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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 7123699">Skyrim isn't a sim though.  It's story-centric sandbox.  You're also talking about a measure of time happening without actually mentioning it.  Sure, if you stand around for days (since Skyrim has that) nothing will actually happen, because Skryim is still a story-centric sandbox (yay shades of gray).  You can play around in the sand all you want, but the world itsself isn't going to change until you start playing through the main story.  I wasn't attempting to point to any specific game though.  I was simply pointing out that a computer can track and calculate more things faster than a human.  A better comparison would be research simulations on whether patterns, stellar phenomenon, migratory patterns of birds, etc.Either example is still a facade.  Neither are actual living, breathing worlds.  I don't think computers or people have the processing power to simulate all that.  But "tracking if the civil war is moving forward" is exactly what I mentioned.  The DM isn't tracking each individual soldier until the party shows up (and still might not even then!) they may not even be tracking major players in the war, specific military divisions or whatnot, they may simply be rolling two die and deciding that "Red Side" rolled higher than "Blue Side" so Red Side has gained 1 point towards victory (requiring say, 100 points).  The simulation only comes to life when the players get close enough to it.  It's basically the "view distance" on a 3D graphics setting.  If you're too far away to see it, it doesn't stop it from being there, it just stops you from seeing the details.Maybe, since you're essentially adding living beings to an artificial world (i'm assuming "groups" in this context means IRL players, not fancy AI NPCs).  But now we're talking compounding interest.  Sure, eventually you could put enough real people in a simulation to make the outside viewer question if it's a simulation but it still relies on smoke and mirrors and when all those people go home and go to bed, the game world "pauses" until they return (since play time does not always translate into real-world or in-game time), you might finish turning some gears, but even you too will stop and thus the game will stop.</blockquote>

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