D&D 5E Is the Real Issue (TM) Process Sim?

[pemerton]

Overcoming the challenges that give you XP is totally an ingame process. And your character overcoming those challenges is totally a process in the fiction.

Maybe you have interpreted the word "process" in a different way from what I (and I'm pretty sure [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]) intended.

You could keep a running tally of the number of breaths, or heartbeats, you have taken in your life. But that would not model any process or any component of a process: at least to the best of my physiological knowledge, there is no process in the human organism in wich "number of breaths taken" or "number of heartbeats" is a causally active quantity.

Whereas a running tally of the number of kilogram weights I have loaded into your backpack is a modelling of a process, or at least a component of a process: the weight of your backpack is a causally active quantity in various muscular efforts.

If you treat XP as a running tally of exciting events or accomplishments in the PC's life, it is analogous to a tally of breaths taken. It's a tally, but it's not a model or representation of any causal process. Unlike an encumbrance tally, which is.

The process is that if all these things are happening at the same time, who has the speed and wherewithal to be a little faster at trying to achieve their goal than someone else?

But initiative doesn't model that process.

Suppose I take three items - a sinker, a facewasher and a ping-pong ball - and I drop them into water. The sinker sinks quickly. The facewasher sinks slowly as it fills with water, and perhaps bobs somewhere not far below the surface. The ball floats. I could then label them by their degree of "floatiness": ball-1, washer-2, sinker-3. The "floatiness" number is not a model of any process. It's just a label for an observed outcome.

At best, initiative is a label for an observed outcome of "who is more likely to get the drop on whom".

Again, no, it needn't be.

Actually, the 6-second round, and its associated action economy, must be a metagame device. A sufficient proof of that is the following: I can represent exactly the same ingame events via a 6-second round (3E, 4e), a 10-second round (B/X, Rolemaster) or a 1 minute round (AD&D). Changing the length of the round doesn't correspond to any difference of what is happening in the fiction (it's not as if AD&D character are 10 times slower than 3E or 4e ones). Hence, the choice of round doesn't correspond to any modelling of any ingame process. It's a metagame decision about how often to take stock of the ingame situation, try and represent it, and pay attention to changes within it.

I don't think the same is true for hit points.

It's not insane to hold that view

<snip>

the playstyle that I use is worthy of consideration for 5e, and, in fact, may be a style well-suited to being a default 5e playstyle.

Who said that it's insane, or not worthy of consideration? My point is that it's not insane to interpret otherwise either - ie the mechanics don't mandate your favoured interpretation.

Remember, the D&Dnext rules themselves suggest, as a default, that hit point loss that leaves the target above half hit points do not correspond to injury. So Mearls, at least, doesn't think your view is the default, or "natural".

by "beat this orc," you must mean "beat the AC of this orc,"

Not necessarily. Not, for instance, if my PC can do damage on a miss.

Also, I as a player roll a die trying to beat the orc's AC. My character is not trying to beat the orc's AC. My character is trying to defeat the orc in physical combat. There is no such thing as AC in the fiction: only armour, and speed, and strength, and grit.

a value (AC) that explicitly represents how hard it is to physically hit the orc with a weapon.

<snip>

Attack rolls are explicitly attacks. It's what it says on the tin.

As I said, I'm not any sort of fighter or fencer or boxer or re-enactor. But from those who are, I gather there is no such thing as "the attack". Gygax, in his DMG, tells me that the attack roll doesn't model any particular swing of the weapon. I have never watched a boxing match in which punches were thrown at a rate of one every 6 seconds (let alone 1 every minute).

I also have read that Gygax envisaged D&D combat looking like an Errol Flynn sword fight. In a Errol Flynn sword fight, every swing involves physical contact (on the other's sword, typically) and only one blow delivers a serious injury (the final one). Prior to that final strike there might be a slash to the face or arm that draws blood, but that doesn't contribute to death: no one dies because they took to many blood-drawing slashes to the face or arm of that sort!

In Runequest, that sort of duel is modelled as Parry, Parry, Parry, Dead. But D&D doesn't have a parry mechanic. For those who envisage their D&D fights in this sort of way, though, hit point ablation is the relavent mechanic.

