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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8677681" data-attributes="member: 82106">Your own first proposed definition answers this. A simulation needs to 'mimic the operation of an existing or proposed system'. I think that all of my objections are based on this particular phrase, or the general 'is a model', or perhaps some flavor of 'being able to test different scenarios'. That third one I find many putative simulations fail on based on the fact that they are so simple they don't really admit of different inputs. I'd also note that something like an encumbrance model doesn't seem to have much of a character of 'a process that has a flow of events' to it, being simply a static model, though I'm less concerned with that as it could at least serve as a component input to other processes which might be simulations of something.Sure, but does their combat system really, in a meaningful way that corresponds in some degree to reality tell you what factors are really relevant in terms of the overall lethality of gunfire in different situations? In other words, could you look at the model, or run the simulation with various inputs, and extract from it some useful and predictive output that would inform decisions in the simulated type of situation (IE when setting up a real gun battle for instance). My guess, having played one or two of these games, is that it would be of very marginal use there, but that it is at least moderately good at generating (along with other inputs from participants) a suitable NARRATIVE of a gun battle. It seems far less like a gun battle simulator and far more like a narrative generator. I mean, you can certainly go ahead and talk about it in simulation terms, but I'm skeptical that is the most effective approach. For instance, things that are likely to make it a better simulation are unlikely to make it a better game, nor perhaps to improve the narrative in terms of the qualities that are likely valued by the participants.However, I think the questions I'm raising fall well within the realm of what and why the OP's original question was aimed at discussing.Right, this is why I call these games something closer to narrative generators than simulations. They are not really concerned with accuracy. The primary concerns involve how, when, and where the participants make inputs, the comprehensibility of the situations portrayed and how they can be reasoned about, and then about other non-narrative aspects like how enjoyable the game process of play itself is.5e dragons seemed pretty darned tough and BIG to me when I have seen them depicted in play. Outside of some significant trickery mid-range 5e dragons didn't seem to be something you could really defeat at all in a practical way. One thing our encounters drove home in spades, you better approach it on your own terms, because if the dragon gets to pick how and where it fights you, then its pretty much game over.Right, but a 20th level Battlemaster actually is NOT significantly better at Athletics than 'ordinary humans' by the rules as written. That was the issue discussed, if you can actually defeat a 10 ton dragon, you couldn't possibly lose a contest of strength with any sort of realistic ordinary human.Well, if people have a discussion where they don't agree on certain points, then the only reasonable and fair tactic is to point out where the other person's logic falls short in some way, right? That and/or making some alternative argument are the only two approaches that seem possible to me.I mean, I don't have a problem with the definitions you put forward at the start of the post, but I believe they are entirely consistent with, and congruent with the ones that I put forward myself! So, my main observation is that it doesn't appear that RPGs, most of them at any rate, are terribly concerned with simulating anything. They seem concerned with providing a recognizable depiction of the ordinary world outside of whatever conceits they are adding. You can, to some varying degree, apply the definition simulation to some of those. The problem as I see it is that simulation in general has a focus on making a useful and faithful mapping of real/potentially real scenarios back and forth onto its models in order to create predictive power. The agenda there is heavily in the direction of improving the quality of that mapping with the understanding that it will both increase predictive power, and potentially generate insights into the physical system being modeled. IMHO RPG depictions don't really have the above simulation agenda. Honestly, games like Aftermath showed us this back in the mid-80s. You can make really detailed models of things (guns in this case) and then deploy them in the form of a really complicated combat system, but the result is not a materially better game experience than that had by playing something like Traveller, at least for most people. I mean, there were a bunch of serious gun heads that loved Aftermath, but I found the play in that game really rather dull myself. So, my general advice to game designers and GMs, certainly in terms of 'simulation of process' kinds of things (like use of skills or combat) is to focus more on how the depiction works in game and narrative terms, and less on worrying about how it maps onto the fiction in a mechanical sense. Finally, I don't even think that simulation is actually the concern for most people who are using the term. It seems more like the most common concern has more to do with how the process incorporates or does not incorporate elements that are present in the fiction, amongst other concerns. So, for instance, even though something like an inventory subsystem that produces results more likely to objectively mimic the outcomes of experienced characters choices of equipment might seem to be a better simulated inventory by any reasonable definition of simulation, it is selected against for other reasons like its effect on how and when the narrative unfolds. It feels super hard to have any scope for discussion of how depictions work in RPGs with that in mind since any but one very narrow set of mechanics is met with scorn from some direction or other.</blockquote>

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