Here is what I find funny (and I haven't read all the posts, but just a post here and there)
Ron Edwards does this deep theory crafting on RPGs - talks about Simulationism etc.
But then when it suits the argument, people here imply D&D isn't simulationist at all and pushback against D&Ders defending their game as being an S-game.
So which is it? Was Ron completely off the mark and we throw away his theory crafting in the bin or do we acknowledge that there is simulationism in D&D?
Edwards has plenty of discussion about various approaches to D&D play, and the influence on D&D design (over time) of various play priorities. I'm happy to point you to it if you're curious. But I don't think it will tell anyone anything they didn't already know to read, for instance, that Wilderness Survival Guide introduces simulationist priorities that are largely absent from the original 3 booklets, except perhaps in their rules for aerial and naval combat.
What in my view is more interesting, in thinking about how D&D is frequently - even typically (at least up until the last decade or so, maybe) - played, is
this:
I promised a definition for Gamism and here it is. It operates at two levels: the real, social people and the imaginative, in-game situation.
- The players, armed with their understanding of the game and their strategic acumen, have to Step On Up. Step On Up requires strategizing, guts, and performance from the real people in the real world. This is the inherent "meaning" or agenda of Gamist play (analogous to the Dream in Simulationist play).
Gamist play, socially speaking, demands performance with risk, conducted and perceived by the people at the table. What's actually at risk can vary - for this level, though, it must be a social, real-people thing, usually a minor amount of recognition or esteem. The commitment to, or willingness to accept this risk is the key - it's analogous to committing to the sincerity of The Dream for Simulationist play. This is the whole core of the essay, that such a commitment is fun and perfectly viable for role-playing, just as it's viable for nearly any other sphere of human activity.
- The in-game characters, armed with their skills, priorities, and so on, have to face a Challenge, which is to say, a specific Situation in the imaginary game-world. Challenge is about the strategizing, guts, and performance of the characters in this imaginary game-world.
For the characters, it's a risky situation in the game-world; in addition to that all-important risk, it can be as fabulous, elaborate, and thematic as any other sort of role-playing. Challenge is merely plain old Situation - it only gets a new name because of the necessary attention it must receive in Gamist play. Strategizing in and among the Challenge is the material, or arena, for whatever brand of Step On Up is operating.
. . .
Competition is best understood as a productive add-on to Gamist play. Such play is fundamentally cooperative, but may include competition. That's not a contradiction: I'm using exactly the same logic as might be found at the poker and basketball games. You can't compete, socially, without an agreed-upon venue. If the cooperation's details are acceptable to everyone, then the competition within it can be quite fierce. . . .
If person A's performance is only maximized by driving down another's performance, then competition is present. In Gamist play, this is not required - but it is very often part of the picture. Competition gives both Step On Up and Challenge a whole new feel - a bite.
How does conflict of interest relate to Step On Up and to Challenge? The crucial answer is that it may be present twice, independently, within the two-level structure.
- Competition at the Step On Up level = conflict of interest regarding players' performance and impact on the game-world.
- Competition at the Challenge level = conflict of interest among characters' priorities (survival, resource accumulation, whatever) in the game-world.
Think of each level having a little red dial, from 1 to 11 - and those dials can be twisted independently. Therefore, four extremes of dial-twisting may be compared.
- High competition in Step On Up plus low competition in Challenge = entirely team-based play, party style against a shared Challenge, but with value placed on some other metric of winning among the real people, such as levelling-up faster, having the best stuff, having one's player-characters be killed less often, getting more Victory Points, or some such thing. Most Tunnels & Trolls play is like this.
- Low competition in Step On Up plus high competition in Challenge = characters are constantly scheming on one another or perhaps openly trying to kill or outdo another but the players aren't especially competing, because consequences to the player are low per unit win/loss. Kobolds Ate My Baby and the related game, Ninja Burger, play this way.
- High competition in both levels = moving toward the Hard Core (see below), including strong rules-manipulation, often observed in variants of Dungeons & Dragons as well in much LARP play. A risky way to play, but plenty of fun if you have a well-designed system like Rune.
