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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5512507" data-attributes="member: 42582">For me, this is a good description of purist-for-system simulationist priorities.I think the three classic RPGs that really support this sort of simulationist play are Traveller, Runequest and Rolemaster. Runequest is perhaps the most simulationist of them all, as there is almost no point at which metagame considerations can intrude to disrupt the mechanical modelling of ingame causal logic: there are no choices like feat or skill development, for example, and decisions about how much to parry vs how much to attack are encoded in the parry and attack skill percentages rather than made by the player. Traveller is nearly as simulationist as Runequest, but does allow the player to make choices about parry vs attack in melee combat - but melee combat is probably a fairly small part of typical Traveller play.Rolemaster is noticeably less simulationist in its character build rules, because the player gets to make choices about allocating points to skills which don't necessarily model any ingame causal process. (Though one can interpret it that way if desired - the points allocation models the PC's learning.) And choices about attack vs parry, and similar choices in spell casting - which come up all the time in typical fantasy adventure play - mean that the simulationist mechanics create room for a bit of a metagame wedge to be inserted.I think that 3E has a lot more places where the metagame wedge can be inserted - the whole system-mastery issue in relation to character build, for example (which is quite different from Rolemaster, where it's hard to go wrong provided you put big numbers in the skills you want your PC to use). And hit points are pretty black-boxy to me (surely no one is suggesting that they just measure physical meat, such that a high level fighter has as much "meat" as a huge dragon).But there is little doubt that 3E does prioritise this simulationist ideal, of using the system to exhibit the ingame causal processes, to a much higher extent than does 4e.</blockquote>

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