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

[Enrahim]

You're not quite getting my point.

It's not that it has to simulate reality. It's that a simulation has to simulate something. Anything. For something to be "Verisimiltudinous", the system has to actually inform the narrative. And in D&D, it never does. The system in no way tells you what happens. Combat is the easiest example, but, anything else works as well - skill checks, saving throws, anything. Nothing in the system actually informs the narrative.

If you fail a climb check, what happens? If you are at the bottom of the climb, then nothing happens. You simply do not move. Why did you fail the check? What caused the failure? Who knows? The system tells you nothing. Conversely, if you succeed at the climb check, the system again does nothing to actually inform the narrative. Maybe you found foot and hand holds. Maybe you scrambled up. Maybe fairies came and lifted you higher. Maybe you succeeded by the lightness of your heart. Who knows? Any narrative you choose is equally valid as far as the system goes.

I have no problems with the idea that your players want to feel like they are acting in a real place. I get it. I honestly do. But, I do not understand why you would choose D&D for this. Or why you would think that D&D is providing this in any way, shape or form. D&D, at no point, informs the narrative. Because it is not, again in any form, a simulation of anything.

IOW, your players would feel like they are acting in a real place regardless of system since D&D isn't doing any lifting here at all.

Wow! I think you just accurately described why D&D is the best system I have found for me so far <3

 

[Maxperson]

Yup. The lockpicking example.

In the random encounter, it doesn't matter what the PC's do, where they are or any actions they are taking. It's 6 PM and the DM has decided (through the die roll) that an encounter will occur. Nothing the PC's could do could change that.

But, no, I don't see any difference between the DM deciding that an encounter will occur because of an arbitrary die roll and the DM deciding an encounter will occur because of a different totally arbitrary die roll. They are identical. It's not like the Players choose to add the Cook to the kitchen. The only difference is which completely arbitrary die roll the DM chooses to use.

That's not true. Traveling stealthily can completely avoid the encounter if it doesn't notice them. Becoming invisible when they hear something coming can avoid it. There are things that they can do. They can't stop a monster from being there, but then it would still be there at that time even if they weren't.

Tying the encounter to the player's roll is very close to being a punishment. Further, it creates a situation where the player's roll is altering the reality of the world. Success and the cook is somewhere else in the house, failure and she is in the kitchen.

The DM when he rolls the encounter isn't altering the reality of the world, he's establishing it. Something the players can't do. Players can't establish or alter the reality of the world unless the DM allows it to happen through different playstyles or homebrewed rules.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's not quite player rolls or dm rolls - it's attacker rolls or defender rolls. The example in the 3e UA is player rolls, but it's extensible.


We are talking about miss for half damage, I agree. I use the 3e UA rules to convert saves into attacks vs defences. I cast a fireball at a creature, it could be a PC or an NPC. There is no change to the fiction input. There is no change to the fiction output. The only difference is that now the die leaves the hand of the attacker rather than the defender. I roll poorly and miss their defence. They take half damage. They have taken damage on a miss, resulting purely from the administrative re-organising of who rolls.

I am playing standard 3.5. I use a sword to attack a human NPC with a Dex of 10 who is wearing Full Plate. Their Touch AC is 10. Their AC is 18. I roll between 10 and 18. I have hit their touch AC (so in fiction, I have struck them, this might be narrated with the ringing of steel on steel or similar) but I have missed their full AC (so mechanically and in fiction, I have not impaired them). By the plain meaning of the word and the fiction, I have hit them, just not in a way that impairs them. In the mechanics, I have missed them.

I'm not saying that damage on a miss is a good idea, or that it should be in any particular game. I fully accept that rolling the die may be preferable for many reasons and you may prefer the current split of defences.

The point was that much like the difference between roll-under and roll-over mechanics (or descending or ascending AC), damage on a miss is (given the correct setup of probabilities) identical in the fictional input and the mechanical and fictional outputs. At least in 3/5e you can convert AC to a save or saves to AC-like defences with no change to the game, it's just that some people, for whatever reason, prefer a split

I don’t know how many times I have to say the representation/map of meaning/thing being simulated matters and not just the structure. You are solely focused on the mechanical structure.

 

[AlViking]

You're not quite getting my point.

It's not that it has to simulate reality. It's that a simulation has to simulate something. Anything. For something to be "Verisimiltudinous", the system has to actually inform the narrative. And in D&D, it never does. The system in no way tells you what happens. Combat is the easiest example, but, anything else works as well - skill checks, saving throws, anything. Nothing in the system actually informs the narrative.