Since that HP damage came as a result of beating the enemy's defenses (AC) with your attempted lethal attack (attack roll), the mechanics are pretty much spelling out you that you injured, but failed to kill, the target when you tried to land that lethal blow.

This is the bottom line, I think (or the first half of it).

In my view the mechanics don't tell me that I injured the target, because the target (absent condition-infliction) is in no way impeded. So for me, the mechanics tell me that, in the exchange that took place over that 6 seconds, the target was worn down in some way (on the back foot; tiring and "on the ropes"; perhaps dazed or distracted).

What I'm really telling you is that specificity and causality are really quite important factors to an enjoyable game for what I'd wager is a great plurality of players (if not a majority), and so to describe those things as "problems" is to miss the plot.

And what I'm saying is that nothing in the core D&D combat rules, including the D&Dnext rules, mandates that an attack roll, or hit point ablation, be given any particular interpretation in the fiction. The mechanics leave it open. They don't stop me envisaging it in an Errol Flynn style, just as they don't stop you envisaging it in whatever style you want to. None of that "specificity" matters to the actual action resolution mechanics, which don't differ depending on whether I declare "I swing at the head" or "I go for the gut" or "I attack him" or "Have at it, yon ogre!"

I'm demonstrating that this reading of things is merely valid and important -- not a "problem." I would go on to argue that it's probably a better way for default D&D to go, but I haven't really launched into that yet.

<snip>

5e needs to do to satisfy both camps at once is avoid default rules that can only be modeled one way or the other (injury mechanics, and morale-based healing, for two).

This is the other half of the bottom line. If damage-on-a-miss and morale-based healing are going to be eliminated as options, because their presence upsets the process-sim crowd, I probably won't be buying D&Dnext.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

If you treat XP as a running tally of exciting events or accomplishments in the PC's life, it is analogous to a tally of breaths taken. It's a tally, but it's not a model or representation of any causal process. Unlike an encumbrance tally, which is.

Well, it's somewhat representative of experience as the name implied. It is saying because you've had the experience of fighting monsters you understand fighting better. You understand tactics better. You've learned to swing your sword better through watching your allies fight and your enemies fight. You've just spent more time thinking about fighting which might lead your to your own inspiration for new techniques and strategies.

In that it's the same process your brain goes through of storing memories, learning and imagining. Though we don't understand this process well enough even with modern science to model it precisely even if we wanted to.

I find the idea that if you perform adventuring you get better at adventuring to be fairly logical. The more advanced the adventuring, the more you learn from it. Therefore higher level traps and monsters provide you with more xp than lower level ones.

 

[billd91]

But initiative doesn't model that process.

Suppose I take three items - a sinker, a facewasher and a ping-pong ball - and I drop them into water. The sinker sinks quickly. The facewasher sinks slowly as it fills with water, and perhaps bobs somewhere not far below the surface. The ball floats. I could then label them by their degree of "floatiness": ball-1, washer-2, sinker-3. The "floatiness" number is not a model of any process. It's just a label for an observed outcome.

At best, initiative is a label for an observed outcome of "who is more likely to get the drop on whom".

I'd say you're mistaking an initiative modifier for the process of determining initiative. The modifier would be the label on someone's quality of "reacting faster than someone else".

Also, I as a player roll a die trying to beat the orc's AC. My character is not trying to beat the orc's AC. My character is trying to defeat the orc in physical combat. There is no such thing as AC in the fiction: only armour, and speed, and strength, and grit.

But you are trying to penetrate his "defenses, something you can see expressed in the fiction. It's all a question of your level of abstraction/specificity.

In Runequest, that sort of duel is modelled as Parry, Parry, Parry, Dead. But D&D doesn't have a parry mechanic. For those who envisage their D&D fights in this sort of way, though, hit point ablation is the relavent mechanic.

Sure it does. Combat Expertise, fighting defensively, going full defense.

 

[Balesir]

Overcoming the challenges that give you XP is totally an ingame process. And your character overcoming those challenges is totally a process in the fiction.

