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

[AlViking]

The class system.

So you don't think people can have different careers or become better at their chosen career? Because the biggest complaint I hear is, once more, an issue of granularity not of a concept being emulated.

 

[Don Durito]

Can we try to find an example arguing against simulation that doesn't involve hit points? Just as a change of pace?

Well I was playing around with 3.5 the other day and I realised that if I gave a Mature Dragon one level of Abjurant Champion they would be a better swordsman than someone who had spent their entire life training with the sword due to the way base attack bonuses work.

And of course a personal bugbear of mine. Players of Fighters wanting to wear their armour everywhere (which is reasonable) because as soon as they get into a fight without armour their ability to defend themselves completely vanishes.

Or a character with a rapier being able to use it to destroy skeletons (how exactly? - don't ask - it's just a game - not unreasonable perhaps but still not Sim.).

I mean it's not hard. You can just have to look at what games that have more highly prioritised sim have done differently.

 

[TwoSix]

Even then, what specifically they find fun is going to form an agenda, unless they find all things equally fun which would be a bit odd.

But at this point we are getting almost exclusively into the domain of psychology.

I think we may differ here because I think "exercising creativity" and "having a creative agenda" are two different things. Simply having some desire to be "creative" does not means it coelaseces into an agenda.

An agenda requires at least some forethought and a sense of aspiration.

 

[FrogReaver]

Do you think the degree of metagaming possible in Traveller combat, that arises from its rule for allocating damage dice against physical stats, is greater or less than the amount of meta-gaming that is possible in D&D by making decisions based on how many hp a PC has remaining?

I think it depends on what one believes hp represent and/or if the dm has provided some narration that overrides that representation.

Which is one reason hp is such a terrible example. There’s far to many divergent underlying assumptions about it.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think we may differ here because I think "exercising creativity" and "having a creative agenda" are two different things. Simply having some desire to be "creative" does not means it coelaseces into an agenda.

An agenda requires at least some forethought and a sense of aspiration.

Yea. That would be the difference. I think one can have a subconscious agenda so no forethought is needed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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:
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?

Is it possible in your view for a game to have laudable approaches to sim in some ways and not be particularly sim in others? Does it have to be all or nothing?

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

I think this ignores the inherent ongoing social convergence and expertise expansion that occurs in a prolonged campaign over multiple sessions with the same individuals who are free to leave at anytime.

 

[Don Durito]

I think it depends on what one believes hp represent and/or if the dm has provided some narration that overrides that representation.

Which is one reason hp is such a terrible example. There’s far to many divergent underlying assumptions about it.

I would point out that the examples I gave earlier were not about hit points. They were about game outcomes that occur within the fiction that are merely the result of the way that hit points work mechanically.

 

[FrogReaver]

I would point out that the examples I gave earlier were not about hit points. They were about game outcomes that occur within the fiction that are merely the result of the way that hit points work mechanically.

Two things.

1) I wasn’t responding to your post.
2) I don’t see a heck of alot of difference in those things. Summing them both up as hitpoints seems to be proper language to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Wearing heavy armor makes you dodge better?

Point. I prefer damage reduction personally. But to be fair most of my sim work for RPGs is for outside combat anyway, because my players are used to how D&D does things and I prefer to pick my battles. I have lots of different ways to make combat (including heavy armor and hit points) more sim, but I rarely get to use them in play.