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

[pemerton]

Early proto-RPG play, such as Braunstein, required a lot from the GM. Essentially it was necessary to devise a whole set of heuristics and rules, props, etc. and then manage play in a very unstructured way. Note how only a bare handful of people have ever put these things on. Even if we include modern who-done-its and such this is a tricky thing to carry off and requires substantial planning (I think @pemerton has mentioned putting one on).

I've run two free-form murder mysteries. One I adapted from an old Traveller module; I wrote up the 3 player characters and played the three or so important NPCs.

The other I wrote myself, and wrote up about 12 character backstories with various interconnections to one another. I also wrote the clues, some in the form of "memories" placed in envelopes, which a player could open when the trigger - written on the outside of the envelope- occurred. And also had "external" clues - messages from police HQ or from the "lab" - that I as GM introduced at appropriate moments when the action seemed to have stalled a little bit.

That second one took quite a bit of prep and planning!

 

[Maxperson]

The fireball can have save for half because it’s not calling that a miss.

This is semantics.

Someone successfully saving against a fireball(the caster missed) and being damaged anyway, is essentially the same someone successfully getting out of the way of a sword swing(the fighter missed) and being damaged anyway.

Saving throws usually completely negate(cause to miss) the spell. Some spells still do damage on that "miss."

I’m not opposed to adding glancing blows that deal some damage in. I’m opposed to calling such things misses. On the same token I would call a glancing blow that doesn’t cause any damage a miss. So yea, glancing blow isn’t the best name either but I think it was enough to get across the idea.

I wouldn't mind that, either. Maybe if you hit the AC exactly, it's a glancing blow. Calling it a miss bugs me as well, but it's still functionally the same as a spell still doing damage after being successfully saved against.

 

[Maxperson]

Your second thing is a characteristic of all RPGing. It is what Edwards calls exploration. Your first thing is an overly narrow account of "simulationism": Pendragon is a RPG intended for simulationist play, and it doesn't lose that character if the participants in a game prioritise character and/or situation over setting.

Edwards characterises "simulationist" RPGing in terms of the priority that it gives to exploration:

the thing to do is to get as clear an understanding of "Exploration" as possible. It's our jargon term for imagining, "dreaming" if you will, about made-up characters in made-up situations. It's central to all role-playing, but in Simulationist play, it's the top priority. . . unlike Narrativist and Gamist priorities which are defined by an interpersonal out-of-game agenda, Simulationist play prioritizes the in-game functions and imagined events. . . .​

​

The key issues are shared love of the source material and sincerity. Simulationism is sort of like Virtual Reality, but with the emphasis on the "V," because it clearly covers so many subjects. Perhaps it could be called V-Whatever rather than V-Reality. If the Whatever is a fine, cool thing, then it's fun to see fellow players imagine what you are imagining, and vice versa. (By "you" in that sentence, I am referring to anyone at the table, GM or player.) To the dedicated practitioner, such play is sincere to a degree that's lacking in heavy-metagame play . . .​

​

Sincere shared creativity: all role-playing has to have it. For some, it's the whole point.​

"Simulationist" play is described by Eero Tuovinen, in a blog that you're referenced in earlier posts upthread, in this way:

Simulationist play attempts to experience a subject matter in a way that results in elevated appreciation and understanding. The Shared Imagined Space is utilized for intensely detailed perspectives that sometimes surpass the means of traditional, non-interactive mediums.​

Edwards and Tuovinen don't offer identical characterisations: sincerity is not the same thing as elevated appreciation and understanding in virtue of intensely detailed perspectives. What they have in common is that they exclude certain sorts of ways of establishing the shared fiction:

"Simulationist" RPGing, as described by these commentators, precludes altering the fiction on the basis of, or as a direct response to, our appreciation or engagement with it. This is not easy to state, and not easy to achieve. In a RPG, the fiction has to change. Necessarily, those changes occur because the participants engage with it - they describe fictional events, fictional causes, fictional effects. "Simulationism" is about trying to hold the fiction constant on its own terms while the RPGing happens.

Often (not always - consider some approaches to Tuovinen's "dollhouse play" or "substantial exploration") it is the job of the GM to hold the fiction "constant on its own terms", meaning that the GM is not really getting to engage in the sincerity and the elevated appreciation. They are labouring away, fully conscious of their authorial role, so that the players can enjoy the pleasure of simulationist play. I think it's actually rather common to see GMing described in this way, often using metaphors of "behind the screen" or "behind the curtain".

It doesn't really matter what Edwards calls it. A simulation simulates something real in some manner. It may not be all that accurate, but it doesn't have to be. Someone who is into simulation would want the world to be a bit more realistic than D&D typically is, and would want the world to feel like it exists independently of his PC, as that simulates the real world.