Yes, but is the fact of *having* xps something that means anything to the character? Do they feel any different (assuming they have not levelled up) when they get a few more xps?

Which means it's not a "problem" like the OP posits, anymore than not liking One Direction is a problem. It's not WRONG to play the game like this, it's not a flaw in need of fixing, it's a way the game is used and it shouldn't be ignored or dismissed as a mistake that needs to be fixed.

That's my intent when I point out that XP and initiative and HP and whatever can totally be a representatoin of something in-world. It doesn't NEED to be metagame.

My original post did not say that the view of hp, xp, attack rolls or whatever as specific events or things in the game world was the "problem"; please read it again.

What it was saying was that some people do see the mechanical steps of resolution as corresponding exactly with steps in the process we are imagining happening in the game world, while some people find that the process described by such a supposition is hopelessly non-believable (even in a world of elves and pixie-fairies). This is the problem - that there are incompatible desires/needs, not that either preference is "wrong".

I'm not particularly interested in jargony labels, really. I'm not here under the tribal banner of "process-sim" (whatever the Ron that means), trying to lay claim to rulebooks as my territory. I'm just articulating why the playstyle that I use is worthy of consideration for 5e, and, in fact, may be a style well-suited to being a default 5e playstyle. Not a "problem." I'll leave it up to experts in the terms to determine if this falls under that umbrella, but given the OP, it seems like it might.

The term does not come from the Great Bête Noir, and I have explained at great length what it means (and if you don't want to read through that detail every time it is discussed, congratulations - you have just discovered what jargon is for).

And as for your preferred playstyle being worthy of consideration, of course it is - which is why there is even a "problem". If either playstyle were not worthy of consideration there would be no problem - we would simply ignore that playstyle!

I don't think the mechanics need to tell you what your actions are. You tell the mechanics what your actions are, and the mechanics work out what that means. You say to the dice, "I'm going to try and hit that orc with my sword, you tell me if that works." It's the specific thing that helps the players see the action in their head.

Also, by "beat this orc," you must mean "beat the AC of this orc," which uses a value (AC) that explicitly represents how hard it is to physically hit the orc with a weapon. So there's a pretty obvious tie in the mechanics to actually injuring the orc with your weapon if you beat the AC with your weapon, and not injuring the orc with your weapon if you do not.

They also tell you that the reason you didn't land a lethal blow was because you failed to beat the enemy's defenses when you tried to land that lethal blow. And before you even used the mechanics, you knew that you were attempting to land a lethal blow.

What I have tried to explain is that this "model" of how the fight works just fails to work for me. If you like, it "shatters my suspension of disbelief". The idea that one combatant might swing their sword (or whatever weapon) in a great arc trying to "hit" their opponent is just so at odds with how sword fights and such work that I hardly even know where to begin. All that conjures up for me is some sort of bizarre, wooden parody. It almost sounds like schlager duelling where you are supposed to let your opponent hit you. The idea that you aim for a specific target on your enemy's body and the blow either gets blocked/parried/dodged or it does not is just alien to any conception I can reasonably form of how sane, sentient creatures might fight. The depiction is more surreal than it is real.

Without an action, there is no conflict. Conflict doesn't exist in an unconnected vacuum from the events that precipitate it. There is no agon without a struggle, and a struggle comes out of a verb, a change, a dynamism, something happens, and then there is a result. A conflict is a process. Might as well work through it how causality does. Might as well say that the precipitating event that causes the conflict happens, and use the mechanics to help describe the fallout from that event.

This is all, of course, true. But the precipitating action is "I attack the orc (or whatever creature I'm fighting)". The sequence of events that follows is confused, complex and immensely variable, and during it I will act more as a result of my training (or lack of it) and instinct than ever I will as a result of rational, considered thought. Combat consists of a succession (from possibly only one up to as many as the combatants can manage before reaching exhaustion) of sharp, confused (at least from an observer's point of view) flurries of action. Each flurry may or may not end with one combatant being hurt, dazed, bruised, reeling or disabled. It could be either combatant, and both combatants will almost assuredly have tried to disable, maim or kill their opponent at some point during the flurry.

