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

[pemerton]

I would never stat Superman's invulnerability as hit points. Damage reduction (and a lot of it) all the way.

OK?

But if you give Batman damage reduction or a dragon's worth of hit points, that's not "diegetic". And if you don't give Batman something like that, then you don't get "action movie physics".

The point is: in the fiction, Batman doesn't know that a single person with a gun can't kill him. Superman does. But "action movie physics" requires that Batman, as much as Superman, cannot be killed by a single person (indeed, any number of persons) with a gun.

Those aren't games I play (or care to), so it's not really relevant to my interests. I'll stipulate to your point being accurate though. What do I know?

Given that you posted this, I took you to have opinions on MHRP and my fantasy hack of it:

In the runes example, the player expressed a hope, and the GM decided to make that hope real. They didn't have to. They could have provided some other beneficial result. They chose to make the player's hope manifest.

 

[pemerton]

The DR would need to be high enough to completely negate the rapier's damage, either in general or to piercing. Alternatively, the damage represents striking a joint or other weak spot.

Quantum weak spots! Quantum aiming!

I mean, we already resolved the hit with the roll to hit. Why are we now reading the damage roll back into the prior determination of hit or miss?

 

[Umbran]

Quantum weak spots! Quantum aiming!

I mean, we already resolved the hit with the roll to hit. Why are we now reading the damage roll back into the prior determination of hit or miss?

Because our mechanics are mechanical, and sometimes to make sense of the result, it helps to not treat them as strict prescriptions of the narrative's physical reality.

 

[pemerton]

If a group want to use D&D for simulation and their world is one in which people shouldn't survive enormous falls then when a high-level fighter takes one, DM narration should say how they survive. Example "You fall, but the bending and breaking limbs of trees you fall through slow you enough that the damage isn't lethal."

How is that any different from the startled cook? Instead of a cook in the kitchen, we have limbs of trees that bend and break in just the right way.

 

[pemerton]

Because our mechanics are mechanical, and sometimes to make sense of the result, it helps to not treat them as strict prescriptions of the narrative's physical reality.

I don't think this is really consistent with a simulationist approach, is it? Or the idea that we should avoid abstractions that are at odds with "diegesis".

 

[pemerton]

Do you mean that the game system must not only produce results consistent with the imagined world, but must do so in a way that explains how that result was achieved in that world?

Every RPG system that isn't terrible produces results consistent with the imagined world. But that doesn't mean they are all simulationist in their orientation, does it?

 

[pemerton]

Do you mean that the game system must not only produce results consistent with the imagined world, but must do so in a way that explains how that result was achieved in that world? Given that the results are often achieved by rolling dice it is hard to see how that will work.

<snip>

Seeing as it's dice rolls, mathematics, and player speech and gesture around the table, I'm doubtful that any game can claim to produce results in the way that they are supposed to be produced in the world.

@Hussar didn't say that simulationist mechanics must produce results in the way that they are produced in the imaginary world.

He did say that, to count as simulationist, mechanics must yield some sort of answer as to what the process was, in the imaginary world, that produced the result.

I imagine that RQ's attack/parry/damage rules, or Rolemaster's crit tables that tell you where and how hard a blow lands, would count, in the context of melee combat.

 

[AlViking]

Dodge is an explicit action in 5e. It's not affected by armor.

I believe what they're saying is that hitting someone's armor and doing no damage is still a hit. That the only way to miss is to make no contact whatsoever with the target or their armor. Obviously not the intent of the rules and I doubt they actually believe that it works that way.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

Good, we're clear that it is not the case that "Wearing heavy armor makes you dodge better." At least, not in D&D.

Armor doesn't make you dodge better, but a high AC can have much the same net affect as dodge without burning an action. So it can be a "better" dodge even if it doesn't "make you dodge better".

The cloak of displacement is the best dodge in D&D if you have an attunement slot.

 

[AlViking]

I would cut the quote here, as this is the argument I think is strong in the post (the rest seem to be rehashing things already picked appart).

I think you are here onto something important. The rules of D&D are there to support game. The fameous Gygax quote given a few times in this tread clearly indicated he was willing to sacrifice simulation for game. However the secondary concern appeared to allow simulation.

I think @clearstream points to something that is close to my interpretation. Few if any rules are there to directly support any kind of simulation. They are there to make for a fun game. However sim has not been completely ignored as there are some (atemped) in-fiction anchoring for all the rules. The key idea here is that it isn't the rules but the DM that should do the heavy lifting in terms of producing a good simulation. This is signature FK thinking. This of course got diluted in post Gygax D&D, but this philosophy still has it's fingerprints all over the place, even in 4ed.

So the difference between sim focused FKR and D&D is in my view that D&D added more to rules to support a game experience than modern FKR. The structures and philosophy allowing for sim play in FKR is very present in old school D&D.

The rules in D&D are a set of tools to run a game. They give you advice on how you can run the game but it's always up to the DM and group to make it their own. This is very different from how DW is presented for example, in DW the rules explicitly tell the GM they are also bound by the rules. In D&D we are explicitly told that the DM is in charge, not the rules. DMs are encouraged to try different things to find what works for them and their players.