Exploration is just exploring something, whether it's the setting as a whole, the character's beliefs, or just a dungeon.

 

[pemerton]

How there was a complication determined matters (this is the heart of sim play). We aren’t opposed to the general notion of cooks being in houses. We aren’t opposed to the general notion of sounds drawing the cooks attention. But if your lockpicking check as opposed to your stealth check causes the sound then that would be an issue. If either of lockpicking or stealth checks causes the cook to be there where success would not have, then that’s another issue.

Your last sentence contains an ambiguity: you use "causes the cook to be there" without clarifying whether you mean causes, in the fiction, the cook to be there or causes, at the table, the GM to narrate the presence of a cook.

No one thinks the first thing is true, in any RPGing other than perhaps 4th-wall breaking Over the Edge.

The second thing is what I (and @hawkeyefan, if I've correctly read his posts) have been fastening on in the comparison to random encounter rolls: there are all sorts of things that occur at the table and that prompt the GM to add to the fiction, narrate new fiction, retrofit fiction: eg on the strength of a random encounter roll, followed by a % in lair roll, the GM inserts a whole "thing" into the fiction that had never even been contemplated before. We could even have a cook encounter occur in this fashion: the GM rolls a die and learns there is a being in the kitchen; rolls on a table and learns its a cook; rolls on the % in lair chance and learns the cook is in their lair (thus deciding to narrate a cot for the cook off on the side of the kitchen), and then rolls a surprise die (perhaps modified by the stealthiness of the burglar), which says that the cook is surprised, and so the GM narrates this as the cook sleeping on their cot, and as long as the burglar quickly moves through the room the cook won't notice them.

None of the process that I've just described, which involves a "quantum" cook, "quantum" cot, "quantum" nap, etc would be out of place in a "sim" play.

The objection is solely that the "quantum"-ness is attached, mechanically, to the resolution of the declared action.

 

[Maxperson]

I stated my view: that D&D surprise rules, from AD&D and from 5e, involve retrofitting a fictional explanation of a situation whose narration is prompted purely mechanically (ie by the outcome of dice rolls).

Except that I showed that they don't. The terrain, darkness, etc. will already have been narrated, so nothing involves retrofitting unless the DM screwed up.

 

[Maxperson]

5e surprise is determined purely fictionally???

In 5e surprised based entirely in established play. It seems like @pemerton doesn't really understand the 5e surprise rules, either.

 

[pemerton]

It's down to what's being abstracted, right? Spells fill an area and might be partially avoided, swords connect or don't.

See, from the point of view of common sense, this doesn't make sense to me.

Either the sword cuts me, or it doesn't. (But even if it doesn't cut me, I might hurt or strain myself avoiding it.)

Either the fire burns me, or it doesn't. (But even if it doesn't burn me, I might hurt or strain myself avoiding it.)

Conan being a "whirlwind of steel" seems to me just as much an "area of effect" as a 1st level mage's burning hands spell. The decision to treat them differently is a game design decision, not a reality-modelling decision.

 

[pemerton]

For me there's a difference between character nimbly dodging out of the way of a sword's swing or blocking it and taking half damage because everything around them is on fire. In other cases you've been poisoned or dipped in acid so you can't avoid it but you're so tough it doesn't bother you as much.

So now we have more hit points because we're tough and get a saving throw because we're tough? Why doesn't my tough character get a save to reduce the damage from being stabbed or bitten?

As I just posted, these are decisions about game design - I don't know Chainmail that well, but I'm guessing they are inherited from how Chainmail handled artillery compared to unit-vs-unit melee; and keeping the former while replacing the latter with the "alternative combat system". They're not decisions driven by a consideration of how to model things.

 

[AlViking]

You can put the cook there on a success as well.

Remember, the cook is one example of what can be done with a failed lockpicking check. If you think the existence of a cook in a kitchen is too far out for you, then pick a different consequence.

You can put the cook there on success or failure, but the example specifically did not.

 

[AlViking]

None of this speaks to my point.

Hit-point based combat is (i) quite granular, and (ii) not a simulation of anything. It's a way of turning a weighted coin-toss (this being is tougher than this other being, so more likely to win) into a more protracted, intricate race between countdown clocks.

In the context of a 3-round fight between two PCs and two Orcs, let's pause at the end of round 2. Each Orc has lost 4 of 8 hp. Each PC has lost 5 of 10 hp. The table has been playing this out for, let's say, 5 minutes. What have they simulated? Nothing at all! They're part way through finding out who lives and who dies, and that's it.

Whether or not something is a simulation is not based on the simulation's accuracy.