Clearly, it isn't necessary. You can describe a conflict abstractly, without a need to reference what is driving it. You can look at a struggle in reverse chronology the way historians and archeologists do, in terms of figuring out how a certain condition came to be. Some might even prefer that for the flexibility it offers in terms of the story you tell (anything that arrives at the endpoint is a valid narration!). It sounds confusing and dull and dis-empowering to me, but I'm not the arbiter of how everyone has fun.

Even so, this is likely how the combatants in a real fight view the action, in part. The rapid sequence of actions in combat are done mainly through habit of training and instinct. It is only after the flurry - while circling awaiting the next attacking move - that the fighters will review what just happened rationally and make decisions about their approach to the next flurry.

But is it better for default D&D to be a game where people declare actions and drive the game forward than where they abstractly resolve nebulous conflicts and figure out what happened to bring them to their present state? I'd certainly argue so. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily true, but I think there's a strong, strong argument in favor of it.

I think there is a strong, strong argument against it, if we are talking about declaring individual weapon moves, because (a) these are seldom things that combatants do consciously/rationally and (b) they are almost certainly a realm of decisions where the character will be vastly better placed to make the decisions than the player.

The only really considered decision the character makes rationally is the decision to attack. After that, everything is down to reactions and responses. There is a really good reason they say "no plan survives contact with the enemy" - you can have intentions going in, but not really a plan since, as the Duke of Wellington once remarked, your enemy "has not vouchsafed his plan to you".

"Engaging the goblin in melee combat" is what, specifically? What does that look like? What is different about it when Mary's character does it vs. when Billy's character does it? What are they trying to DO when they do that?

Give me something concrete, so that I can imagine the world in my head, and believe in this this world of elves and orcs because things are happening in it.

It looks like adopting a guard, making an opening move intended to neutralise his weapon and/or shield or force him to make some counter move, and then reacting to his counters and counters to your counters by trained reflex and instinct until either one of you is stunned, maimed or disabled or you separate due to neither of you wanting to follow up hard.

This does not just apply to humans fighting - watch cats or dogs fighting some time; it works much the same way with them. This is why the whole thing is pertinent to a game of pixie-elves - it's not a specifically "real world" thing. It's a "sentient creatures with soft bodies fighting" thing.

I think it may be better for the game to presume that players are saying that their characters do specific things. I'd bet that creates a more rewarding experience at more tables than abstract waffling. Which is still viable for those that have no issue with it.

What I'm suggesting is not "waffling" - it's just that:

- Assuming an implausibly simple process of "fighting" in the game world destroys plausibility for me and others like me

- There is no need to model the process that is happening in the game world step-by-step in order to have a functional game system

- A plausible process of fighting is too confused/complex/involved to model with a simple, quick system

- But some folk apparently need (or at least prefer) to follow every stage of the happenings in the game world with system artefacts

This generates a problem, because the various desires are at odds one with another.

If player decisions are set at the level at which the character might make considered, rational choices I think you get everything you need from a roleplaying and drama point of view. If the resolution process then eschews following the game world process step-by-step then it seems to me that imagination could reasonably fill in the gaps in whatever way the various players find satisfactory.

What I'm trying to get to is, in fact, a system that will satisfy all the preferences/playstyles. Saying "a hit must mean that the attackers swing has struck home" does not do that. Leaving it ambiguous enough that the to hit and damage rolls might just be an abstract model of a flurry resulting in an outcome of one or both combatants damaged would satisfy me - how about you? Saying "damage on a miss is impossible because a miss means the swing was wide" blows it for me - how about you?

Attack rolls are explicitly attacks. It's what it says on the tin.

But if an "attack" is a move that leads to a flurry of counters and wrestling for advantage, does that really make sense? What does a "hit" mean in this context? The combatants probably "hit" each other many times, but not all "hits" really hurt. A "hit" that is a kick between the legs could be just as effective (and just as deadly, if followed up) as a spear thrust to the face. A spear haft to the kidneys would work, too. What does that "to hit" roll mean, now? Does it mean that the point of the spear made the strike? Or would a boot suffice to make it a "hit"? What about a mailed fist or sword pommel?

