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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3738296" data-attributes="member: 4937">The text isn't really about 1st edition AD&D, and to the extent that it is, I'll be bold enough to say that Ron Edwards was wrong.For example:Edwards is just flat out wrong there.  What Gygax is addressing is specifically the threat from highly simulationist then rivals to D&D like C&S (or even Tekumel) which had carved out a niche by pointing out how poor of a simulation of anything D&D was.  Gygax is here rejecting heavy simulationism in favor of the game.  And when he says 'game', he means game.  In order for Edwards to continue to make his point from here, he then has take Gary's words and twist them around so that they no longer mean what they obviously mean.  I would love to be able to support my argument by saying, 'When the author says, 'red', he really means 'blue', and when he says 'blue', he really means 'red'.', but doing so would be truly disengenious rather than merely "palpably" so.When Gygax says, "imagination and creativity", he means just that.  And the context he is using them in is not tools of simulation (which he's just explicitly denied), but tools of problem solving ie 'gamist'.  Edwards does this same twist a bit later on: Edwards wants to focus on the 'true-to-life quality' phrase in that statement, but deliberately ignores all the context.  Why is Gygax obsessed with keeping careful track of resources?  Because, keeping careful track of resources challenges the players: "Time is yet another facet which helps separate the superior players from the lesser ones."  The snipped out text is part of Gygax's larger discussion of challenging the players.  Some players will use thier time resources unwisely, and thus fail the challenge, and other players will use thier time resource wisely and prove themselves the superior player.  He is most certainly not focusing on keeping track of time so as to make the game believable, however worthy of a goal that might be.  And this can easily be shown because in other places, the need to keep challenging the players and not let them get ahead will trump realism or simulationism.  As anyone that has read through the whole of the 1st edition DMG knows, when Gygax says 'a meaningful game', he means one that has been suitably challenging.  He reserves his greatest disdain not for DMs who fail to simulate things, but for those DMs who fail to challenge the players.  When he brings up realism in the 1st edition DMG, its entirely in the context of creating additional burdens and complications for the players.  Sometimes the irony gets pretty good though:Yes, it is, but maybe not for the reason Edwards outlines here.  Again, D&D latched on to earlier wargame mechanics not for any hard resolution/realism reasons, but because of the desire to create tactically challenging situations where players would excercise "imagination and creativity".  As Edwards goes on to write just a bit later:D&D has notably never cared much about any of that stuff.  Of course, it would be entirely unfair to Mr. Edwards to claim, despite what you seem to imply by sending me this link, that he thinks of D&D as a simulationist school game.  Rather his early mention of D&D is trying to argue about simulationists roots, and here - for whatever reason - he flubs the argument.  If Gygax had wanted to take his vast knowledge of history and use it to create a simulationist game, D&D would have been alot more like C&S.  If he cared nothing about it, it would have been alot more like T&T.</blockquote>

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