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

[TwoSix]

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.

I have to think about this a bit more, but it strikes me that play focused on elevating one aspect of these five over the others (while not neglecting the other four) makes for a fairly interesting taxonomy.

Character - neotrad/OC play.
System - Gamism, character op/powergaming play.
Setting - Sandbox play, algorithm driven "living world" play.
Situation - Adventure path play.
Color - Horror games, thespian-oriented play, focus on immersion/"being there".

 

[pemerton]

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?

I just made a long post about this.

But I'm not a poster who talks about a "sim" group vs "sim haters".

 

[AlViking]

Wearing heavy armor makes you dodge better?

If heavy armor didn't prevent people from taking damage nobody would wear it. Try punching someone with your fist in their stomach while they're wearing a breastplate and see how much they care.

 

[Don Durito]

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.

The difference is important. Hit points are just abstraction. Falling a 100ft and being able to stand up and dance a jig is a fictional game outcome.

It doesn't matter what rules got you there. If it's a game artifact and not a reflection of what the reality is supposed to be in the setting it seems you have a problem with Sim.

In D&D it might be escalating hit points that make a character completely indifferent to a crossbow pointed at your face - in Warhammer it may be that you are a Dwarf with a ridiculously high Toughness. It doesn't necessarily matter how you got there, if you are trying to simulate a world (or genre) where people should be afraid of crossbows aimed at them you have a problem.

 

[FrogReaver]

The difference is important. Hit points are just abstraction. Falling a 100ft and being able to stand up and dance a jig is a fictional game outcome.

It doesn't matter what rules got you there. If it's a game artifact and not a reflection of what the reality is supposed to be in the setting it seems you have a problem with Sim.

In D&D it might be escalating hit points that make a character completely indifferent to a crossbow point at your face - in Warhammer it may be that you are a Dwarf with a ridiculously high Toughness. It doesn't necessarily matter how you got there, if you are trying to simulate a world (or genre) where people should be afraid of crossbows aimed at them you have a problem.

And yet no one suggests the simulations are perfect. I can see how that would be a ‘problem’ if they did. But they don’t, so?

 

[Micah Sweet]

The class system.

The class system can fit into a sim agenda, particularly if the classes have enough options available to represent many different ways to accomplish one's goals. In my view, class features feed into the fiction all or nearly all the time, and if they don't a little adjustment can make that happen.

One of my favorite things in the world is watching stories critically with an eye towards translating the narrative, setting and character into game terms. I can look at a character kicking butt with a variety of weapons and a distinct, training-based style and say to myself, "that's a fighter". I can see a character casting a spell and speculate how magic works in that setting. Heck, I can see a character getting hit by a monster and thrown across the room and try to figure out the combat system. More importantly I want to do those things.

IMO, all of that is sim.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do you agree it’s not a primary agenda?

Maybe not for a lot of people, but for some I believe it is.

 

[FrogReaver]

Maybe not for a lot of people, but for some I believe it is.

That’s fair. Then I think we agree.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I have sim ways around all those things (to my satisfaction), but fair enough. I know there are non-Sim things other than hit points that can be pointed to. I'm just very tired of beating the hit point horse.

It can't have many left by this point.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

How is that not about hit points? Your examples are predicated on how hit points work.