Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6260761" data-attributes="member: 27160">This is a very good point, and shows that a system in which the divisions and steps of the mechanical process are driven by player decision points is not always divided up in a way that reflects the chronological progress of the game-world process being modelled.I do think it is still reflective of the game-world process, however, since it is generally saying (at least implicitly) that the decisions that are resolved earliest have outcomes that cannot be influenced by those that are resolved later. We could say, though, that the linkage is &quot;soft&quot; or &quot;loose&quot;.This is all very true, but I still am reminded of my own views and assumptions when I started moving away from D&amp;D back in the early 1980s. At the time, it seemed &quot;obvious&quot; to me that the AD&amp;D experience system was &quot;silly&quot; and &quot;nonsensical&quot; since it &quot;obviously&quot; was meant to model character learning, whereas people clearly do not learn combat and adventuring skills from geting richer (ha - how naive!). Having xp awarded for beating foes and such &quot;made sense&quot; (lord how I have come to loathe that phrase!), but xp for treasure was just &quot;ridiculous&quot;.Of course, I eventually came to realise that this was total and utter hogwash - that xp for treasure did exactly what it was intended to do - but by then the water was under the bridge, down the river and out in the deep blue sea...In other words, this is yet another area where people will be quite capable of seeing (and needing?) a &quot;process-sim&quot; resolution mechanic, even though such an interpretation is not really supportable upon careful consideration.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Balesir, post: 6260761, member: 27160"] This is a very good point, and shows that a system in which the divisions and steps of the mechanical process are driven by player decision points is not [I]always[/I] divided up in a way that reflects the chronological progress of the game-world process being modelled. I do think it is still reflective of the game-world process, however, since it is generally saying (at least implicitly) that the decisions that are resolved earliest have outcomes that cannot be influenced by those that are resolved later. We could say, though, that the linkage is "soft" or "loose". This is all very true, but I still am reminded of my own views and assumptions when I started moving away from D&D back in the early 1980s. At the time, it seemed "obvious" to me that the AD&D experience system was "silly" and "nonsensical" since it "obviously" was meant to model character learning, whereas people clearly do not learn combat and adventuring skills from geting richer (ha - how naive!). Having xp awarded for beating foes and such "made sense" (lord how I have come to loathe that phrase!), but xp for treasure was just "ridiculous". Of course, I eventually came to realise that this was total and utter hogwash - that xp for treasure did exactly what it was intended to do - but by then the water was under the bridge, down the river and out in the deep blue sea... In other words, this is yet another area where people will be quite capable of seeing (and needing?) a "process-sim" resolution mechanic, even though such an interpretation is not really supportable upon careful consideration. [/QUOTE]

Verification