- Low competition in both levels = strong focus on Step On Up and Challenge but with little need for conflict-of-interest. Quite a bit of D&D based on story-heavy published scenarios plays this way. It shares some features with "characters face problem" Simulationist play, with the addition of a performance metric of some kind. Some T&T play Drifted this way as well, judging by many Sorcerer's Apprentice articles.
That last dot point - low competition both between the players at the table and between the characters in the fiction - describes a huge chunk of party-based D&D play. And you can see how easily it drifts into a type of situation-oriented simulationist play: as Edwards says, the difference is whether there is a performance metric. Some D&D modules downplay that performance metric (eg Planescape ones); others don't (eg Tomb of Horrors). I think that a lot of D&D groups are playing in this space; but the idea of "beating the module" or "solving the mystery" does seem to have a lot of cogency for a lot of D&D play, and to that extent it's gamist at its core.
Here's a second thing which I think is relevant, in the context of this thread:
Exploration, to me, seemed to be involved in all of role-playing. I decided to modify GNS severely and "float" the three modes on a "sea" of Exploration. In that context, Simulationist play priorities suddenly made more sense - as I saw it and still do, 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.
All RPGing involves the participants imagining a fictional setting and situation and treating it as if it's real. There is nothing uniquely simulationist about that. What is
simulationist is to prioritise the fiction -
as Tuovinen says,
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.
The two things I've pointed to - (i) the proximity, in terms of approach to play, of a certain sort of gamism and a certain sort of simulationism, and (ii) what simulationism both has in common with all RPGing, but also how it differs from other RPGing - in my view explain some recurring discussions/debates we see in relation to D&D play. The idea of "power-gaming" or "munchkinism", for instance, seems to describe a type of "break point" on a particular boundary between simulationism - building the character
to be a suitable character for the imagine situation - and gamism - building the character with an eye on succeeding against the challenge.
Related to "power-gaming" is the question of whether or not a person who builds a "weak" character is letting the rest of the group down.
No, if you're playing simulationist;
yes, if you're playing low-competition-on-both-dials beat-the-scenario gamism.
Is the point of the setting, presented by the GM to the players, to be
experienced for its own sake, or
to provide a context in which players, via their PCs, can identify, confront and (perhaps) overcome challenges? We've seen both ideas presented in this thread, under the same label "sandbox".
And a final point to close this over-long post: Edwards
identifies five elements that are found in all RPGing:
When a person engages in role-playing, or prepares to do so, he or she relies on imagining and utilizing the following:
Character,
System,
Setting,
Situation, and
Color.
- Character: a fictional person or entity.
- System: a means by which in-game events are determined to occur.
- Setting: where the character is, in the broadest sense (including history as well as location).
- Situation: a problem or circumstance faced by the character.
- Color: any details or illustrations or nuances that provide atmosphere.
Edwards
elaborates system a bit more: "System is mainly composed of character creation, resolution, and reward mechanics."
And simulationism, in foregrounding the fiction itself as the thing to be prioritised and enjoyed, can foreground these various elements, but not all of them at once. A game like RM, and the sim-ish aspects of Burning Wheel, foreground the fiction: PC build (and how this models or exhibits the fiction), and action resolution (and how this models or exhibits the interplay between in-game situations and character attributes and actions), and reward (eg BW has elaborate rules for how using skills and abilities, and/or practising skills and abilities, improves those skills and abilities).
Whereas the sim-aspect of sandbox-y D&D is much more about
setting, and how it feeds into
situation. (As I posted about
a long way upthread.)
And here's one reason why you can't prioritise all these elements all at once: if you foreground system, then - of necessity -
setting and even
situation will to some extent escape your grasp, because you can't control the impact that system will have on it. Conversely, if you foreground
setting or
situation as that component of the fiction to receive "elevated appreciation" then you are necessarily going to have to subordinate
system, as it cannot be allowed to disrupt the setting or situation that is the object of appreciation.
This is another tension that manifest quite commonly in D&D play and discussion about it: see every discussion ever, for instance, about "fudging" or "rulings" or the like to make sure that "the fiction" turns out as it is supposed to.
So anyway, there are some thoughts on simulationism in D&D.
