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

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
This seems like a pretty ridiculous comment.

It's obvious (for instance) that the mechanics in AD&D of determining whether or not a Type VI demon survives being lightning bolted by an archmage aren't simulating anything.

Nor are the mechanics in Agon for determining whether or not a hero is able to stop the kraken destroying a temple.

But that wouldn't stop someone enjoying AD&D or Agon.
I would suppose they're simulating a demon being struck by a lightning bolt, but obviously you have to devise rules for both those things for it to make any sense.

It's equally obvious that there are many games on the opposite end of my preferences that I know nothing about. I have no idea what Agon is, for example. That's what I was curious about, since the preferences espoused in the post I responded to were so alien to me that I had no idea what game would even cater to them. I wasn't trying to be snarky. I honestly don't get it.
 

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Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I think that a description of a dragon that says it weight five tons - whether that is in a paragraph of text, or broken out into a "stat block" format, or whatever - is not the same as the sort of stat block we see in a wargame that actually feeds into a set of rules procedures and resolution mechanics. It's just a description.

Will a five ton dragon sitting on top of a house collapse the roof/building? How strong is the roof, and how much load can it take? Answering those questions doesn't seem like a simulation - it's just doing some engineering calculations. My guess is that, at most tables, people would just make something up.

Do we need a rules system to determine whether or not creatures destroy buildings that they land on - say, a system that takes some sort of Size statistic, feeds in an Architectural Strength statistic, and generates an outcome? Rolemaster has various rules in this neighbourhood, but most people find RM too rules heavy! Which is to say, they don't like simulation-type mechanics and prefer to make things up.

A D&D example: the Wilderness Survival Guide is full of charts and tables that allow determining things like how much food someone might find if they forage in such-and-such an area, with such-and-such a skill, for such-and-such a time. I doubt those tables have seen much use, relative to the whole extent of D&D gameplay in which they might have been used. Again, because many people just prefer to make things up than filter it through a system that models (or purports to model) the process in question.


I basically agree with @chaochou's reply, but want to add something.

I don't think the gameplay principles are the same. The rules for a simulationist wargame, or the rules for jumping chasms in a system like Rolemaster or RuneQuest, have correctness conditions: we can see whether or not the rules, when applied, produce a spread of results that more-or-less conforms to the real world outcomes that our system is meant to produce. If they don't, we can improve our rules (eg by adjusting paramters, or making room for further inputs, or whatever). At least in my play of RM, this sort of correction-by-reference-to-real-world-constraints is a meaningful part of play.

But in the case of invented units and hypothetical engagements, there are no correctness conditions. The "expected outcomes" are just imaginative preferences. If the 4th level fighter (a Hero, in the Chainmail/classic D&D parlance) is able to handily defeat a 4 HD Ogre in a typical engagement, does the mean I have to adjust my inputs and parameters, or is that the system working as intended? There's no answer other than one's aesthetic preference for Hero vs Ogre fights!

Further, as @chaochou mentioned, to satisfy correctness conditions for wargames we need lots of different rulesets even when we make relatively small variations: eg a system used to resolve clashes of Napoleonic infantry, cavalry and artillery will probably not be usable, without significant changes, for a conflict featuring tanks, machine guns or modern artillery.

But D&D uses the same system to resolve a fight between two mercenaries, a fight between one mercenary and five others who surround them, a Hero vs an Ogre, a Hero vs a Dragon, etc. What's it simulating? It's a mechanical process for answering some questions, like Who wins the fight?, but it's not simulating anything, even hypothetically.
The difference, as I see it, is that @chaochou seems to want to make everything up, because nothing in the books seems to have any weight to them. That's what I don't understand.
 


pemerton

Legend
I would suppose they're simulating a demon being struck by a lightning bolt, but obviously you have to devise rules for both those things for it to make any sense.
The point is, what does that even mean? What are the properties of a demon? How do they interact with lightning? (Be that normal, or magical.)

Suppose I change the number of dice the lightning bolt does from 18d6 to 36d6. Or suppose I change the die size from d6 to d8. Or suppose I decide that demons are immune to being struck by lightning (the AD&D MM says they take half damage). Have I improved my simulation? Made it worse? There are no answers to those questions, because there are no correctness conditions, which is to say it's not a simulation at all. It's just storytelling, mediated via some dice rolls.