Like I said above, I'm demonstrating that this reading of things is merely valid and important -- not a "problem." I would go on to argue that it's probably a better way for default D&D to go, but I haven't really launched into that yet.

No, the "problem" is not any one particular way of doing things - it's finding a way of formulating the rules such that all the ways of doing things are accommodated.

That's not really what I'm telling you. I mentioned in the "let us meat and morale come together under one HP model!" thread that all 5e needs to do to satisfy both camps at once is avoid default rules that can only be modeled one way or the other (injury mechanics, and morale-based healing, for two). Which isn't to say at all that everyone needs to envision these things the same way.

I agree - 5E ought to (at least try to) satisfy both (or even all) camps. Saying that the mechanics must model what I can only see as a ludicrously oversimplified process, and judge what is or is not possible in the game based on that process, fails in that precise aim.

What I'm really telling you is that specificity and causality are really quite important factors to an enjoyable game for what I'd wager is a great plurality of players (if not a majority), and so to describe those things as "problems" is to miss the plot.

I don't know for how many players following a causal process in detail would be important, but this is more-or-less what I was saying in my original post. Some players apparently do feel the need to have the sub-steps of the process explicitly modelled by sub-steps in the game mechanism. My question is can we provide for this in some way without the need to model a cartoonishly bizarre process? Is there some explanation, some alternate wording or some slightly adjusted model that might satisfy both camps?

I think the trick is finding the right combination of abstraction and simulation. I think it's funny how opponents of simulation style games seem to think those of us who like those games want everything simulation like real life. I can tell you from my own preferences that I don't want exact simulation in a game.

Please read the thread again. It is not, and never was, about realism or simulating the real world. It is about the perceived need (or lack of need) for the resolution system to step through the in-game-world process that leads to the modelled result (whether that is "realistic" or not).

 

[pemerton]

Well, it's somewhat representative of experience as the name implied. It is saying because you've had the experience of fighting monsters you understand fighting better. You understand tactics better. You've learned to swing your sword better through watching your allies fight and your enemies fight.

<snip>

I find the idea that if you perform adventuring you get better at adventuring to be fairly logical. The more advanced the adventuring, the more you learn from it. Therefore higher level traps and monsters provide you with more xp than lower level ones.

But this is not how XP works in classic D&D (where it mostly comes from treasure). Nor is it how it works in 4e (where you get XP for completing quests, for failed skill challenges (per Essentials) and for free roleplaying (per DMG2)).

What you're describing is the sort of "hard field training" model of XP that a game like Rolemaster goes for, and perhaps some versions of AD&D 2nd ed and 3E. Those designs are a reaction to process-sim criticisms of classic D&D XP-for-gold.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

But this is not how XP works in classic D&D (where it mostly comes from treasure). Nor is it how it works in 4e (where you get XP for completing quests, for failed skill challenges (per Essentials) and for free roleplaying (per DMG2)).

What you're describing is the sort of "hard field training" model of XP that a game like Rolemaster goes for, and perhaps some versions of AD&D 2nd ed and 3E. Those designs are a reaction to process-sim criticisms of classic D&D XP-for-gold.

Well, I started in 2e, so that's where my idea of XP comes from. However, even before this you could say that the gold you gained almost always came from adventure in some form or another, it was just the reward you gave at the end of the adventure and it came with the XP. Which means it was just an alternate way of giving out the same sort of experience. Of course, one that wasn't perfect. Which is why it was changed in future editions.

As for 4e, I can tell you that although it was POSSIBLE to get XP for completing quests, and roleplaying that the books say this to be an entirely optional way of getting XP. The numbers it recommends to give out for these sorts of things if you decide to do it at all are so small as to be negligible compared to the XP for defeating monsters as well. However, rewards for completing an adventure can still be considered in the same vein as XP for defeating monsters. You learned how to successfully complete a quest. You learned all the logistics that go into planning and executing a quest. It also gives a number to the things you learned along the way that weren't combat related. How to haggle for inn rooms, how to navigate the wilderness, etc. Roleplaying is another story and is mostly just given out as a reward for trying harder in game.

