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<blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6260485" data-attributes="member: 27160">I think some &quot;process-sim&quot; games you can see in the mind's eye as not process-sim. What I mean is that you can view the steps of the mechanical process as not being linked to the game-world process at all, but as being merely steps to generate a random outcome that tells you the outcome you are to imagine of the in-world events without reference to the in-world process required to reach that outcome. The only disadvantage in doing this is that the assumption of step-to-step correspondance may exclude certain stochastic patterns of outcome (like &quot;damage on a miss&quot;).Well, the line is very thin, here, I think. By &quot;pausing&quot; the process to allow player input, you are breaking the in-world process up into steps, each of which is modelled by the system - which is just what process-sim seems to entail. The difference is that what defines the size of each &quot;step&quot; is the points at which you are deciding that a &quot;significant&quot; character decision (i.e. one that ought to be reflected by a player decision) is made (or could be made).I could go further and say that each of these decision points ought to be a decision that the players at the table are competent to understand the import of, but that almost goes without saying, as they are by definition in that they have selected the system for that very reason (one hopes).The only real criterion to emerge so far is that it can be unhelpful if the game system process has steps that superficially map to the game world process but for which no player decision is possible (like &quot;to hit roll&quot; -&gt; &quot;damage roll&quot;). Such systems can lead to the imposition of unnecessary restrictions on the game system due to players imagining some unnecessary correlation between system process and game world process.This may well be one reason why some players regard correspondance between the steps of the mechanical system and the steps of the imagined in-world process as neccessary (or at least desirable, or maybe &quot;natural&quot;), but I honestly don't know. Are there any here who like/need such correspondances willing to do some soul searching and comment on this?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Balesir, post: 6260485, member: 27160"] I think some "process-sim" games you can see in the mind's eye as not process-sim. What I mean is that you can view the steps of the mechanical process as not being linked to the game-world process at all, but as being merely steps to generate a random outcome that tells you the outcome you are to imagine of the in-world events without reference to the in-world process required to reach that outcome. The only disadvantage in doing this is that the assumption of step-to-step correspondance may exclude certain stochastic patterns of outcome (like "damage on a miss"). Well, the line is very thin, here, I think. By "pausing" the process to allow player input, you are breaking the in-world process up into steps, each of which is modelled by the system - which is just what process-sim seems to entail. The difference is that what defines the size of each "step" is the points at which you are deciding that a "significant" [I]character[/I] decision (i.e. one that ought to be reflected by a [I]player[/I] decision) is made (or could be made). I could go further and say that each of these decision points ought to be a decision that the players at the table are competent to understand the import of, but that almost goes without saying, as they are by definition in that they have selected the system for that very reason (one hopes). The only real criterion to emerge so far is that it can be unhelpful if the game system process has steps that superficially map to the game world process but for which no player decision is possible (like "to hit roll" -> "damage roll"). Such systems can lead to the imposition of unnecessary restrictions on the game system due to players imagining some unnecessary correlation between system process and game world process. This may well be one reason why some players regard correspondance between the steps of the mechanical system and the steps of the imagined in-world process as neccessary (or at least desirable, or maybe "natural"), but I honestly don't know. Are there any here who like/need such correspondances willing to do some soul searching and comment on this? [/QUOTE]

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