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

[AlViking]

No. That’s the straw man you keep insisting on.

A simulation in no way must mirror reality.

A simulation MUST reveal ANY information about how the resolution of the simulation was reached.

Since DnD never reveals any information about how a result occurred, simply that a result did occur, it is not a simulation.

Again a simulation must reveal some information about how the result occurred or it is not a simulation of anything.

Let's see ... simulation definitions ... "must reveal..." ... nope. Not in there. You keep saying that simulations must show reasons for component pieces as if this is not just something you came up with off the top of your head and I just don't see anything that backs it up. If I am playing a war simulation video game and I shoot an enemy I don't care how my gun works, how it fires a bullet. I don't know how the simulation calculates the damage to the enemy. Most war simulations will not track body part specific hit locations, although many will do more damage if specific body parts are hit. For the most part enemies don't bleed out slowly or if they do I can ignore them once their death loop is started because ... wait for it ... I know their hit points have been reduced to zero and they're dead.

Now you could tell all those people playing those games that they aren't really playing simulation games but I suspect they might disagree with you.

 

[Faolyn]

The actual process behind it matters. Why are they seperating them? What agenda are they pursuing?

Why is who separating what?

Why is the GM separating the party? Very often, because it makes things more difficult and potentially more interesting and dramatic. It's an adventuring trope with a long history, after all.

Or were you talking about in-game reasons? I dunno; you'd have to talk to whoever is doing the separating.

So...yes, they are the same? What are we all talking about then?

The fact that the GM's roles in both trad and narrative games are built around the principles that range from very similar to actually identical. It's silly to complain about things being written down neatly in one game when it's been part of the rules and expectations of another game that I know you play and seemingly enjoy.

 

[Hussar]

That's what I've repeated for years. It just as to simulate something in the real world in some manner.

How did you take the damage from a fall? Gravity pulled you down hard after you let go of the cliff and you impacted the ground hard. That's how it happened.

Besides, you are trying to apply the wrong definition to RPGs. There's the scientific study definition which you are misapplying, but that has nothing to do with RPG simulations. And then there's the definition that's simply, an imitation of a situation or process, which is the definition that RPGs use when they talk about simulating things. The falling example is 100% an imitation of the process of falling due to gravity and hurting yourself upon impact.

That imitation can range from poor to really good, but regardless of quality, it's still simulationism. And no revealed information about how it occurred is necessary.

Nice shifting goalposts there.

Why did you fall? What happened? You failed the climb check and fell. The mechanics are entirely silent about why you fell. Why did you take damage? Maybe magical falling pixies stabbed you on the way down. Prove me wrong.

And what does the fall damage actually mean? How did I land? What body part is injured? I've taken "damage" but, that actually has no diegetic meaning in the game world because Hit Points have no diegetic meaning in the game world.

This is where @AlViking's use of that specific definition falls apart. His definition specifically states that all mechanics must be diegetic and that abstraction should be reduced to the point where all mechanics can be used diegetically. That's straight from the post. Nothing in D&D is actually diegetic. You fell because you failed a climb check. That climb check doesn't actually tell you anything, other than you fell down.

For mechanics to be diegetic, they MUST inform the narrative. That's what diegetic means. If the mechanics do not give any information with which to form a narrative, then they are not diegetic and fail to be part of simulationist as defined.

 

[Faolyn]

I've spent a lot of time thinking about and designing content for D&D-like games. I don't use that as a bludgeon to try to convince people my style is superior (all the while telling folks I'm just trying to correct their misunderstandings).

Yeah you do. You complain all the time about how 5e is nothing more than a money grab and about how the new books, which you don't like, are badly done. That's a bludgeon.

 

[Faolyn]

Are you telling me that in PbtA you actually have the GM using the various player moves as tools they can invoke at will, and treat the fictional trigger descriptions merely as guidelines?? That would indeed be eye opening and surprising given all the seemingly contradicting claims I have heard.

GMs don't use player moves. GMs use GM moves. Mind, depending on the game in question, it's possible for a GM to create a move associated with a place or NPC that they made that mimics a PC move.

(In case you weren't aware, GMs can create moves for their NPCs and locations.)

Also, moves aren't used "at will." They have to be triggered. And moves aren't special abilities or skills. They are specifically responses to narrative events. When X happens, Y results.

 

[Hussar]

You keep saying that simulations must show reasons for component pieces

The word you keep missing here is

ANY

It has to show ANY information. For something to be diegetic, it must inform the narrative. You point your gun in an FPS and the bullet travels along a path to the enemy which is hurt. You can see every step of the simulation played out. While you might not know the exact math being used, you can see the narrative. Shoot gun, bad guy falls down.

D&D doesn't do this. You make an attack, you ablate some HP and nothing in that actually tells you, the player a single piece of information about what actually happened in the game world. Because it is not diegetic. The video gamer can see exactly what happened in the simulation. The narrative is 100% driven by the mechanics of the game. You shoot and hit bad guy falls down. You shoot and miss, bad guy shoots you. There's no mystery here at all. It's 100% the mechanics of the simulation defining the narrative of the game.

