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

[AbdulAlhazred]

This then defines 'simulation' as any game mechanic. Pick a game, it's simulation, we just need to haggle over the price.

Again, I think the word 'depiction' is MUCH more useful here! @Crimson Longinus' climbing check mechanism DEPICTS the salient elements of climbing (that it depends on skill and physical conditioning, is assisted by equipment, and that the difficulty of the climb is a situational factor based on conditions on the ground). It doesn't quantify any of these factors in any meaningful way, and in fact gives us NO real information as to how climbing works, or why the various modifiers exist, their proportions, etc. it simply depicts some salient features of climbing in a way which feeds back into the game process to produce incentives for player motivation which produce a narrative mimicking elements of how you might prepare for and approach a climb in reality. This is depiction, much like a painting of people climbing a cliff might illustrate some equipment, some particular terrain, and illustrate some situation that might be present in a climb. We would never call that painting a 'simulation' of a climb!

 

[NotAYakk]

I think of it as simulating the process of writing the script for a heist movie, as opposed to just muddling through a mostly-written script and trying to figure out what the incomplete-draft writer expected of us.

No, it is simulating the preparation step without walking through it explicitly, in an out-of-order way.

Your character spent time gathering gear and planning. What gear you gathered and what preparation you did isn't simulated then, it is simulated later.

Or are you restricting simulations to being causal and temporal? Physics doesn't have this restriction! I can make orbital simulations that run both ways, and even use them to simulate inputs that match observed output.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Why are you not engaging with what I'm typing.

You want receipts. I gave them to you.

Smaug was a kaiju and he was the inspiration for D&D Red Dragons.

For 8 years, Adult Dragons were the limit in AD&D from 77 to 85, ending with Master Set when Kaiju were introduced.

From '85 w/ Master Set > Immortals Set > Greybox FR > AD&D 2e > 3.x > 4e it was all Kaiju (outside of RC's concurrent release early 90s) through at least 2014. That is 29 years straight.

5e releases late 2014 and there is ample evidence, including the comparison to 4e Great Wyrms (also Gargantuan on the battle grid but clearly kaiju in dimensions - given), that kaiju still appear to be a thing in D&D 5e.

So what are we arguing over here?

This conversation should have been donezo long ago. It was DoA.

Can we just skip to the point where we all agree "yeah, it makes no sense for a Fighter to deal with these titans through martial prowess unless that same prowess extends out of combat with a supernatural athletic profile...so lets make sure that Ancient Wyrms only come in play at Epic Tier and that our Martial Heroes have sufficiently supernatural athletic prowess in and out of combat to clash with these titanic beasts in melee. That way its easily cordoned off to the Epic Tier of play where very few souls venture. Earlier Tiers of play can end with Adult Dragons that aren't Kaiju and those folks can have their 'bound by earth-physics martial heroes' doing relatively mundane things out of combat to go with their slightly more believable clashes with Adult Dragons."

Who doesn't agree with the above at this point? Its inarguable and its healthy for the game and the gaming culture.

What he's done is he's translated your argument that BASED ON FICTION and translated it into mechanics, so he's saying "its bullcrud because an ordinary guy in armor kills the dragons in the D&D game." Its a CIRCULAR ARGUMENT! You OTOH are saying "see, here, look at the depiction of this dragon, its 100' long, and weighs 80 tons and its a magical flying super tank!" and then you look at RoS and you see THAT depiction. The guy you are arguing with, OTOH is looking at last nights session where the fighter killed a dragon and saying "its not the same thing!"

So, look guys, the argument is that if you read the depiction of the dragon in ANY MM it is a gargantuan beast of >10 tons in weight that couldn't possibly be harmed by anything approaching a normal human! The dragon would just push past the fighter like he wasn't even there, stomping him pancake flat if he didn't scram, gulp down the magic user in a single gulp, and then burn the place down to make sure he got the thief and the cleric! lol. Even a 1e dragon realistically fits into this description (and to be honest you could run the 1e fight exactly like above since it actually has rather few hard and fast rules, though the foot stomp part doing 50+ damage might be a bit outside how you'd expect the rules to work, conventionally). THAT version of the dragon might be as small as 20' long and ONLY 10 tons!

 

[Ovinomancer]

The OP wanted to have a friendly discussion about how people use simulation in 5e. At this point, more than half of the posters are trying to prove to the other half that simulation isn't actually a thing in 5e, and those who think otherwise are essentially fooling themselves. How is that not bad faith?

Sim is definitely a thing in 5e. It's just a chaotic mess of jumbled up and opposing simulations. You have some genre sim, some real world sims, and a great big middle finger to simulation called 'magic' that's entirely prevalent throughout the system. The arguments are really between people that see this and people that want to insist that it's coherent. If you use a definition of simulation as 'like the real world' then D&D is piss-poor at this, with a few fragments that directly contradict the rest of the game. D&D isn't the only game, though. I'd actually make a strong argument that Dungeon World does a better job of real world simulation with the same trope and genre set at D&D. Certainly dragons are a better go of it!

