D&D General On simulating things: what, why, and how?

[Mannahnin]

I guess I don't consider faction play to be downtime. Players are actively doing things to strength them or weaken their foes. I was thinking more like buying stuff, crafting things, or training to be a next level whatever. That stuff I would rather wave away and get to the actively doing things part.

I was thinking about video games just now. How MMO and open world games became all the rage in the last few decades. Tons and tons of content and have it any way you want. Truth is the 100 hours of promised game play is 75 hours of scouring the corners of the globe looking for squirrel pelts to get whizbangs. Its filler to stretch the legs of the content. This is needed in video games because folks can devote tons of time to them. I'd rather skip all that for my valuable player to player time at the table. No fetch missions, no house building, etc.. Wave and done.

I'm with you. As I said, I'd like it to be interesting or to run fast, or both. I do like the idea of having time pass in the campaign, so we don't have the "zero to 20th level in five weeks" phenomenon.

In my current old school game the PCs are 6th and 7th, after about two years of real time and probably a year and a half of game time.

 

[Reynard]

Man I hate to tell you but starting in the 80s make you old school man.

I know some 1975ers that would definitely not let me in the Old School club.

 

[payn]

I'm with you. As I said, I'd like it to be interesting or to run fast, or both. I do like the idea of having time pass in the campaign, so we don't have the "zero to 20th level in five weeks" phenomenon.

In my current old school game the PCs are 6th and 7th, after about two years of real time and probably a year and a half of game time.

I do usually have time pass, but its a blink of an eye type thing. 6 months later...

What I really dislike is downtime mechanics that dictate what you do. Like time units. "Ok we will be downtime for 6 units until the adventure continues." For 1 unit you can shop, for 3 units you can level, for 6 units you can craft... The sim here is each activity takes a certain amount of time and you have to manage it. Not a level of sim I'm interested in.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm with you. As I said, I'd like it to be interesting or to run fast, or both. I do like the idea of having time pass in the campaign, so we don't have the "zero to 20th level in five weeks" phenomenon.

In my current old school game the PCs are 6th and 7th, after about two years of real time and probably a year and a half of game time.

I still like the old AD&D way of doing things. Real time passes between sessions as long as the party is back in town instead of out in the wild or delving. The recommendation was to end every session back in town. That's not feasible now considering how long combat takes, but it would be pretty easy to extrapolate. Last session the group entered the dungeon, this session they head back to town. Just have however much time passed between those sessions happen before the next session.

 

[overgeeked]

I know some 1975ers that would definitely not let me in the Old School club.

It's all relative. To someone who started in 2014 someone who started in 2000 is "old school". But they're both fresh-faced babies compared to us '80s kids...and we're newbies to the '70s grognards. It's "get off my lawn" all the way down.

 

[Mannahnin]

I still like the old AD&D way of doing things. Real time passes between sessions as long as the party is back in town instead of out in the wild or delving. The recommendation was to end every session back in town. That's not feasible now considering how long combat takes, but it would be pretty easy to extrapolate. Last session the group entered the dungeon, this session they head back to town. Just have however much time passed between those sessions happen before the next session.

That's exactly what I did for most of the campaign. It was basically necessary for the year+ when I was running two groups in it as an open world, because a lot of the time they were raiding the same megadungeon. No way I was going to deal with figuring out whether group A would still be in the dungeon when group B arrived, so I just made them leave. A week passes between sessions = a week passes in game too.

Now that I'm down to one group and we're playing through some longer modules, though, I'm more flexible about letting them end a session mid-adventure. Right now they're in the middle of Castle Amber and I think we've had 6-7 sessions but have only passed two days in the dungeon. Hence game time and real time no longer matching up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A think that is A reason, and a good one, but wouldn't call it THE reason. I think some people just like the immersion simulation helps engender, while others like the fact that there are understandable, "realistic" rules to the universe of the game for their own sake.

I agree. All three of those reasons matter to me.

 

[chaochou]

And if the rulebook bothers to tell us how much the dragon weighs, that implies an intent that players use the information. Hey, we can adjudicate whether the corpse is transportable on our wagon! Etc.

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that without a fictional weight written down somewhere you cannot adjudicate such things in D&D? Do you also need a volume written down for you?

If you're not saying that, then, again - what work is this make-believe-stat doing for you? And what makes it 'simulation' instead of just making stuff up?

 

[Micah Sweet]

You're free to do all these things with your imagination without a stat block that says a dragon weighs five tons. Or if it says two tons. Or 800lbs. Do you need the statblock's permission in order to imagine these things? If not, what work is it doing?

I can imagine all those things in Dungeon World without a stat block and without the claim of simulating anything. It's just a thing to imagine a dragon landing on a roof and tiles scattering everywhere and the beams creaking and splintering. That's authorship.

Make believe dragon, make believe roof, make believe events. No simulation happening, nor required.

To be frank, directly making this stuff up all the time with no consistency sounds awful to me.

 

[chaochou]

To be frank, directly making this stuff up all the time with no consistency sounds awful to me.

Perhaps you can give examples from your own play of how this inconsistency occurs.

Or are you - by quoting me and saying this - attempting to impute inconsistency (whatever you mean by that) in my games? If so, perhaps you can back that up with examples from my games.

ETA: Yep, thought not.