If you fail a climb check, what happens? If you are at the bottom of the climb, then nothing happens. You simply do not move. Why did you fail the check? What caused the failure? Who knows? The system tells you nothing. Conversely, if you succeed at the climb check, the system again does nothing to actually inform the narrative. Maybe you found foot and hand holds. Maybe you scrambled up. Maybe fairies came and lifted you higher. Maybe you succeeded by the lightness of your heart. Who knows? Any narrative you choose is equally valid as far as the system goes.

I have no problems with the idea that your players want to feel like they are acting in a real place. I get it. I honestly do. But, I do not understand why you would choose D&D for this. Or why you would think that D&D is providing this in any way, shape or form. D&D, at no point, informs the narrative. Because it is not, again in any form, a simulation of anything.

IOW, your players would feel like they are acting in a real place regardless of system since D&D isn't doing any lifting here at all.

I, and my players, have never had any real issue with imagining what is going on. Why should the game rules tell us why or how we fail a climb check? My character could be climbing a trellis, a crumbling castle wall, a cliff, a giant bean stalk, a giant. It doesn't matter, the description of what happens and why is up to the people at the table. D&D simulates a heroic fantasy fictional world.

Take something like Warhammer Fantasy. It's a pretty deeply trad game. At least earlier editions of it are. I'm unfamiliar with later editions to be honest.

But, in Warhammer Fantasy, the narrative is actually driven by the mechanics. If I attack something, the system tells me not only whether I hit the target, but, also where I hit the target and if I hit the target hard enough to actually hurt it. So, if I roll a successful attack, the system is going to tell me that I hit the bad guy in the arm and my damage was significant enough to cross the damage threshold and deal harm to the target. Which, I can then narrate pretty well.

That's what a simulation should do. No. I'm going to go further than that. That's the entire POINT of playing a simulation game. For the mechanics to actually inform the players what is happening in the game world. It doesn't have to be realistic, or even remotely real world. After all, similar mechanics cover the magic system, telling me that if I do X, then Y will occur, with Z results.

The magic system in D&D isn't horrible here. It's actually pretty clear. You cast Fireball and a honking big ball of flame explodes at Y range. Great. Cool. Of course, what it means that the baddy saved from the spell isn't really spelled out (sorry for the pun), but, it's not too much of a stretch. But, outside of the magic system? D&D doesn't inform the narrative at all. At best it gives you end results and leaves any narration entirely in the hands of the players.

That's not a simulation of anything. Nor is it verisimiltudinous either. When the system does not provide any information about how you got from A to B, then it is not the system that is helping your narration.

So it's a simulation because you like how the rules work, it's not a simulation if it doesn't. D&D is a lot more flexible than a lot of genre specific games. That means that some of the descriptions of what happen and why are left up to the people at the table. That may not work for you but it doesn't mean it's not a simulation to the people playing at the table. It doesn't matter if the simulation is of something real (and Warhammer is not particularly close to reality either), it's does it invoke the feeling of a reality to the people at the table. I know that Star Wars isn't real, but when I watched the original movies where Han shot first when I was a kid, it felt real to me. Even though they didn't explain what hyper drive was or include details of how the Force worked. That level of detail wasn't needed for it to feel real while watching the movie, just like a D&D game doesn't have to have an impossibly accurate simulation of every detail to feel real.

If it doesn't work for you, that's fine. But you don't get to decide for me and my players what it feels like.

 

[Maxperson]

A roll is used to determine surprise but no rolls are occurring to determine surprise? You can see why that might parse as self-contradictory.

No, because it's not what he said, or what is happening. A roll determines stealth, NOT surprise. You might as well claim that perception causes surprise, because if you fail the perception check you don't see the stealthy group.

There is no surprise roll at all.

 

[pemerton]

Let’s focus on this aspect. How is the GM deciding the orcs are sneaking? Presumably he accounts from the already existing fiction that there is suitable terrain and lighting to do so, that the orcs have spotted the PCs (that is the PCs weren’t trying to be stealthy or if they were that they weren’t doing it very well). Those are the fictional details the stealth roll would be based on. In no way does this lead to the dm inventing terrain to justify hidden/surprising orcs after the stealth roll which is what you stated that brought on this whole tangent.

I didn't talk about terrain. I talked about the facts of what the PCs are doing, such that they don't notice the Orcs.

But terrain could be mentioned. Is there enough shadow to hide in? The GM can just decide this, like the ride on which the dire wolf stands.

