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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8614864" data-attributes="member: 71699">That happily matches my intuition. What counts isn't that the designers provided descriptions (what I've called pre-authored narrative), but that those descriptions "correlate to something outside of the simulation". I don't believe we have to give up on the mechanics including or narrowing fair descriptions, we just need to add that the descriptions must seem to us right for the reference.It therefore appears to be crucial to simulationist games that their simulation is modelled on a reference. That has to be an existing world - real or fictional - because if it is not then how can we say if the descriptions are right? That suggests an interesting opportunity for the game designers. They can simulate any preexisting reference. Thus, where they wish to simulate something that doesn't exist in our real world, they just need to locate or create a reference.That could entail that [USER=7026617]@Thomas Shey[/USER]'s idea about Earthdawn is right. The designers commit to a construct for hit points and it is then simulationist to model and have rules using that construct as a reference. I propose that simulationist games aren't differentiated from others on the mechanics yielding fiction, rather they are differentiated on having a preexisting reference that the mechanics yield fiction descriptive of.The failing (to be simulationist) of 5e hit points then is not the simplicity of the mechanic (that's just an argument over preferring more moving parts) but the failure to commit to a construct and model that construct. Traveller is simulationist not because there is a real galaxy that Traveller tech etc is modelled on, but because there is a preexisting reference that Traveller intentionally models (multiple references in fact). In this light, EPT might fall back into the simulationist fold... or at least be hovering somewhere nearby.Coming back to moving parts, possibly there is some threshold for "enough", but dashed if I can see how one firms that into anything but a weak and somewhat partial definition. Consider, for instance, that RQ fails to model individual fingers and toes... but surely a sword swing could take off a finger!?I mean in contrast to authored on the fly with our play. The game designers pre-authored the words, i.e. wrote them at a time prior to our play. We will recite or synthesise from their words rather than freely author our own.It's not now at issue because I believe we are defining whether or not a designed game is simulationist. Not whether a group's play is.</blockquote>

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