It's equally obvious that there are many games on the opposite end of my preferences that I know nothing about. I have no idea what Agon is, for example. That's what I was curious about, since the preferences espoused in the post I responded to were so alien to me that I had no idea what game would even cater to them. I wasn't trying to be snarky. I honestly don't get it
My point is that AD&D can cater to the preferences of someone who doesn't like simulation! The way that AD&D resolves the archmage shooting a lightning bolt at the demon doesn't model anything. Yet plenty of people have enjoyed playing AD&D.

The difference, as I see it, is that @chaochou seems to want to make everything up, because nothing in the books seems to have any weight to them. That's what I don't understand.
@chaochou's point is that saying that a lightning bolt does 18d6 damage, and that half that damage is suffered by the demon, and because the demon has 8d8+8 hit point it is likely to survive (before we even factor in magic resistance or saving throws), is all just making stuff up.

Nothing in the AD&D Monster Manual has any weight to it, beyond stipulating some parameters that get fed into resolution systems to work out what happens when creature A fights creature B. Which is completely different from wargame design, that actually aspires to have those parameters generate outcomes that are known, from history and experience, to be plausible.

AD&D adopts the trappings of wargame resolution, but is not actually a simulation of anything.

And then we get the question: given that it's all just making stuff up, what is the benefit of using the stuff in the books rather than just making up one's own stuff? There might be good answers to that question, but the idea that the books are giving us accurate simulations of something couldn't be one of them.
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I don't understand this post. I made an observation about game mechanics. You seem to be telling me something about what is happening in the fiction.
The whole point of simulation is that they're connected. When your archmage casts Lightning Bolt at a demon, you have rules to adjudicate that thing that just happened in the fiction, that simulate what would happen. In the case of fantasy stuff, of course someone at some point made up all those things. But if you want verisimilitude, those made up things are consistently used to create a simulation of the event (lightning bolt is lightning bolt, the same demon is depicted the same way). If the elements in question resemble things in RL, I prefer that some effort be made to have it resemble something close to reality.
 



As far as fighting a dragon, yeah. It's not like people have been hunting animals much larger and more dangerous than humans often using sticks with (maybe) a sharp rock stuck on the end.

Oh, wait
View attachment 251761

I'm going to lead with this.

Oofta. This isn't apples and oranges. This is like petunias to Supermassive Black Holes.

I'm not going to enumerate all the reasons why a tribe paleolithic hunters trapping a herd of RELATIVELY SLOW-MOVING...NOT FLYING...NOT COLLOSAL...NOT GOD-LIKE OMIDIRECTIONAL ATHELTICISM-ENDOWED mastodon in a kill box and MAYBE slaying one with an onslaught of spears from range is NOTHING LIKE a singular warrior wading into melee and clashing with an Ancient Wyrm.

Come on man.

Or...you can do the D&D thing and compare the Mastodon's stats/metrics to that of an Ancient Wyrm! The results won't be pretty (for your attempted refutation)!

Would have liked to see this expressed more as the opinion it is than as some kind of truism, but you're certainly welcome to feel the way you do.

Part of the problem here is something I've discussed elsewhere. Simulation is a spectrum. You don't have to throw it out entirely because you run into something like the dragon issue. Yet time and again I see people attack simulation because it can't be perfect. Of course it can't! The concept isn't meaningless because there are examples where it doesn't work.

Another point I've mentioned before: magic breaks the rules. That includes the inherent magic if a multi-ton flying tank. If magic is involved, its magic and doesn't have to mesh with physics or anything else. If it's not magic, in my opinion effort should be made to keep within at least the action movie realm of reality. I know this angers the "fighters are underpowered" crowd, but the narrative space of magic simply has fewer limits.

Dragons fly and breath fire because they have magic. Just like zombies and animated skeletons are real things in D&D even though they're physically impossible.

So, to be clear, I didn't mean what I wrote above as an opinion. I meant it as a truism. Because its true.

* It is true that the morphological and biomechanical traits of dragons (particularly the larger variety and especially Ancient Wyrms) would be an impossibility in anything approaching a system governed by anything approaching earth-like parameters.