 

[Hussar]

Let's stick with the notion of First Person Shooters (FPS) games for am moment.

Now, the mechanics of the game will determine how the attacks in the game work. Each enemy will have a "hit box" where the player has to aim at in order to damage the enemy. The player's character also has a hit box that the baddies have to hit in order to damage the PC. Fair enough.

Now, here's where the simulation can be tweaked to different genres. In something like ARMA, where realism is the primary goal, the hit box will be the same for everyone - player and NPC alike - and will to the best of the ability of the simulation, simulate a human body (or vehicle or whatever). That's the goal of that game.

Now, switch over to something like Doom. This is a heroic fantasy game in the vein of 80's action movies. The hero single handedly mows down hundreds, or even thousands, of enemies. So, we add things like aim assist. The PC might have a higher chance of hitting (either by making the baddie's hit box bigger or by tweaking the path of bullets) baddies and the baddies have a lower chance of hitting by making the PC's hit box smaller. The graphics of the game add this in by having the baddies miss more often and the good guy hits more often. If it's done right, you can't really even tell that it's happening.

In all cases though, the simulation is defining the narrative. What the player does mirrors exactly what the character does. Genre is simulated by tweaking the parameters of the simulation. Health packs or other power ups might be added to the game to allow continued play. So on and so forth.

Sorry, this got a bit long winded, so, I'll try to sum up my point here. D&D is not a FPS. The mechanics are not diegetic. The mechanics don't actually define or inform the narrative in the game in any way. Your attack does not tell anyone at the table any information other than you have reduced the enemy by X HP. Even the loss of HP does not inform any actual narrative until all HP are lost and the baddy dies. Even THEN, how the baddy died is not informed, at all, by the mechanics.

 

[Don Durito]

I don't really want to get involved in this discussion but I do find the concept of simulationism used here somewhat odd.

Ron Edwards always stated that Pendragon was a classic Sim game and it is neither complex nor has hit locations.

You only need complexity if the thing you are trying to simulate requires it. There's not a lot of detailed breakdown in Mallory of where exactly on his body Lancelot smote his enemy so Pendragon doesn't require hit locations. If you were trying to simulate Hema combat than you'd be more likely to require hit locations.

"different types of Simulationist play can address very different things, ranging from a focus on characters' most deep-psychology processes, to a focus on the kinetic impact and physiological effects of weapons, to a focus on economic trends and politics, and more. I'll go into this lots more later."

And just on practical grounds if you were a making a sim game for say regency romance, you might not even bother with a unique combat system at all as simulating fighting is not the focus of the game.

Points-of-contact are far more directional; things which aren't relevant to the Explorative focus are often summarized and not "System'ed" with great rigor. When done well, such that the remaining, emphasized elements clearly provide a sort of "what to do" feel, this creates an extremely playable, accessible game text. Dread offers the perfect example for the lower points-of-contact end; Arrowflight and Godlike are similar but more reassuringly nail-even-the-irrelevant-down at the higher points-of-contact end. The truly outstanding games illustrating this latter approach are Call of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies, and Pendragon.

(Also as an aside I always thought Edward's conflation of realism with genre emulation muddied the waters somewhat - since to the person who doesn't really care about realism they are the same things and to the person who does they are most emphatically not.)

 

[Maxperson]

Nice shifting goalposts there.

Why did you fall? What happened? You failed the climb check and fell. The mechanics are entirely silent about why you fell. Why did you take damage? Maybe magical falling pixies stabbed you on the way down. Prove me wrong.

And what does the fall damage actually mean? How did I land? What body part is injured? I've taken "damage" but, that actually has no diegetic meaning in the game world because Hit Points have no diegetic meaning in the game world.

This is where @AlViking's use of that specific definition falls apart. His definition specifically states that all mechanics must be diegetic and that abstraction should be reduced to the point where all mechanics can be used diegetically. That's straight from the post. Nothing in D&D is actually diegetic. You fell because you failed a climb check. That climb check doesn't actually tell you anything, other than you fell down.

For mechanics to be diegetic, they MUST inform the narrative. That's what diegetic means. If the mechanics do not give any information with which to form a narrative, then they are not diegetic and fail to be part of simulationist as defined.

I don't need to prove you wrong. Those things are not just relevant to RPG simulations. You are still trying to misapply the wrong definition of simulation to RPGs. All that matters is that it is simulating the process of falling. It doesn't have to do it well. It doesn't have to say that you fell because the rocks were wet. None of that. Only that falling deals damage.

And are you really saying that a PC with 10 hit points and falls 50 feet, taking 23 points of damage has not been injured by the rules? RAW specifically says otherwise.

The rules themselves do not need to give you the information you are requesting.

 

[TwoSix]

I think you may have misinterpreted what @TwoSix was saying.

The point being made wasn't about in-game play involving deep introspection, it was about using out-of-game deep introspection to analyse the way you already play/DM.

Now, I've got no real use for deep analysis of how I do what I do, but that's another issue entirely.

EDIT: @hawkeyefan beat me to it in calling out the mis-read on deep introspection.

Thank you, sir. I know we often end up on opposite sides of these various discussions, so I do appreciate the support.