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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6259508" data-attributes="member: 27160">Any simulation that generates as its only potential outcomes "success" or "failure" is a limited and weak simulation to begin with. Seldom do real interactions break down so simplistically; in combat this is especially so. When we design chemical plant, for example, we have whole processes designed to identify as many of the possible outcomes as can be found; if we limited ourselves only to considering "success" and "failure" of even each step of the process, we would create hopelessly poor simulations of how the final process might be expected to perform. Such a design process would, in fact, be exceedingly dangerous.Stricly speaking this is not so, but in practice it's usually best to treat it as so, yes. If the situation of the simulation were known down to subatomic level with complete precision the outcome would be theoretically deterministic; such knowledge is not really achievable, though, so we substitute random variation for unknowns (since they are functionally equivalent).DPR is a highly limited analysis of the "meaning" of the game system for the nature of the game world, sure. A more complete analysis would take into account the stochastic patterns generated as well as the mean outcomes.Nevertheless, the disputed DoaM mechanic does not allow the player of a GWF character to make any statements such as you suggest and have them be true. The random factor generated by the dice accounts for information not "known" ("generated" might be a better term, since we are talking about an imagined situation, not a real one) by either the GM or the player, but there is other information that is not known by the player, such as the target's hit points, damage reduction and so on. All it makes certain is that the target's hit points will be diminished, but since it's far from clear what hit points are, that is hardly any stipulation as to the in-world causality at all.But there is input from the dice; they determine whether a great amount of hit point reduction is done or a little. There is still a stochastic pattern of outcomes, even if none of those outcomes is "the character's actions had no effect on the world whatsoever". There is no very apparent reason why such an outcome should ever be a required entry in the "possible outcomes table". If a character attempts to walk from one side of an inn common room to another, there is a range of outcomes that we might imagine from such an attempt, but "the character is frozen in position and does not move at all" need not be one of them. To stipulate that "your attempt has no practical effect at all" must be a potential outcome for every action ever attempted in a "simulation" seems to be bizarre at the very best.You seem to be reading too much into the "simulation" bit of "process-sim", here.What happens in the game world will be a process, sure.What happens in the real world will be a process, also.But there is no reason at all why those processes should have any similarity in form, or that they should have any step-to-step correspondances. The only requirement for a good simulation, in fact, is that the range and stochastic pattern of the outcomes predicted by the simulation should match well with those observed in the "real" process. Since we cannot know what the "real" range and pattern of outcomes is for a purely imagined process, D&D (or any other RPG) cannot literally be a simulation, because it's not simulating anything that can be observed and compared to the simulation.Indeed they do - and if they tell us anything at all they tell us that D&D combat is nothing like real combat in the slightest.Right, but to simulate fights between D&D characters by simulating real combat would not give us a system that devolves down to "I swing my sword, do I hit or miss?" The range of outcomes is vastly wider than "hit" and "miss", and is not under the control of any single participant in the fight (unless one of them is vastly more skilled than all the others combined). Not just the actual outcome, but the range of possible outcomes is determined by the actions of all parties in a combat. The very tempo of D&D combat is wrong for any simulation of real world combat (the "I go/U go" pattern of moves is fundamentally at odds with how fights work - especially between trained combatants).So, sure, real world combats happen (and have happened for a long time), but D&D combats look nothing whatsoever like them.I'm having difficulty with understanding what assumptions you are making, here; do you mean that the DM has a map for exploratory play that the players aren't privy to? Because I'm not really considering "system" at that level, here. Or do you mean that the DM's vision of what is happening in the fiction is the only "real" or "valid" one, and that the players' visualisations are all "wrong" to a greater or lesser degree?The second assumption places a huge onus of communication on the GM, and even then I don't believe (as mentioned in my OP) that they could ever nail down every conceivable nuance of the scene such that everyone's vision of "what just happened" was identical to his or hers. Indeed, I might even argue that in the wider sense the "game system" consists of everything that is communicated about the situation in the imaginary world - both everything the players communicate about what their characters do, and everything the GM communicates about what happens in the world thereafter. Unitl something is