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

[pemerton]

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.

<snip>

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.

This is all true.

But while Pendragon doesn't have hit locations, it does have simultaneous resolution (although only approximately simultaneous for movement). And it doesn't have D&D style hit points either - hit point depletion corresponds straightforwardly to physical set-back and injury.

Classic Traveller doesn't use hit locations either, and it even allows for player metagaming in deciding whether to keep your PC in the fight but risk death, or fall unconscious instead (by choosing which stat to allocate wound dice against). But it is still more simulationist than D&D, in that the resolution process broadly tracks and expresses the causal pathway of events in the fiction.

What is distinctive about D&D, compared to these RPGs, is that it centres combat as a domain of action resolution but doesn't adopt a very simulationist approach to combat resolution, except for some aspects of its positioning rules.

 

[AlViking]

Reading through all of these and the same themes and arguments keep coming up, retreads from the "Are you running a sandbox".

1. Arbitrary lines drawn by people just to "prove" that we aren't really doing what we think we're doing.
2. The poster doesn't like a specific rule so therefore it means the game is not what we think it is.
3. Litmus tests that, as far as I can tell, are just made up out of thin air.
4. Appeals to authority when the authority doesn't think that the label we apply ever apply to TTRPGs.
5. The "all or nothing" tests where if there's anything that doesn't fit some very specific criteria then it completely fails because it has to perfectly fit someone's idea of what the word means which is usually based on their favorite game.
6. That decisions made by the author of the rules such as charts or lookups somehow are more valid that the decisions of the GM at the table.
7. Impossible criteria that could not possibly be achieved.
   1. Knowing where every monster is at every moment of the day to the level of detail of knowing exactly when where and if the characters are going to cross paths with that particular monster.
   2. Knowing exactly why someone falls off a cliff or falls in love.
8. Uncertainty resolved by the roll of the dice means the game can't possibly be a sandbox or simulation.

With of course mixing and matching along with variations of all of the above. I'm sure there are more. All to say "You're wrong, I'm right" without actually revealing anything interesting or new for discussion.

 

[AlViking]

Actually, no rules in D&D tell you how far you fell. No matter what, you hit the bottom at the end of the round according to the rules. You can fall ten feet or ten thousand feet and you will take exactly the same amount of time to hit the bottom, and you will ALWAYS hit the bottom before 6 seconds.

Now, I agree, this is utterly ridiculous. But, that is what the rules say.

It is hard to accept because the definition you are using and the one @AlViking insists that simulationist rules are diegetic. Which means that they actually correlate to what is happening in the game world. For rules to be diegetic, they MUST tell you anything (even the tiniest bit of information would be enough) about how the result occured. That's what diegetic means. I'm simply insisting that you use the definitions that you yourself agreed to.

By your definition ALL mechanics are simulationist. Because all mechanics tell you the result of something and don't tell you how it happened. Rolling dice in Monopoly are simulationist according to you. No matter what, all mechanics are simulationist if simulationist mechanics don't have to actually describe anything other than the result because all mechanics, no matter what, do the same thing - describe a result. The cook popping in after a failed lockpick check is 100% simulationist by your definition. Since there is no need for any causal chain between the mechanics and the result - after all the mechanics in no way describe HOW the result was achieved, thus, there is no need for any causal link between the mechanics and the result - then any result, no matter how farcical - like falling at light speed, but only taking limited damage - is 100% simulationist.

Does any game tell you why someone falls off a cliff? How does it do so? How could it?

Simulationism is about how we approach cause and effect. Diegetic doesn't mean the fictional cliff is actually being climbed by the fictional character, it can't because they don't exist. If the outcome is uncertain there has to be something done by one of the people sitting at the table to determine the outcome. Diegetic just means we aren't using metagame rules to determine the outcome, the player can't get a beer for the GM in order to prevent the character from falling. A fellow wizard may cast feather fall to avoid damage to the falling character, the player can't say "I'll take a 10% penalty to XP for this session to avoid falling."

 

[Don Durito]

This is all true.

But while Pendragon doesn't have hit locations, it does have simultaneous resolution (although only approximately simultaneous for movement). And it doesn't have D&D style hit points either - hit point depletion corresponds straightforwardly to physical set-back and injury.