As for failed skill challenges, keep in mind that even failed skill challenges mean you get past them and the story continues with a complication. You just didn't succeed well enough to be perfect. You made some mistakes...and hopefully learn from them, thus the XP.

 

[pemerton]

But you are trying to penetrate his "defenses, something you can see expressed in the fiction. It's all a question of your level of abstraction/specificity.

<snip>

Sure it does. Combat Expertise, fighting defensively, going full defense.

For the reasons that [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] has given, this doesn't really work for me.

If parrying in D&D is reduced to the mechanics you describe (and I'm not even sure they're in Next, unless you count Dodge), then it doesn't happen at anything like the frequency it does in either real hand-to-hand combat (to the best of my second-hand knowledge) or Errol Flynn-style duelling (which, given my greater familiarity with cinema than real life fighting, is what I'm envisaging while I'm playing).

On the other side: if every "hit" - ie every attack roll that beats AC - counts as "penetrating the target's defences" in the way that that happens in real life (as I understand it) or cinema (as I view it), then in D&D defences are penetrated way to often. It would make combat more like a piñata smackdown then a duel between competent fighters. To satisfy my mental image of combat, some of those AC-beating "hits" have to be understood as parries or dodges that nevertheless wear down the target (via exhaustion, wrongfooting, changing the tempo, inflicting pain without otherwise causing physical impairment, etc).
[MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]'s post number 94 hits the nail on the head, as I see it: the process-sim interpretation of D&D mechanics is fine for those who want it, but it doesn't work for me because it produces a verisimilitude-destroying picture of melee combat. At the moment, if I put healing to one side, the core D&Dnext mechanics seem to be neutral as to how one interprets them. (And the designers suggest as the default interpretation of hit point loss that leaves a target above half hp that it is not injury - see the sidebar on p 22 of "How to Play" - and hence presumably did not, in any meaningful way, involve "penetrating the target's defences".)

Preserving this neutrality is quite important to me.

 

[Hussar]

I don't think simulation is opposed to abstraction. I think what simulation means is that the rules of the game are the laws of the game world, and that they are known and are consistent and logical to the people in that world. What isn't a simulation would be so-called metagame mechanics, rules that are in the game but do not have any meaning in the game world.

Conversely, I think that abstract is opposed to detailed. One could have a complicated health system with hit locations and permanent wounds, or a very simple hit point count. Both are simulations, but the latter is more abstract. By being abstract, it is inherently less good of a simulation, but that nonetheless remains the purpose.

I'm not sure that's right though. I could determine the results of combat by flipping a coin. Heads your character dies, tails, the monster dies. That's about as abstract as it can get and the action of flipping a coin bears nothing on the events in the game.

IOW, a game of Monopoly is not an abstract simulation of economics. It's a game that uses some of the trappings of economics to drive play, but, there's nothing actually being simulated here.

The same goes for D&D combat mechanics. None of the things being determined by the mechanics - success or failure of an attack, amount of damage taken, that sort of thing - bears any direct relationship to the events in the game.

In other words, a person in a D&D world has no idea what his BAB is, nor can he know what his level is. These are game elements that have nothing to do with the game world. Only in the most bizarre, OOTS style world, could a person in a game world jump off a cliff, safe in the knowledge that he or she has enough HP to survive the drop. A simple HP count is not simulating anything because there is no correlation between the world and the loss of HP.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm not sure that's right though. I could determine the results of combat by flipping a coin. Heads your character dies, tails, the monster dies. That's about as abstract as it can get and the action of flipping a coin bears nothing on the events in the game.

Sure it does. And it's still fundamentally different then a game where the DM flips a coin, the player calls it, and if the player wins he gets to narrate an event of his choice.

IOW, a game of Monopoly is not an abstract simulation of economics.

Sure it is.

The same goes for D&D combat mechanics. None of the things being determined by the mechanics - success or failure of an attack, amount of damage taken, that sort of thing - bears any direct relationship to the events in the game.

