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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6257996" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think process-sim preferences are part of the explanation, but cannot be the whole of it, because if you really want process sim in your game then you need to abandon D&D combat resolution for some other system (RQ, RM, presumably Harn, Burning Wheel, etc) that actually correlates the outcome with a process. Wheres in D&D combat losing hit points is not itself any definite outcome in the fiction until the combat comes to an end. (Robin Laws is the first designer I know of who actually articulated this idea, in his advice on the narration of action point loss in HeroWars, but Gygax seems to have been implicitly aware of it in his remarks on hit points and abstract combat resolution in his DMG. How it fits in with ranged attacks has always been a bit mysterious - I don't think it's a coincidence that D&D-style RPGs tend to present melee combat as the core case and ranged attacks as secondary or derivative in various ways.)Furthermore, many players seem willing to leave their process-sim preferences at the door if they otherwise enjoy the play of a game element. On the current "Mirror Image in 3E" thread I think it's been established that correlating Mirror Image with the fiction is no easier, and in some cases perhaps harder, than correlating Come and Get It with the fiction. In response to this point I've been basically told to suck it up, apply the spell rules and play the game! Where's the process sim in that? And if it's good enough for Mirror Image, why not for CaGI? I think that a lot of the apparent process-sim preferences, in the context of D&D at least, are connected to other preferences like tradition, familiarity, habit etc. The real objection to DoaM is that it is different. The process sim objection - which, as I say, bites just as hard in Mirror Image adjudication, or in any hit point loss short of death - is in many cases, I think, a post facto rationalisation because people have the mistaken belief that "I don't like it" is not a good enough reason. Whereas I would have though that in hobby gaming "I don't like it" is in fact an excellent reason not to include a certain element (mechanical or story) in your game!That's because all the people who like that style of play are already playing RQ, or RM, or Harn, or BW, or . . . !This is why I regard the process-sim objections to abilities like DoaM or CaGI it as essentially red herrings. No one who loves D&D can be a purist for process-sim, because it's core resolution mechanic does not simulate any process! Until you lose all your hit points, the rules haven't actually specified any outcome within the fiction, let alone any process whereby that outcome eventuated. Hit point loss on its own is a purely metagame state of affairs!I don't see why not. Cast Control Weather. Or offer the mayor an umbrella . . .I agree with this. As I see it, this therefore leaves design space for DoaM. And it also leaves design space for no DoaM. But the reasons for including or excluding wouldn't be abstraction vs process sim. They would be questions like "Do or don't we want mechanics like DoaM that reduce uncertainty and mitigate failure in rather definite ways?" Because the answer to such questions seems to be quite varied across different players, perhaps a suite of options from which different groups can pick and choose is in order . . .</blockquote>

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