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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8616894" data-attributes="member: 71699">For sure. I believe that simulationist games can readily be identified as games whose designers intended to be simulationist, that tend to be adopted by those interested in or encourage simulationist play.That's normally not quite true. We do compartmentalise - say to wings or even parts of wings - and we nuance the mechanic significantly. But in the end, your wing normally has some hit points that are decremented in some circumstances and at some threshold the wings dynamically change.The design pattern is something like this. Set a variable. Let sub-systems send decrements to the variable. Typical cases are intersections of collision boxes, or of particles or lines through a bounded volume. With each decrement assess the variable against some rules, possibly sending updates throughout the system. If necessary, we can assign HP to each nut and bolt in the wing.Genuine alternatives include something like a stress-and-shock dynamic, where say a collision tests a set of variables and sends updates based on static and dynamic parameters. This is not something we will see in an RPG because it is far too effortful for a human to manage multiple times in a game session. It's possible some Flight Simulators use that. One reason why it's not so common is that ensuring the models predictably produce reasonable results is hard.To me there is a strong difference between saying "not a mechanic that prioritises sim concerns" and "not a sim mechanic". 5e HP has a known reference (how tough a person of tier is to take out), and does some kind of a job simulating that reference. 5e HP isn't detailed. When I think about the game text [USER=6987520]@DND_Reborn[/USER] locatedI can see that I ought to have narrated that M was able to shift about the cage and avoid injury until below half HP. (IIRC M was a low level bard so perhaps I didn't err egregiously.) Here, the world reference is a familiar fiction one in which heroes can sustain that for a time. Then bites start landing and I should have (and did) narrate signs of wear. Here the reference is that hero being worn down and shaken or bleeding. The final blow should (and was) narrated as striking directly, leaving trauma.We could say that we discount as a reference a world in which heroes can sustain attacks without visible injury for a time. Okay, but then are we forced to discount all magic systems, psionics, unproven technologies, supernatural creatures, etc? Once we admit some fictions as references, it's hard to see how we aren't picking-and-choosing by discounting one in which heroes are Achillean. We could say that no game is simulationist if it has sysems with fictional references, or that all such systems are discounted from being valid references for simulation (and thus we look to other systems to see how they stand.) On that basis, we could discount what I've dubbed Achillean HP.Having written that, I feel like that's our best approach. We discount fictions as valid references for simulationist mechanics. We can then say that considering its non-simulationist mechanics (HP, levels, etc) and its simulationist-to-a-degree other mechanics (abilities, exhaustion, etc) we classify 5e as non-simulationist because it doesn't appear to prioritise sim concerns and would not be obviously adopted for or encouraging of simulationist play.</blockquote>

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