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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5638974" data-attributes="member: 42582">What does this mean.? What do you mean by "simulation"?Here is an extract from the rules for a free online RPG by Paul Czege, <a href="http://www.halfmeme.com/WFDrules.html" target="_blank">The World, The Flesh and The Devil</a>:Begin by writing a two or three sentence description of a problem. . . The next step is to underline significant words or phrases . . . and to annotate them with a sentence or two each . . . The Annotations are what make it personal to the character. . . The final step is to take a blank six-sider and allocate sides to the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, creating your character's W/F/D die. . . The game also requires that the GM have a set of five dice with different allocations of plus and minus symbols on them . . . in black and red . . . When a player has stated intent for the character to do something where the outcome is in question, the GM will give the player one of the conflict resolution dice with the plus and minus symbols on them. . . The player rolls both his W/F/D die and the one the GM gave him. If the result is a Devil+, it means the victory was one in which the character transcended some aspect of the Devil, and the player narrates the outcome. If the result is Flesh-, it's a failure of the flesh and the player narrates the outcome. . . If a player isn't satisfied with his dice throw, he can use an Annotation to give himself a re-roll. . . And regardless of whether the result is a failure or a success, the player must incorporate some aspect of the Annotation he used for the re-roll in his narration of the outcome. . . There are no opposed rolls, and the GM never rolls. However, if a player rolls a red plus or red minus it means the GM narrates the outcome, rather than the player. This give the GM power to introduce bittersweet victories and dramatic, crippling failures. And if a red plus or minus comes up when a player has used an Annotation to trigger a re-roll, it's the GM that references the Annotation in his narration of the outcome. Can you explain what it might mean, or be like, to play this game in a fashion that was "subjectively simulationist"?I personally can't make sense of this. It strikes me as very obvious that, in this game, rolling the dice isn't modelling anything in the world. It's assigning narration rights, and establishing parameters on that narration.4e's mechanics obviously aren't identical to this. Apart from anything else, they establish narrative parameters in a much more finegrained and nitty-gritty way. But many of them are as much like this as they are like Runequest.(This also has nothing much to do with Actor or Author stance, it seems to me. I can imagine playing The World, the Flesh and the Devil predominantly in Actor stance.)</blockquote>

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