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

[niklinna]

Your example shows EXACTLY what happens and how gravity affects the movement of something. In other words, at any point from the beginning of rolling that ball to the time it comes to a stop next to the heavy point you placed on that rubber sheet, at every single point in time, we know exactly where that ball is, how fast it's going, and where it will go next. Heck, you can, with 100% accuracy, predict exactly the path that that object will take.

This is off-topic, but if you're talking about that hoary old "balls on a rubber sheet" thing for relativistic gravity, that is just a bad model. It relies on actual gravity pulling the balls into the wells to "simulate" gravity. The whole point of relativistic gravity is that it's just the geometry of spacetime, and the "balls on a rubber sheet" model directly countervenes that.

I found a long article many years ago that described how it works using only geometry, but it took a while to find. Wish I'd bookmarked it.

Anyhow. Carry on with debating how many squares a dragon fits into.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I keep hearing this, but I'm not sure I believe it actually happens much. I mean, OK, if you get together 5 random people with limited or no RPG experience, kids, whatever. But really, several people who are at all knowledgeable and have played some? I think they can easily settle on a concept. Things that they may not agree on, those are unlikely to be magically settled by some sim mechanics.

I see it not infrequently, and I'm playing with people I've been playing with for a minimum of a decade, and sometimes four times that. And it doesn't matter whether the mechanics are sim or not, the issue is once they've been accepted, they've been accepted; people may not like it but they're not liable to suddenly expect things to work out in a way different than the mechanics tell them. You can argue how frequent that is, but I've seen it enough over the years I'm going to believe its common until given resounding evidence to the contrary.

With sim its an issue of people not always seeing how things actually work the same way, and nothing about playing RPGs for a while will automatically change that. The difference between the impressions people get about how free climbing works and how it actually works can be pretty different, and all it needs is a little variance in actual experience to make this jarring. For someone who gives a damn about simulation its nice for it to actually at least resemble reality here, but honest, any common metric is better than none.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To be completely fair, this is something that D&D has really gotten weird about. 1e dragons were a LOT smaller. More the St. George type, so, it was a bit more plausible that dude with a pointy metal stick could conceivably kill it. But, yeah, when your dragons are kaiju sized, the notion that I can kill Godzilla with a sword is just so laughable. And it gets even weirder in that a large group of dudes with bows and arrows can kill that dragon.

In general how big things are has a tendency to drift according to artistic impulse. Dragons are just a particularly bad case of this. D&D can also get away with this to a greater degree than some games, but a lot of times its a simple case of the actual game definition and what the artwork seems to show not being congruent.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm sure other people did the same and I'm not surprised other people didn't like ToTm. The lack of reference in books is what I was referring to.

Well, while a fair number of people coming out of the wargaming community into D&D were miniatures players who were used to fussing around with tape measures and such, a lot of others were primarily chit-and-hex wargamers and weren't, and the truth was people coming in from SF fandom were more likely to lean into the latter than the former, so if you weren't going to be really loosey-goosey about it and do TotM, people often would do something with a board, even if it was salvaged from something else. With dungeons you'd often get a default grid even on sketch maps, and I saw people playing using a chessboard and chesspieces as miniatures substitutes.

I'm not actually sold early D&D was quite as play-surface negative as some people try to sell it, honestly.

 

[Thomas Shey]

EDIT - in case it’s not clear, if you wanted to accurately model Ancient Wyrms head < > tail and wing <> wing you’re talking a minimum 18x20 squares figure or max 24x30 squares. No battle mat could handle that and it’s not particularly useful as a position simulator.

You could do it on a VTT grid, but I suspect your final clause is right even there.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I feel I've been pretty consistent about this:



I said the exact same thing about dragons than I said about the T-rex, only the body needs to fit in the square, neck and tail can overhang, and it makes sense as the creature has reach.

