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

[FrogReaver]

This is especially important, if we're actually looking at how play works. It's obvious that many elements of the fiction, which must "exist" in the fiction (eg grass must have some or other length; the sky must have some or other colour; if there are clouds, they must have some or other shape) but they don't get narrated. They can't be.

The choice to actually narrate these things, and to make them part of the shared fiction rather than implicit elements of the fiction but not actually established and shared, is a choice.

And quite often it is done in response to action declarations or other dice rolls or just the players asking questions, with retroactive effect. Eg the player asks, "Was there a shrine in my home when I was growing up?" or "What was the name of my fencing master?" or whatever, and the GM makes something up and tells the player.

I think you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone having an issue with those things, though it’s the internet so there’s always 1 somewhere.

And of course there are the examples you are pointing to, where details are narrated in in order to make sense of some decision the GM has made (the GM decides to have an ambush, and so narrates the clouds covering the moon) or a roll that has been made (as in the randomly rolled ambush case).

And here you point to the underlying issue. It’s an issue (edit: for us) when the details are added to make sense of some decision the GM has made.

 

[AlViking]

The thing you quoted said nothing about your views.

It said that the game under discussion--D&D--is not a very good simulationist game. As in, the claim that its rules are not well-constructed for the purpose of simulating things with granularity and precision, but instead relies significantly on things that are opposite to simulation, such as genre conventions, thematic or dramatic considerations, and gameplay contrivances that could very easily have been less contrived.

Then I disagree, it's not simulating reality and it's not trying to. I think it works fine and it's how I approach the game. I don't care how you approach it.

 

[AlViking]

But, you do. This is exactly the same process that you use. You choose to have an event occur (or rather the dice choose for you) and you then backfill the scene and the narrative to make that event fit into whatever is going on in the game.

There is no difference here. You keep trying to claim some sort of unique process, but, it is exactly the same. Your grass is long because you need it to be long to have an ambush. Otherwise, the length of the grass would be unnoted or irrelevant. Your event will magically teleport to whererever the players happen to be at that point in time, and then the scene will be retroactively constructed to make the event fit.

I wasn't doing any backfilling. I don't narrate terrain for every mile of travel. I rolled a specific monster and knew that there would be terrain or situation that was logical for an attack by that monster at some point in the character's travel. If the characters were not going to come across terrain or situation that worked for the monster (there are no polar bears in the jungle), the monster would not have been on the list. Therefore because the monster came up and it would only logically occur in a location with tall grass, the random encounter happened as they were travelling through one of the patches of tall grass that they had encountered off and on over the past several hours.

 

[AlViking]

Bonus image ... there doesn't have to be tall grass in order for an ambush predator to get a sneak attack. Find the mountain lion about to attack the elk (the big furry thing in the forefront).

 

[pemerton]

I'm saying that I approach it as a simulation of a magical world with action movie logic. It's not attempting to simulate the real world or anything like it, that doesn't mean it's not a simulation. Also, you don't get to tell me how I view my approach to the game.

I'm not telling you what your view is.

I'm telling you about D&D. The idea that hp, saving throws, surprise rolls, etc are "simulationist" isn't one that I can credit.

 

[pemerton]

A living world sandbox compared to a traditional railroad is not very GM driven

That's not the comparison class I'm working with.

 

[AlViking]

I'm not telling you what your view is.

I'm telling you about D&D. The idea that hp, saving throws, surprise rolls, etc are "simulationist" isn't one that I can credit.

I agree that there could be far more detail, there are a lot of compromises in order to make the game easy to play. It may not have the granularity or match the level of fidelity to the real world that you desire, that has nothing to do with it being a simulation.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I rolled a specific monster and knew that there would be terrain or situation that was logical

Why would it be different if the player had rolled a specific result, and as a result you knew there would be terrain or a situation that was logical?

Then I disagree, it's not simulating reality and it's not trying to. I think it works fine and it's how I approach the game. I don't care how you approach it.

But that has quite literally been a core point for the thread for hundreds and hundreds of pages at this point. That it IS simulating reality, that it IS trying to do that thing.

Whether it works fine for what you want it to do is not the same as whether it is well-constructed for the purpose of simulation. As pemerton has now explicitly said just above.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I agree that there could be far more detail, there are a lot of compromises in order to make the game easy to play. It may not have the granularity or match the level of fidelity to the real world that you desire, that has nothing to do with it being a simulation.

Then what on earth does "being a simulation" even MEAN?

Because at this point you've reduced it to little more than "doing what I like something to do, and not doing things I don't like it to do", which is so far beyond useless, it should never have even been given a label in the first place.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm not telling you what your view is.

I'm telling you about D&D. The idea that hp, saving throws, surprise rolls, etc are "simulationist" isn't one that I can credit.

Yes. The fact that D&D is so commonly used for a simulationist agenda (or play with no particular CA agenda that has simulationist trappings) does not mean that the game engine itself is oriented towards sim. There are better games out there that are more oriented towards sim as an explicit agenda.