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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8675122" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm curious, so if basically any of these simulation options is 'not going to improve my game' and don't sound like you consider them very 'sim', what is gained by going there at all? I guess what I mean is, by contrast I have a long-established D&D world. It is a bunch of maps and descriptions of locations, and whatnot, as well as the history of things established during play in many previous campaigns. Now, none of this is really 'explained' anywhere. I mean, there's some histories and whatnot, but all any of it does is 'tell a story'. If your characters visit a certain city that is fairly nearby to a Dwarven enclave, you will encounter some dwarves selling metal goods. That's just color though, nobody can explain the 'trade relations' between these localities, because none exist! You can imagine some such exists, and you are going to imagine that the result is what you're told you see, but that's not 'simulation' it is mere color.So, what would it take for that to be not just color but an actual genuine simulation? What would be gained by that exercise in terms of quality of play, or even any difference at all in play? And frankly, given how simulations of such things in the ACTUAL WORLD are fairly unreliable, even given a vast and dense set of data points and the understanding that there is an ACTUAL physical reality there which we are simulating, how can we even say it is possible to simulate an economic relationship like this when all we have are 2 dots on an imaginary map? Do we know how much labor is required to manufacture an axe head? What are the transport costs? Which commodities are in demand in dwarf land that they are willing to trade for (IE for which it is cheaper to trade an axe head than getting it some other way). I propose that in made up fantasy worlds we are so far from knowing realistic answers to these questions, simply do to the lack of definition of necessary facts, that any claim of 'simulation' is mere sophistry. Certainly we have a description of why an axe head costs 5sp, and I don't deny the plausibility of that description, but it is still mere color, it isn't based on necessary facts, which simply don't exist! So, I FEEL like its color all the way down. People can call it 'simulation' until they're blue in the face, but IMHO we're talking about color. Maybe a particular shade of color, you would never say "oh, they just give away the axe heads for free." OK, right, I think its fair to say the color meets expectations and fulfills genre tropes, etc. by falling within a certain expected range of answers. I just don't think that range is set by any kind of actual model of economics or even anything close to one.</blockquote>

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