 

[clearstream]

So simulation is whatever we declare it to be. The principle of explosion destroys all conclusions by making literally everything true.

I don't feel compelled to jump to extremes like this. Play is messy.

But what actually makes that thing that thing? Authoring new fiction IS ALWAYS "changing the world". That's what authoring new stuff is. So by your very definition, all one need do is have the GM exercise their unlimited authority in order to author whatever fiction they desire. Thus, every game is necessarily a simulation; the world has primacy, and the world is simply whatever the GM has declared it is today.

It's Humpty Dumpty's dictionary, just in worldbuilding form. " ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ " When a GM declares their game is simulationist, it is. After all, they have absolute power to author whatever they want, whenever they want, and by definition that's simply what the world is!

In my #14,054 I spelt out that "I do not take "simulationism" to necessitate a GM. I don't see anything at all about simulationism that requires it. It's a good, workable option with a lot of benefits, but it's not the only option."

Labelling something an RPG can do "simulationism" doesn't compel players to pursue that thing. Once they're proceeding in bad faith it doesn't matter if a principle of simulationism is "play alters the world diegetically." The principles only matter if they put them in force for themselves.

As an aside I've possibly been a little coy with that principle. When I say "play alters the world diegetically" I don't mean that it alters the world in some other way. I mean only, solely, that it alters the world diegetically. And I do not exclude GM, if there is one.

It's not in the superpowers. It's in the world conventions. Things like villains and heroes alike respecting secret identities. Physics that contorts on command, so super strength can lift skyscrapers in whole chunks, not crumbling the concrete beneath the hero's hands. Humans that magically don't have their spine shatter when a flying hero zips past in a blur too fast to see, saving them from a grisly end on the pavement below. Grappling hooks (or webshooters, or whatever else) that always have a convenient grapple-point, wherever the superhero might be, to zip away. Gross and near-constant violations of the conservation of matter and energy. Etc., etc., etc.

I see. I don't believe any imagined world has coherent physics. Rather they apply a sort of folksy common sense. If the imagined world is one in which skyscrapers ought to crumble when superheroes lift them, then if they don't crumble the group are weakly, partially, or not at all doing something fitting the broad label.

Well, it was pretty high before participating in this thread.

I live to serve

I had expected simulationism to involve things like:

• There is a world, and it operates exclusively by consistent, physics-like rules
• Those rules are never mere reified genre conventions nor thematic/dramatic considerations

• Even where magic is involved, it is (as TVTropes would put it) "Magic A is Magic A", meaning, the magic is just bonus physics

I don't really know what those statements mean, in the context of imaginary worlds. If the world "physics" follow the way things work in fiction of that sort, why is that a break with simulationism?

• Extrapolation is done in, to at least some extent, a procedural and iterative way whenever possible

Iterative procedures might be a good way to operationalize simulationism, but I don't see them counting as simulationism.

• To paraphrase from that manifesto linked like 40 pages back but which got a lot of positive attention from "sim" fans, all game mechanics are always wrong, but we build them so most of the time, they are usefully wrong
• Concessions made simply for a better experience of play (e.g., to balance contrasting options so that nearly all choices are almost purely qualitative, functionally not quantitative) do not occur, period

Yes, I agree that Sorensen has some good ideas about the game abstractions. Maybe some of that should be brought back as a fourth principle?

• Other than creating their characters and having (very limited) control over their backstory, the players generally should not (note, not "must not" as with the GM) think in terms of story, unless one or more characters are trying to tell a story through their deeds

• Other than creating what content is in the world to be revealed, the GM simply must not consider thematic or dramatic concerns (e.g. pacing, rising/falling action, the intrusion of complication, etc.)

Wouldn't such concerns be non-diegetic (except via my "unfixable loophole")?

• The world has what one might call "inertia" for its contents: things don't change unless acted upon by forces in the world

• While the GM has an overwhelmingly powerful degree of control over what such forces there are, how strong they are, and where/when they apply, there is (apparently) something of a "gentleman's agreement" situation that such power should only be used in ways that are as close to perfectly realistic and consistent as possible

What ought realism and consistency mean for a world that isn't real? One way to answer that (this is for fiction generally) is that fictional worlds differ from ours only to the extent established by the fiction. How that can play out is that if we're extrapolating an encounter on the twilit city streets, and we narrate a city guard, that's probably better accepted than if we narrate a giant octopus. If it's an octopus, we probably expect something in the fiction to account for it.

