artha in BW, or calling on a trait, is the first sort of thing: it is free-spinning relative to the fiction. [USER=22779]@Hussar[/USER]'s example of D&D combat is an instance of the second: characters move, and attack one another, and (presumably) hurt one another, but the hit point loss doesn't model that hurt in any obvious sense. T&T combat is similar. [/QUOTE]

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