D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[AlViking]

I'm not talking about the word. As @Campbell has repeatedly posted in this thread, I'm talking about what play is about. What it is like.

You keep posting as if Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World aspire to produce an experience comparable to AD&D play, except using slightly different rules for PC building and which dice to roll. But they don't.

Different games have different goals and objectives. I have never and am not speaking of how BW or AW works other than to say that they do not work like D&D or related games.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm confused - I thought we were supposed to hate all analysis that deploys Forge categories.

Sorry; must be the brain damage.

 

[TwoSix]

I've found GNS's desire to lump world simulation and genre emulation together wrongheaded from day one. They don't really serve the same purpose except in the most cursory view at all.

Tuovinen describes that separation this way in the blog post linked above; I find their description compelling but that's just my personal opinion.

Genre emulation vs world simulation vs character immersion​

I’d like to shed some light on an old and popular confusion regarding Simulationism. Namely, people find it very useful to be reductionist about the nature of the Simulationist creative process, which leads to ideas such as these:

• Simulationism is about genre emulation, like Call of Cthulhu or Star Trek or MERP or the superhero game of your choice: the Simmiest game is the one where the rules emulate a genre faithfully.
• Simulationism is about world simulation, like Runequest or MERP or GURPS: the Simmiest game is the one where the rules are consistent and comprehensive about simulating how the world “really” works.
• Simulationism is about character immersion, like a Nordic larp or a Whitewolf game: the Simmiest game is the one where the rules don’t get in the way of experiencing your character.

Keeping my understanding of the nature of Simulationist creativity in mind, this becomes a simple thing: all of the above can be Simulationism if the game is about it, but none of them describe the full scope of Simulationism particularly well, as they’re all descriptions not of the core activity, but rather of important content processing techniques that are unique to roleplaying, and characteristic of Simulationist play in particular.

 

[TwoSix]

This description makes it sound like simulationism and mythological accuracy are the same thing.

But I normally associate it with narrativism, and narrativism with narrative immersion.

It's certainly worth it to read the entire blog post. It engages with precisely these points.

 

[pemerton]

IMO this is precisely where the entanglement lies.

It’s important to note the steps taken to get here.
1. We define character skills as qualities inherent to the character himself.
1b. The implication here is that there is no possible skill inherent to the character himself such that he has a better chance to not encounter cooks while lockpicking as encountering cooks is clearly external to the character. I’m not sure how to state it precisely but this same thing applies to more than just encountering cooks.

If one doesn’t share premise 1 then that mix of internal and external modeling is still occurring but it won’t be viewed as an issue. The issue is that such entanglement undermines premise 1, such that if you want premise 1 in your game you should not use methods that undermine it.

This doesn't shed any light, for me at least. What RPG are you describing here?

 

[The Firebird]

I'm confused - I thought we were supposed to hate all analysis that deploys Forge categories.

I think they can be useful in some cases--the taxonomy at the end of that article is great, for example--but they also try to do too much with too little. You can see the cracks in the structure with the discussion of hybridization. It's like a lot of other Big Theories in that way; its need to explain everything nicely means it has to impose categories which don't quite fit.

A lot of this comes from the goal of GNS, which is prescriptive rather than descriptive and ends up smuggling in the preferences of its authors. People pick up on this, and I think it's why the Forge gets so much pushback.

 

[clearstream]

This description makes it sound like simulationism and mythological accuracy are the same thing.

But I normally associate it with narrativism, and narrativism with narrative immersion.

I had a (probably inadvisable) idea that might be related to that, which was to propose* that

Narrativism (like Western dramatism) is concerned with problems of the human condition​

​

Simulationism is concerned with what something external or contextual to the human condition is like​

​

If right, that could mean that accuracy, realism, and immersion don't divide them. While on the other hand, differences between what sorts of things they might prefer to see in play seem pretty clear.

*I don't claim these propositions as original. The first is more or less a direct quote.

 

[The Firebird]

This doesn't shed any light, for me at least. What RPG are you describing here?

Not @FrogReaver , but (1) describes the kind of RPGs I want to play. I'd go so far to say "character skills ought to encompass qualities inherent to the character themself". (For me, not for everyone). D&D would be at the front of my mind.

 

[pemerton]

Different games have different goals and objectives. I have never and am not speaking of how BW or AW works other than to say that they do not work like D&D or related games.

4e D&D actually works best - in my view - played somewhat similarly to Burning Wheel. I learned a lot about how to GM 4e D&D from the BW rulebooks.

The point with this is that there are some things that are not naturally compatible with the general approach of D&D. You can, of course, hammer D&D into something else if you want and it works for you and your group but if you want to stick to a more standard game the cost should be something that is the direct result of the declared action that failed. It's also preference and maybe someone who uses it for D&D could give actual detailed examples of how it happens in a D&D or other similar game.

There is an example that, at the structural level, is basically identical to the screaming cook in the example skill challenge in the 4e D&D Rules Compendium: the players fail the last check in a skill challenge, and the consequence that is narrated by the GM is that an NPC whom the PCs crossed earlier in the challenge comes back with a gang, ready to beat them up.

 

[pemerton]

Not @FrogReaver , but (1) describes the kind of RPGs I want to play. I'd go so far to say "character skills ought to encompass qualities inherent to the character themself". (For me, not for everyone). D&D would be at the front of my mind.

But the sort of game you play wouldn't have "weird entanglement", would it?

I'm asking what RPG actually exhibits this "weird entanglement", where (i) skill rolls are intended to have no meaning or consequence in the fiction except how well the PC performs the requisite bodily motions and (ii) failure is narrated in terms of an unhappy encounter or other unhappy outcome.

If there is no such RPG, why are people posting as if there is? And if there is such a RPG, I'm curious to know what it is.