You need to have a conversation with @Oofta, then, as they show a T-Rex extended half again outside the assigned grid dimensions and not just "a bit." Again, T-Rexes seem to get a pass that dragons do not.

Look at this picture of a T-Rex (with curious cat for scale) that I just painted.
View attachment 252011
The base, the area that the dino occupies on a mat is smaller than the actual critter. You can look at it and say "Obviously a T-Rex is bigger than huge." Or you can look at and say that the area it's standing is huge, and it's the space that the feet occupy, the room it needs to stand on and maneuver, is what makes it huge.

I think either way of looking at it is fine and don't have a problem with the latter. The reach exceeds the space it occupies by 10 feet which makes sense based on the mini.

P.S. No cats, or minis, were harmed in the production of this photo, although I did put the mini back safely behind glass before posting.

Again, you seem to be establishing that what is simulated is correct because the game says so, and you can find a mini that both 100% follows the game's convention but also let's you pretend you really aren't and a T-Rex is somehow bigger. The bit about reach is a hoot as well, because you're effectively saying that the T-Rex is only that big when it attacks and isn't that big at any other time. That's certainly simulationy, however you define it.

And then there's the question of how much is a miniature, which is just art (and we've been told art cannot be relied upon) probative to the issue?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Again, I think you are making assumptions about the role of distance and position in resolution that are not true for a whole host of RPGs.

Absolutely true, but since they tend to not be games that interest me for various reasons, its true for all the ones I'm liable to engage with. I've explicitly mentioned on numerous occasions that games that do not care much about position its far less true. Its why people could to some extent get away with it in OD&D for example, because all you really cared about was distance and proximity.

I did not bother with maps much when running Scion 1e, for example, because movement was so large, area effects so rare that all you really cared about positioning for was visibility. But that's a distinct outlier in most everything I chose to play, so suggesting TotM for me is still a nonstarter for the most part.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's true of the RPGs I've played, such as the ranges of weapons, targets having cover, etc., but then again I've only played about half a dozen RPGs with any frequency in the past. I know others who have played or tried dozens of RPGs over the years, but that isn't my experience.

YMMV, of course.

He's correct that there are absolutely games its true of, but I think he overstates how common it is for it to be completely irrelevant.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You need to have a conversation with @Oofta, then, as they show a T-Rex extended half again outside the assigned grid dimensions and not just "a bit." Again, T-Rexes seem to get a pass that dragons do not.


Again, you seem to be establishing that what is simulated is correct because the game says so, and you can find a mini that both 100% follows the game's convention but also let's you pretend you really aren't and a T-Rex is somehow bigger. The bit about reach is a hoot as well, because you're effectively saying that the T-Rex is only that big when it attacks and isn't that big at any other time. That's certainly simulationy, however you define it.

And then there's the question of how much is a miniature, which is just art (and we've been told art cannot be relied upon) probative to the issue?

We are being consistent. The creature's body should roughly fit in the area, they should be standing in their squares. T-rex can do that for a 15 feet square, 120 feet long dragon cannot even remotely do so for a 20 foot square.

And yes, we can certainly quibble about whether 20 foot square would make more sense for a t-rex, but with giga dragons in 20 foot squares we are talking about an issue of a completely different magnitude.

But, please, go ahead and tell us how you imagine this working. Do dragons of the size of a passenger aeroplane just somehow stand in a 20 foot squares, perhaps even in a room they could no way fit in, and everyone just is supposed to overlook this?

 

[jmartkdr2]

In general how big things are has a tendency to drift according to artistic impulse. Dragons are just a particularly bad case of this. D&D can also get away with this to a greater degree than some games, but a lot of times its a simple case of the actual game definition and what the artwork seems to show not being congruent.

IIRC, 1e giants were about 10 feet tall. 5e giants start at 16 for the shortest of them, and range up to 24.

I can see how picturing a 4 foot dwarf fighting a 24 foot storm giant with a battleaxe can be difficult.