And that's really the problem. The OP defined simulation as a goal -- to play and feel like it's close enough to real world stuff that you can easily discard disbelief. That got almost immediately tracked into arguing that specific mechanical approaches are needed to do this. That's where pushback came from, because those mechanical systems are the incoherent jumbled mess I mention above -- where you mechanically have a fighter that can only jump like a non-world class athlete, but can also engage in superhuman feats of endurance, toughness, and agility when they face off against even common monsters like ogres, much less dragons! So that got pushback. I think the OP definition is workable, though, but 5e doesn't do the job, and coming up with new mechanics to force the issue in some places while ignoring the glaring inconsistencies in others just adds to the incoherence. YMMV, and you may like the incoherence (and this is 100% fine), but at least acknowledge that it's there and you don't care about it. This argument is people declaring it doesn't exist -- or saying it does and then immediately arguing that it doesn't with the next breath.

For the uninitiated, DW dragons are 1) smaller than D&D dragons (but still terrifyingly big) and 2) are actually statted out to be as horribly scary as they should be. And that includes only having 16 hitpoints in a game where a Fighter can reliably deal d10+d6 damage. This is because dragons have all the fun tags -- reach, meaning you have to defy danger to close, where anything not 10+ means the GM can level damage on you (bad, see later); terrifying, meaning you have to defy danger to act against your fear to begin with; Messy, meaning that when the dragon deal damage it rips things apart, so like losing armor or an arm, depending. It also has 5 armor, which is straight damage mitigation. And it's damage is 2d12, keep highest, +5 with armor penetration 4. So, to fight this thing with a sword, you have to defy danger to overcome it's Terrifying nature, then you need to defy danger to get close (and need a 10+), then you need to successfully clash with it (again, a 10+ is important here) to deal damage, which would require rather high level and specific effects and some good dice luck to do in one go. And, if you miss a 10+, you're taking a crapton of damage (PCs have around 18 hitpoints themselves) AND losing something to the Messy tag. Since DW is also monsters don't take turns, there's not concern about action economy. That's not considering anything at all about the environment -- just white room straight up fight. So, yeah, I'd say that if you want to simulate what it might be like to fight a dragon in the real world (if you squint), DW is doing a better setup of what that might look like than 5e. But it's using verboten mechanics to do so, so the mechanics argument on simulation is going to be upset at the suggestion.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The OP wanted to have a friendly discussion about how people use simulation in 5e. At this point, more than half of the posters are trying to prove to the other half that simulation isn't actually a thing in 5e, and those who think otherwise are essentially fooling themselves. How is that not bad faith?

I asked @Reynard some questions a few pages ago that were genuine questions about "What, why, and how" of simulation. I also asked you for specific examples of how you incorporate simulation into your worldbuilding.

You guys didn't reply to those questions.

I've now introduced a specific example of mechanics from Blades in the Dark, related to gear and loadout, and what that does.

Do you think those mechanics simulate a PC as a capable and crafty scoundrel? Do you think relying on player skill to properly prepare their PC's gear in a game is not a simulation? Do you think this is crazy? What kinds of mechanics do you prefer for character inventory? And why?

Let's have a discussion!

 

[Oofta]

I asked @Reynard some questions a few pages ago that were genuine questions about "What, why, and how" of simulation. I also asked you for specific examples of how you incorporate simulation into your worldbuilding.

You guys didn't reply to those questions.

I've now introduced a specific example of mechanics from Blades in the Dark, related to gear and loadout, and what that does.

Do you think those mechanics simulate a PC as a capable and crafty scoundrel? Do you think relying on player skill to properly prepare their PC's gear in a game is not a simulation? Do you think this is crazy? What kinds of mechanics do you prefer for character inventory? And why?

Let's have a discussion!

I did respond to the loadout question. I'd rather reveal information to the players before they enter, revealing information they need. If they're invading the lair of a vampire, the cleric will know to prepare spells like daylight, perhaps the wizard preps sunbeam or they work out some way of stopping the vampire from just escaping in mist form.

But my approach to simulation is a bit different, it's not normally quantum equipment, it's usually things they get from investigation before they head out. However, occasionally it will come up that the player didn't think to bring something and will ask if their PC would have thought to bring it. Doesn't happen very often, and occasionally it's uncertain so it will be gated behind a check, but it does happen now and then. I don't expect the player to think of everything the PC possibly could.

 

[Reynard]

I asked @Reynard some questions a few pages ago that were genuine questions about "What, why, and how" of simulation. I also asked you for specific examples of how you incorporate simulation into your worldbuilding.