What you draw attention to is that too much work is being asked of "diegetic". @pemerton characterised it as being "about trying to hold the fiction constant on its own terms while the RPGing happens". In my framing I expected that altering the world diegetically would include not doing so by any means not sustained by the world itself.

 

[Maxperson]

Is that actually true? I don't grant that it is. Like I genuinely seriously do not grant this claim.

"Complications" that you can't deal with are independent. But having a competent person at the helm genuinely does mean fewer things become complications at all.

That makes no sense. A complication is a complication, even if someone fixes it quickly and easily because they are skilled. Something doesn't have to be unfixable or a huge setback in order to be a complication.

 

[pemerton]

No, because it's not what he said, or what is happening. A roll determines stealth, NOT surprise. You might as well claim that perception causes surprise, because if you fail the perception check you don't see the stealthy group.

There is no surprise roll at all.

How can we have this situation where a dozen-ish folks in this thread are vociferously in favor of "the world is ALWAYS primary, mechanics are ALWAYS an abstraction and thus always at least somewhat wrong", and yet so many of those exact same people are also vociferously opposed to this, and instead expect--even demand--that the world MUST reflect what the mechanics said, not the other way around?

In addition to what @EzekielRaiden posted, I didn't use the phrase "surprise roll" in relation to 5e D&D - I used the phrase "rules for surprise":

Here are two different d6 rolls that happen in AD&D:

*The roll to open a stuck dungeon door.

*The roll to determine whether or not a person (or party) is surprised.​

The first roll is made when a player declares that their character is trying to force open a stuck door. At that point, in the fiction, the PC is standing at the door, about to try and force it open. We can imagine the roll of the d6 correlating to the character's attempt to shove or shoulder the door. As the dice comes to rest and we can read the result, so we know what happened in the fiction: either the door yielded to the shove/shoulder, or it did not.

The second roll is made when the GM determines that an encounter has occurred. (And has not decided that the PCs cannot be surprised.) The time of making the roll at the table correlates to that event at the table. But it does not correlate to anything in particular happening in the fiction at that moment. In particular, suppose it turns out that the PCs are surprised. The reason why they are surprised - eg they're looking the wrong way, or are distracted by sorting through their gear, or relieving themselves (Gygax identifies this as a possible cause of surprise in his DMG) - has already come about, in the fiction, at the time the die is rolled.

<snip>

The traditional reaction roll (found in various versions of classic D&D, in Classic Traveller, and maybe other RPGs as well) is, in these respects, the same as the surprise roll.

The 2014 5e D&D rules for surprise are no different, as best I can tell. From DnD Beyond,

Surprise
A band of adventurers sneaks up on a bandit camp, springing from the trees to attack them. A gelatinous cube glides down a dungeon passage, unnoticed by the adventurers until the cube engulfs one of them. In these situations, one side of the battle gains surprise over the other.

The DM determines who might be surprised. If neither side tries to be stealthy, they automatically notice each other. Otherwise, the DM compares the Dexterity (Stealth) checks of anyone hiding with the passive Wisdom (Perception) score of each creature on the opposing side. Any character or monster that doesn't notice a threat is surprised at the start of the encounter.

If you're surprised, you can't move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can't take a reaction until that turn ends. A member of a group can be surprised even if the other members aren't.​

Why do the adventurers fail to notice the gelatinous cube? At the table, *because their passive WIS (Perception) score tells us so. And then, if we like, we have to make up some retroactive reason, about what the PCs were doing immediately before this moment, that explains why they didn't notice the cube.

There is a roll that determines surprise though, as I've noted: the roll for the DEX (Stealth) check.

 

[Maxperson]

No issue with player rolls or dm rolls. I think I’ve been very clear about that.



And here I thought we were talking about miss for half damage. That’s a different fictional outcome than miss for no damage.

Miss has a semantic meaning. That is important. If Miss ceases to mean Miss then you’ve rendered the meaning that word is imparting to the simulation meaningless as well. It’s about more than just the mechanical structure.

Note: 2024 d&d has damage on a miss in the game already with the graze weapon mastery.

If you think about it, damage on a miss has sort of been present since 1e. The nature of hit points mean that even if I hit an ogre with my axe, I can fail to hit physically. I can swing and get very close(a hit that does skill hit point damage), the ogre could stumble and jerk out of reach of my sword(a hit that does luck hit point damage), or the ogre could block my axe with his club(a hit that does skill hit point damage). All of those are "misses" that still deal damage.