In other words, a person in a D&D world has no idea what his BAB is, nor can he know what his level is. These are game elements that have nothing to do with the game world. Only in the most bizarre, OOTS style world, could a person in a game world jump off a cliff, safe in the knowledge that he or she has enough HP to survive the drop. A simple HP count is not simulating anything because there is no correlation between the world and the loss of HP.

I think it's abundantly clear that the exact opposite is true. Hit points and the various level bonuses to d20 rolls (as well as spells, feats, and other categorical abilities) almost invariably create observable and reproducible in-game consequences. The distance you can jump, the amount of harm you can sustain, and the amount of information you can remember, are all very knowable.

In a d20 Modern game, I think materials scientists can determine that hardness, hit points, and special damage vulnerabilities of any object. Sports science segments on ESPN can essentially deduce an athlete's Jump modifier or Con score. Psychologists have probably deduced a probability curve for the population's Intelligence scores, corresponding roughly to what in real psychology is called the "G factor".

In D&D, the culture is less advanced and there is less scientific methodology, but I still think that a character with 100 hit points knows roughly how far he can fall and survive, how much damage he has at any given time, and how long it will take to heal. I think a character with 40 ft. speed knows that he is roughly a third faster than everyone else. A character with 14 Cha knows that he is more charismatic than the average commoner. Given that all of these correspond clearly to outcomes that are observable to the character and which occur reliably according to the rules, it's hard to believe that the character does not reach some common sense conclusions about his competencies relative to the tasks he does.

If you're suggesting that this creates a bizarro world that doesn't work like the real world, this is of course true. It's fantasy. There are dragons and magic and alternate planes. That's part of the fantasy. It's also part of the fantasy that no one ever really gets hurt, or that probability distributions are usually linear rather than normal. All fiction is this way; it all takes place in an alternate reality that reflects creative decisions made by the author, practical limitations of the storytelling process, and most importantly the sheer limitations of the author in observing and rendering reality.

 

[Hussar]

Sure it does. And it's still fundamentally different then a game where the DM flips a coin, the player calls it, and if the player wins he gets to narrate an event of his choice.

Sure it is.

I think it's abundantly clear that the exact opposite is true. Hit points and the various level bonuses to d20 rolls (as well as spells, feats, and other categorical abilities) almost invariably create observable and reproducible in-game consequences. The distance you can jump, the amount of harm you can sustain, and the amount of information you can remember, are all very knowable.

My character scores a 25 on a jump check and jumps 25 feet. What's his bonus? What level is he?

My character sustains 10 points of damage and has not died. What has happened to him? How many HP does he have? How many more hits can he take before dropping?

I hit a horse for 10 points of damage and it has not died. How many HP does a horse have? Without referring to any game rules, explain how you would determine the HP of a horse.

In a d20 Modern game, I think materials scientists can determine that hardness, hit points, and special damage vulnerabilities of any object. Sports science segments on ESPN can essentially deduce an athlete's Jump modifier or Con score. Psychologists have probably deduced a probability curve for the population's Intelligence scores, corresponding roughly to what in real psychology is called the "G factor".

In D&D, the culture is less advanced and there is less scientific methodology, but I still think that a character with 100 hit points knows roughly how far he can fall and survive, how much damage he has at any given time, and how long it will take to heal. I think a character with 40 ft. speed knows that he is roughly a third faster than everyone else. A character with 14 Cha knows that he is more charismatic than the average commoner. Given that all of these correspond clearly to outcomes that are observable to the character and which occur reliably according to the rules, it's hard to believe that the character does not reach some common sense conclusions about his competencies relative to the tasks he does.

If you're suggesting that this creates a bizarro world that doesn't work like the real world, this is of course true. It's fantasy. There are dragons and magic and alternate planes. That's part of the fantasy. It's also part of the fantasy that no one ever really gets hurt, or that probability distributions are usually linear rather than normal. All fiction is this way; it all takes place in an alternate reality that reflects creative decisions made by the author, practical limitations of the storytelling process, and most importantly the sheer limitations of the author in observing and rendering reality.

Wow, this is an interpretation of D&D that I would never, ever want to play. How can you claim that you want immersion when everything is determined by game mechanics? I never thought anyone would look at D&D, play it like an OOTS strip and then claim that this is a good thing.