* It is true that if the above were possible, that mundane humans (even those at the absolute tail of the distribution when it comes to athleticism, mental processing, proprioception, courage) couldn't dream of even withstanding a singular moment of melee clashing with these colossal, endowed-with-impossible athleticism creatures.

These two things are fundamentally true.

What isn't true is what you have both written above.

There is no evidence in any of D&D that Dragon morphology, ability to respirate, biomechanics, athletic prowess, or flight are supernatural. I'm looking at AD&D 1e MM. Nope. I'm looking at B/X. Nope. I'm looking at RC. Nope. I'm looking at 3.x. Nope. 3.x tries to bin a whole lot of stuff under the sense-defying, total-hack Simulation patch, Extraordinary (not magical but may break the laws of physics...whatever the hell that means!) keyword...again...a complete patch for historical game problems (one that wasn't carried forward).

There is no precedent that I've ever heard in D&D of a dragon being unable to move, fly, claw/bite/tail swipe within an Anti-magic field or when Dispel Magic is placed upon them. If this is happening in D&D-land I would love to hear about it. Tell us about the stories of the Wizards in your games curb-stomping dragons with a nicely timed dispel when the dragon is flying! CRASH. Ok, now they can't move or claw/bite/tail because their biomechanics are shut down so just enstabinate them until dead. My guess is this hasn't happened in your games (nor anyone else's games). If it has, I would love to hear about it!

Dragons HAVE magic. Their morphology and biomechanics are not magic.

And ok...let us use the sense-defying 3.x Extraordinary keyword for dragon morphology and biomechanics. Why wouldn't it be a prerequisite for epic heroes to ALSO have their morphology and biomechanics fall under this exact same Extraordinary keyword? There we go! Simulation satisfied. Epic Warriors can now wade into melee and clash with dragon because their athleticism breaks the laws of physics without being magical! I expect a slew of D&D posts about this now and I expect a cavalcade of play excerpts regaling us all of your 18th level Fighters doing 30 ft standing Broad Jumps and 15 ft standing Vertical Jumps and cleaving mountains and holding their breath for 2 hours! My guess is this hasn't happened in your games nor will it ever happen. If it has, I would love to hear about it!




And it all comes back to things like HP, To-Hit, Armor Class, and the keyword "Wounds" for the Cure Line of spells. The worse part about HP is that they actually model physical and mental resolve/stamina BEAUTIFULLY. If your gas tank is waning YOU KNOW IT and you know that every clash/effort (whether you're in a grapple, sparing, or climbing or trying to defend someone on the basketball course/hockey rink) at that point might be your last (before you fail at the endeavor/lose the matchup). That is the exact internal causality model of D&D and the exact cognitive state inhabited by PCs etc

If folks didn't interpret “to hit” (in melee only...not other target numbers) early on as “creature in imagined space” rather than “target number" and we had the nonsensically nameed Cure Wounds line changed to Restore Vitality....well D&D would have historically worked infinitely better as both a Game and a Simulation and we wouldn't have had these ridiculous culture wars around D&D as Simulation and HP as meat.

Finally, ironically a game like Stonetop (not remotely a Sim game) is infinitely a better Sim than D&D when it comes to this stuff. You have a HP pool that doesn't grow and it measures your physical/emotional resolve/stamina etc. You have Armor as "Soak." You have the Weakened, Dazed, Miserable Debilities that actually negatively impact your performance in ways that hews to those conditions. You get actual Injuries that shut down possible moves in the imagined space or hinder you dynamically. You have a recovery model for these things that is infinitely more sensical than D&D!
 

Hussar

Legend
In most of my home campaigns, months if not years pass between levels after the first level or two. People need a significant amount of time to train and improve their skills. Depending on the campaign we also narrate downtime activities that sometimes involve ongoing combat encounters, just at a lower risk level than in our gaming sessions.

But I recognize that it's pretty atypical to do it that way.

I’m not sure how typical or not it is.

My current Candlekeep game has hit 9th level and more than 3 years have passed. A lot of that is travelling but there was a lot of other stuff too.

If you start actually tracking actual travel times, I think a lot of 5e games do have a lot of time pass.
 

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