AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Personally I'm happy if the action handling part of the game simply reads like an Indiana Jones movie, or a DC Comic, basically. In my interactions with game design people in the 21st Century (at least) I don't think 'simulation' is a word any of the more prominent ones ever use or even consider. I know it isn't how I think!
You can have other discussions about the 'campaign aspects' or whatever you want to call it (world 'simulation') and there's a somewhat different set of things to be said. In the end though its fundamentally the same. All that is needed or really practical in a game is to have a depiction of things such that the players can apply simple logic and get comprehensible results. If you besiege the town, then food won't be available in the market, or it will be really expensive. We don't need to simulate a market for this, nor is simply saying this in and of itself meaningfully a simulation. Its just how we expect that the world will work. If for some reason Greaso has plenty of flour to sell, then we know to ask questions about that!
You can have other discussions about the 'campaign aspects' or whatever you want to call it (world 'simulation') and there's a somewhat different set of things to be said. In the end though its fundamentally the same. All that is needed or really practical in a game is to have a depiction of things such that the players can apply simple logic and get comprehensible results. If you besiege the town, then food won't be available in the market, or it will be really expensive. We don't need to simulate a market for this, nor is simply saying this in and of itself meaningfully a simulation. Its just how we expect that the world will work. If for some reason Greaso has plenty of flour to sell, then we know to ask questions about that!