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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8675273" data-attributes="member: 82106">Because, otherwise calling it a simulation is just empty words! If your simulation process cannot tell you HOW and WHY something came to pass, then it is nothing more than a random generator of outcomes! Calling it a 'simulation' is thus meaningless, it is just as equally valid to call it a "random generator of genre-appropriate results."I would talk to some physicists about that... Yes, we don't have a complete description of ANYTHING in the Universe at some 'final cause' level, but we have a DEEP understanding of how gravity actually works! No physicist needs a rubber sheet, they can use the full equations of GR (if they really want to do a lot of math) and tell you very accurately what any system of masses will do. While I cannot speak for [USER=22779]@Hussar[/USER]'s intended meaning, I am highly skeptical that he is proposing your maximal interpretation. There is an excluded middle here. In order to do a simulation we need to be able to construct some sort of model, which takes as inputs the relevant conditions in the simulated system, and produces as outcomes some new state of that system or additional facts related to it, and where there is some kind of either A) actual verification that the outputs resemble the simulated system, or B) a formal description of the causes and effects within the system which can be shown to relate to known laws. Absent A or B, we have really nothing. Since A is impossible in relation to a game world, we are left to conclude that any meaningful definition of simulation must include that it incorporates a formal description of the causes and effects that it models.No, I can simply say that when I describe things in D&D I describe them as being largely analogous to things in the real world. I don't have a REASON for why they are like the real world. I don't actually care! It is not a 'simulation', I am simply following a convention that says I do this thing this way. Its perfectly fine if I construct some tables or whatever that spits out plausible descriptions of things too. It isn't 'simulating' anything, it is simply a "generator of plausible things." I'm all for plausibility and the resulting comprehensibility and verisimilitude of settings. I just don't honestly believe that there's any possibility of approaching this in terms of simulation (except in possible a few very restricted and specific cases, like I'm sure you could make a table that told us how long it takes to fall X distance that is based on Newtonian Gravity and I will grant that using it in a specific situation is 'performing a simulation', for all that's worth).</blockquote>

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