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

[EzekielRaiden]

I have never thought that D&D was best for sim. It allows for sim, it has many trappings of it, and can be adjusted to move further in that direction. Combine that with its familiarity to the people I have access to as players and you have a game that can, if played the way I prefer, provide an enjoyable experience for both me and them.

And if more folks held a position like this, I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem.

Instead, there have been several folks across this thread who have declared D&D to be not only very good for sim, but among the very best for it, dismissing the parts that welcome adjustment, as you say.

If one chooses to use it because it is more convenient, even if it requires adjustment, that's a perfectly valid stance to take. "I prefer D&D for sim because it's what all of my gaming group knows and enjoys" is a great reason, hands down. "I prefer D&D for sim because it's an innately great game specifically for sim play" is...questionable at best, and folks have gone quite a bit further than "it's an innately great game for sim".

 

[Micah Sweet]

OK, how, to you, does it feel better? How, to you, is it more immersive?

You want me to explain my feelings? If I don't feel the setting has a sense of independence from me the player, such that my ability to affect it is limited to the abilities and choices of my character, then that setting feels artificial and unsatisfying to me. I am not immersed in the experience of my PC in that world, because I have the explicit option (maybe even the responsibility in some games) to step out of that personal and advocate to the GM directly, or maybe simply declare facts myself. I don't want that power. It is not fun for me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's as it is, but my statement still stands for probably the majority of games out there; a dead end can be, if not planned for, a true dead end.

Fair enough, but you know how little I concern myself with any majority.

 

[Hussar]

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

And that is perfectly fine. Hell, I totally agree.

 

[pemerton]

I think the narrative systems give players more agency, separate from their characters, to change the fiction

See, this is where I assert that you are just confused about how fiction works. The fiction is not being changed. It is being authored: everyone agrees that there are strange runes; no one knows what they are or do; now a roll has been made, and we all know what the runes are - they are a secret message about how to escape the dungeon.

Back in the late 70s/early 80s, it was common (or at least it seemed common to me) to find discussion about what to do if the players had their PCs go down a stair or through a door to a part of the dungeon that the GM hadn't yet keyed. (And perhaps hadn't even yet mapped.) Various solutions were given; one is Appendix A of Gygax's DMG (random dungeon generation).

But no one described this as changing the fiction. It's just authoring it.

And turning now to the "separate from their characters*: the action of reading runes is not separate from the character. It's a thing that the character does. This is how it is possible to play the RPG without ever having to do anything, as a player, but declare actions for your character ("Maybe these runes show a way out of the dungeon - I try and decipher them!").

The disconnect is that I think giving the players power in this way actually gives them less agency in-character. Their in-character actions aren't connecting with anything solid and so they don't really matter. In that sense, the game is more GM-driven--you just want to convince the GM action X will make a good story. ('Hmm...will Pemerton, the GM, go for this runes = map idea?')

This is a factually false description of play. The player did not try to, or need to, convince me that something will make a good story. He declared an action, and we resolved it using the rules of the game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The lack of something doesn't make it a good tool for a job; at best it means its not actively interfering, since its not providing any help.

No, but it can make it not a bad tool, and no game is all or nothing in every aspect of it anyway.

 

[Hussar]

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.
/snip

Because that's the BASIC DEFINITION of simulation. If the game rules do not tell you why something happens, then they are not simulating ANYTHING.

So, no, D&D absolutely does not simulate a heroic fictional world. It really doesn't. You have added all of the simulation yourself. At no point is the system simulating anything. The fact that you straight up say, "why should the game rules tell us why or how" something happens means you actually don't know what the word simulation means.

This system is only a simulation because you like it and you think that you like simulations. But, it's pretty clear here, you don't actually know what the word means. A simulation that does not tell you how or why is not a simulation.

 

[Hussar]

Heh. Just to inject a little levity into the conversation:

 

[pemerton]

]They teleport away from a bad situation not (as far as I can tell) because they have an inherent teleport ability like a spell in D&D but because there was a "doom pool" that was spent to get them the heck out of Dodge but ended up being lost as a complication.

No. If you read the account of play, you'll see that they were teleported by a Crypt Thing. Maybe you're not familiar with the Crypt Thing: it's a classic D&D monster from the Fiend Folio, and it has the ability to teleport its victims to a random location within the dungeon. In the account of play, I explained how I adapted this creature, including its teleport ability, to my fantasy hack of MHRP.

Then the player decided what weird runes were and how to use them and because they succeeded on their check it was good, if it had been bad the complication would have gotten worse.

This is not accurate either. The player, playing his PC, expressed a hope as to what the runes might be, and decided to try and decipher them. The appropriate roll was then made, and the PC succeeded in deciphering them and found his hope to be fulfilled.

You don't know what would have happened on a failure. Nor do I. It was some years ago now, and I have no idea what the state of the Doom Pool was.

 

[Hussar]

I get your point, but I don't think it is true. I don't see why the simulation has to simulate something at that level of detail to be verisimilitudinous. In my experience that isn't true.

That level of detail?

How about ANY level of detail? A simulation, in order to actually be a simulation, MUST inform the user something about what happens when the simulation is run. And D&D doesn't. It doesn't tell you anything. The mechanics do not inform the narrative at all.

How can something be a simulation if it doesn't actually simulate anything?