You are misrepresenting that exchange. You demanded to know what I WOULDN'T want covered by sim mechanics and I explicitly told you that I didn't really have an answer for that, but then gave you an example of areas where I WOULD like sim mechanics. That you did not want to talk about those things is not my fault.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I did respond to the loadout question. I'd rather reveal information to the players before they enter, revealing information they need. If they're invading the lair of a vampire, the cleric will know to prepare spells like daylight, perhaps the wizard preps sunbeam or they work out some way of stopping the vampire from just escaping in mist form.

But my approach to simulation is a bit different, it's not normally quantum equipment, it's usually things they get from investigation before they head out. However, occasionally it will come up that the player didn't think to bring something and will ask if their PC would have thought to bring it. Doesn't happen very often, and occasionally it's uncertain so it will be gated behind a check, but it does happen now and then. I don't expect the player to think of everything the PC possibly could.

Sure. But Blades actually allows for all of that through the Loadout/Gear mechanics. The scoundrel knew to bring his arcane implements because he'd looked into the Dimmer Sisters and knew they'd likely have arcane defenses on their lair.

The difference isn't how things are established, only when they are.

You are misrepresenting that exchange. You demanded to know what I WOULDN'T want covered by sim mechanics and I explicitly told you that I didn't really have an answer for that, but then gave you an example of areas where I WOULD like sim mechanics. That you did not want to talk about those things is not my fault.

My intent is not to misrepresent that exchange, but just to express frustration on the seeming lack of actually wanting to have a discussion. I posed some questions, you made several comments about other arguments in the thread such as dragons and the like, which I've not commented about once. I didn't demand anything. I asked for examples of game elements where it doesn't make sense to try simulation. I asked this in order to get a better understanding of what you mean by simulation, because as you use it, I am struggling to really think of games or game mechanics that don't fit. I said as much. You then assumed I was laying a trap of some kind.

Now, in an attempt to move past all that and to actually have a conversation, let's just assume misunderstanding on each other's part, and move forward in good faith.

Do you have any comments on how Blades handles inventory? Do you prefer the encumbrance system of D&D? If so, why? Which do you think is more of a simulation?

If that example doesn't interest you, maybe offer another. You mentioned shields in your first post, but not many other specific examples since (that I recall). Do you have an example you think would be interesting?

 

[niklinna]

No, it is simulating the preparation step without walking through it explicitly, in an out-of-order way.

Which is pretty much what a scriptwriter does when they write a character into a situation where they would need to have packed a certain item, so they just write in that the character has that item. So, yes.

Your character spent time gathering gear and planning. What gear you gathered and what preparation you did isn't simulated then, it is simulated later.

Which is pretty much what a scriptwriter does when they write a character into a situation where they would need to have packed a certain item. The simulation can't happen after the item is needed ("later"), it has to happen when the item is needed ("then").

Edit: By "then" you may have meant "during the time gathering gear and planning", but that isn't even considered in Blades in the Dark or in many heist films. We're in the moment, we decide the character needs something right then and there, and so they have it, without even a flashback.

Or are you restricting simulations to being causal and temporal? Physics doesn't have this restriction! I can make orbital simulations that run both ways, and even use them to simulate inputs that match observed output.

Scriptwriting doesn't have this restriction, either. You can write a story forwards, backwards (as many mystery writers do), or in whatever order you like.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I asked @Reynard some questions a few pages ago that were genuine questions about "What, why, and how" of simulation. I also asked you for specific examples of how you incorporate simulation into your worldbuilding.

You guys didn't reply to those questions.

I've now introduced a specific example of mechanics from Blades in the Dark, related to gear and loadout, and what that does.

Do you think those mechanics simulate a PC as a capable and crafty scoundrel? Do you think relying on player skill to properly prepare their PC's gear in a game is not a simulation? Do you think this is crazy? What kinds of mechanics do you prefer for character inventory? And why?

Let's have a discussion!

I use a variety of resources when worldbuilding. For geography, my main source is the 2e Worldbuilder's Guidebook. For community creation, economic and government systems, and other factors, I mostly use the ACKS RPG (an OSR game based largely on B/X). It is extensively researched, and verisimilitude is it's and my main priority.

I understand there's a disconnect between what a non-magical character is capable of in combat and what they can do out of it. It's not my main priority as a DM or a player, but I try to make up the difference with magic gear, and I'm okay with the idea that higher level characters are capable of transcending normal limits (although I wish that was more explicit in the game).

The requisition system for gear you describe is definitely a form of simulation, not much different from the Resource stat in Marvel FASERIP. That sort of system is often used in games set in a modern world. It's not my preference, nor that of my players, but sometimes it makes sense.

How much more specific do you need me to be?