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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8617082" data-attributes="member: 42582">Post 192, upthread - which was mostly in reply to you:And from post 325:And in reply, post 329:So the notion that "simulationism" is a property first-and-foremost of game procedures - PC build, action resolution, GM-side/setting-and-framing content introduction being the main three - seems to be an accepted premise in the thread.I think Ron Edwards did a reasonable job of identifying it <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/" target="_blank">here</a>, under the heading "Internal cause is king":Consider Character, Setting, and Situation - and now consider what happens to them, over time. In Simulationist play, cause is the key, the imagined cosmos in action. The way these elements tie together, as well as how they're Colored, are intended to produce "genre" in the general sense of the term, especially since the meaning or point is supposed to emerge without extra attention. It's a tall order: the relationship is supposed to turn out a certain way or set of ways, since what goes on "ought" to go on, based on internal logic instead of intrusive agenda. Since real people decide when to roll, as well as any number of other contextual details, they can take this spec a certain distance. However, the right sort of meaning or point then is expected to emerge from System outcomes, in application.Traveller is able to aim at this, despite its vacc suit and chase rules, because those don't sit at the core of the system. Or to flip it around: someone like me, who looks at the vacc suit rules as one of the strongest of the Traveller subsystems, is coming to the game looking for a less-than-fully-sim experience. (Which it can support, with some very minor changes to how the world map is generated.)And <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">here</a>, Edwards quotes a lengthy passage from Maelstrom Storytelling, about how to frame scenes in terms of thematic/dramatic intent, and that includes the following remarks:If the players enjoy the challenge of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the narrative flow and enjoyment of the game. . . . Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.And Edwards then remarks, "I can think of no better text to explain the vast difference between playing the games RuneQuest and HeroQuest."The ethos of simulationism is internal cause is king - we resolve the jumping of the chasm by (i) knowing how wide the chasm is, (ii) knowing how far a person can jump, and then (iii) comparing (ii) to (i), perhaps with some randomisation if appropriate. The ethos of HeroQuest and Maelstrom is that we resolve the jumping of the chasm by (i) setting a difficulty that reflects the dramatic stakes of the story, then (ii) applying some resolution that reflects how much the character is committed to overcoming those stakes, and (iii) narrating appropriate colour - including, perhaps, widths of chasms and puissance of thews - that reflects the outcome generated by applying (ii) to (i).Hit point loss in D&D is fundamentally a measure of what has been staked rather than what in-fiction causal processes have occurred.</blockquote>

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