Classic Traveller doesn't use hit locations either, and it even allows for player metagaming in deciding whether to keep your PC in the fight but risk death, or fall unconscious instead (by choosing which stat to allocate wound dice against). But it is still more simulationist than D&D, in that the resolution process broadly tracks and expresses the causal pathway of events in the fiction.

What is distinctive about D&D, compared to these RPGs, is that it centres combat as a domain of action resolution but doesn't adopt a very simulationist approach to combat resolution, except for some aspects of its positioning rules.

Well yes.

 

[thefutilist]

Really GNS exists as a way to carve out space for narrativism. I've always thought of it as sort of like a weird manifesto presented as a taxonomy.

I believed the same thing for years and often said GNS would have gone over better if it was just a Narrativist manifesto. When I'd got a really clear idea of what I was doing, playing with a variety of other people changed my mind. It really does seem people fall into one of two camps, Gamist or Narrativist. I think you even see a similar split in something like boardgames and wargames, although it's far more murky in that case.

What makes The Big Model more controversial than just the agenda categories, is that Ron makes normative claims about the value of play and the quality of play. In Ron's view most play is neither G or N because it's fundamentally broken. This just isn't going to go over well at the best of times but it was made worse because the only route to 'functional' play was from a Narrativist perspective.


In a kind of practical sense the claims of GNS really amount to:

Most play is broken and if you don't want broken play you must do these two things.

1) Play with people who have the same agenda and level of commitment as you do.

2) Play challenge based OSR or Narrativist games.


Still controversial but it moves the conversation totally away from sim, which was the thing that screwed the model from the start.

The other way the categories might have been more useful is just to split gaming into that which requires player skill and that which does not. I get why Ron didn't do that, it's less accurate because N can involve player skill. In a practical sense though, it does more clearly delineate play priorities.

 

[FrogReaver]

Classic Traveller doesn't use hit locations either, and it even allows for player metagaming in deciding whether to keep your PC in the fight but risk death, or fall unconscious instead (by choosing which stat to allocate wound dice against). But it is still more simulationist than D&D, in that the resolution process broadly tracks and expresses the causal pathway of events in the fiction.

I think many would say the metagaming aspect expressly moves it far outside the simulationist camp.

What is distinctive about D&D, compared to these RPGs, is that it centres combat as a domain of action resolution but doesn't adopt a very simulationist approach to combat resolution, except for some aspects of its positioning rules.

I think your simulationist scale is very uncalibrated.

There’s a difference in saying d&d combat is t the most simulationist out there and saying it utterly lacks the necessary elements of simulationist. There’s actually a lot that’s simulationist about d&d combat.

 

[pemerton]

I don’t get the whole non-expert criticism. Assuming someone is incompetent but consistent then at worst we have an inaccurate simulation, and given all our simulations have inaccurate elements then that shouldn’t be a deal breaker.

I don't judge wargames. I do, sometimes, judge moots - simulated arguments in an appeals court. the significance of my expertise is that the participants, by improving their expertise, can ensure that I will judge them favourably.

Having an amateur judge a moot makes it little different from a lottery. To me, it seems the same would be true for a wargame.

 

[pemerton]

Well yes.

Which is why I find the "I'm a sim fan so I don't like it" argument, coming from people who mostly play D&D or D&D variants, pretty unpersuasive - as in, I believe that they don't like it (whatever the "it" is) but can't really credit the idea that it is their commitment to simulationism that explains that dislike.

 

[pemerton]

I think many would say the metagaming aspect expressly moves it far outside the simulationist camp.

Would they? Have you ever even seen that metagame aspect of Traveller mentioned by anyone before me in the post you quoted? I mean, I never have - and I've read quite a bit about Traveller, and first played it around 1980.

Upthread, you liked this post:

In the late 80s and 90s, games like Traveller, RuneQuest, and GURPS introduced more simulationist or open-ended approaches.

That poster doesn't seem to have noticed the metagame possibility in Traveller's damage rules.

Would you have noticed it if I hadn't pointed it out to you?

 

[TwoSix]

I think many would say the metagaming aspect expressly moves it far outside the simulationist camp.

That makes it sound like you have the premise that actor stance/"immersive"/"I am my character" play is a necessary component of sim play. Is that accurate to your beliefs?