communicated, it's not part of the shared imagined reality.So the players play characters who have literally no understanding of how the world they live in works until they experiment with it?? That seems an alien and curious way to play, to me. Indeed, it's not really a "game" at all, since the players are ignorant of the rules of it (quite literally, apparently). Furthermore, it's likely to be a very long winded affair, since the players will need to explain what their characters are trying to do very carefully and attend to the outcomes minutely in order to even start making sense out of the game at all.I commonly play games where all the players know the rules, and I find they work far better than those where the players don't know the rules. The rules form a sort of "code" for communication - a shorthand, if you like - so that character actions and outcomes can be communicated swiftly and unambiguously. Knowledge of the rules also acts as a proxy in the player for the knowledge their character has of broadly how the world they grew up in works.I do, I suppose, draw a clear distinction between the "rules" and "game elements". Game elements, which includes player characters but also includes other creatures and items in the world, are defined in terms that call off the "shorthand" of the rules but are not rules themselves. As a result, the players need know nothing about the game elements outside their own characters; the creatures they fight and the items they find, for example, will (at least to start with) be completely mysterious to them. But the *rules* - the definition of how those game elements interact with each other - will be openly available to everyone playing.I think I would disagree. It would - or at least could - be "process-sim" in that it describes the steps in a process. The problem is that the process has no similarity to anything that might happen in any sort of believable world. Without the "slack" available to interpret the outcomes in a way that takes into account all the things to which our own view of the world is sensitive, the process that is described risks becoming unbelievable in the extreme. The first response of some (me, for example, back in the day) to this process-sim --> unbelievable process is to start trying to build a "realistic" process (i.e. one that models all the things that the people one plays with are sensitive to or knowledgeable about). Eventually, however, it becomes obvious that this is a fools errand and a never ending quest; no system can cover everybody's sensitivities. Eventually, I came to the realisation that "less could be more"; that building a system with a plausible range of outcomes without defining the process that leads to them works far better than any attempt to model the process step-by-step ever will.The problem with that is that the division of possible outcomes into "hit" and "miss" is completely implausible. The very concept of a "sword swing" that either finds its mark or misses, with no further consequent result or variation in outcome, is alien to any plausible concept of "combat".Just a few examples of why this model fails:- A trained fighter will never "swing" with any expectation of striking with the first move (unless their enemy is ignoring them or unaware of them). They will never, in fact, undertake a move that is either purely attack or purely defence. The first swing might be designed to draw the opponent's weapon in a certain direction or make them shift balance, but it would hardly ever be expected to "hit".- No move in a combat is just "an attack". What you see are "defensive attacks" or "offensive defences". Holding your shield close by your side and swinging a weapon is practically a written invitation for the opponent to maim or disable your weapon arm. Offence and defence are one action - the move is intended to do both.- Flowing from the above, the tempo is never ONE (strike) - TWO (block/parry). The tempo is just ONE (simultaneous move to block or deflect the enemy's weapon and strike at the same time). "TWO" is taken up with an attempt to counter the opponent's counter to your "ONE"; if you have not made an attack on "ONE" then you aren't going to get one, and if you haven't made a defence on "ONE" then you may well be dead or disabled. A fight instructor might well say "Forget one-two - there is no 'two', it's never going to happen".- Rarely, when starting a move, will a fighter know where their blow might land. Counter will follow counter will follow counter, until one side or the other leaves an opening where their defence fails and an opportunity to cause hurt is seized. Whether this opportunity is for a stab to the gut, a pommel to the face, a kick to the 'nads or a slice to the arm you simply don't know in advance. If the opportunity arises, a fighter will learn to just follow their instincts and take it - wherever and however it might arise.- There will always be "contact" in melee combat - lots of it. In fact, skilled fighters will try to keep in contact with their opponent (or their weapon) as much as possible, because that way you can feel where the opponent is trying to shift and gain warning of their next move. The idea that "contact" happens only when one side successfully "attacks" another is simply flawed when any recognisably "animal" combatants are fighting.In short, you will model a process this way, but it won't be one that resembles in the slightest any plausible form of combat between animate, sentient beings with vulnerable bodies.</blockquote>

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