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

[pemerton]

So what would to call the referee’s specific mental process to simulate if not a mechanic?

The making of a decision, guided by a heuristic.

"Mechanic" is cognate with "machine". Using a machine to generate a result stands in contrast to making a judgement.

More puzzling still, how do the supposed TTRPG mechanics make themselves felt in play without some person's specific mental process to enact them?

This is a red herring. When I draw a lot out of a hat, or shuffle and deal cards, or rolling dice, I need to make decisions - about putting the lots into the hat, moving my hands and the cards in certain ways, picking up the dice and then dropping and reading them, etc.

But it would be spurious to say that there is no difference between performing those actions and getting a result and (for instance) imagining myself performing those actions so as to get a result.

Or to give another example: there is a difference between looking at a pile of things and intuiting their number, as opposed to counting them out systematically. (And some guessing games - how many jelly beans in the jar? - depend on that difference.)

Trying to assimilate mechanical processes to the use of imagination, judgement and intuition obscures understanding. It doesn't aid it.

 

[pemerton]

That is not a phrase I would use but if players can change the fiction of a world then they are warping that reality.

Huh? Authoring a fiction is not "warping reality".

 

[AlViking]

Huh? Authoring a fiction is not "warping reality".

As I said, I would have not used that term. The player making the declaration is changing the fiction of the world - which is something I try to avoid even as a GM. I may clarify and add to the fiction but not in any substantial way that makes a difference.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course they can. I’m simply urging them to ignore that dislike.

I assume you're also urging players to do the same?

 

[pemerton]

As I said, I would have not used that term. The player making the declaration is changing the fiction of the world - which is something I try to avoid even as a GM. I may clarify and add to the fiction but not in any substantial way that makes a difference.

Some people, when they play RPGs, prefer that all the setting backstory and the like is established prior to play. And some RPGs - including RPGs that support "narrativist play" - work best in this fashion.

Some RPGing involves the setting backstory and the like being created during the process of play. Some RPGs support this, and some of those RPGs are more simulationist than narrativist in their orientation. An example would be Traveller played without a referee as described in the original rulebooks for that game.

It's not "reality warping". When Traveller was published in 1977, and it included rules for the players generating a star map as they go along and playing a trading-and-exploration game, no one talked about this in terms of "reality warping". It's just play without a pre-established setting, using procedures to generate the setting as we go along.

And of course that sort of procedural Traveller play is highly simulationist in orientation/experience.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The difficulty in getting a quorum of players to actually consume and then use in play the setting information in these thick settings is one of the main reasons I’m against them.

If people don't use it in your experience, why be against it? What difference could it possibly make to you?

 

[pemerton]

I used that term for anything a player does in game, during active play, that modifies the fiction outside of the purview of their PC.

So according to you, procedural-generation play of the sort flagged in the Classic Traveller rulebooks (1977) or the DMG Appendices (1979) is "reality warping" because the players/participants work out the setting as they go along?

No one ever saw it like that back at that time. It was (correctly) recognised as an alternative way of generating a setting. (That is, an alternative to authorship prior to play.) Why is a pejorative description now being projected onto it?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Doesn't everyone who is playing RPGs? I mean, isn't "treating the sub-creation of the setting as real for the purposes of the game" just a fancier way of saying "pretending"?


I'm not sure why we're talking about analogy here. The PCs are imaginary people who live in the imaginary universe.


This is confusing to me, because the GM is a real person but the universe - the "sub-creation" - is imaginary. Wouldn't the GM be the sub-creator? But distinct from their sub-creation?

This seems to be a description of GM-driven/GM-centred play. The players declare their PCs actions, and everything else is worked out by the GM (either directly or, as you say, mediated via the mechanics).

Are you saying that this is what you mean by "simulationism"?

That is how my sim is adjudicated, yes. I still wouldn't call it GM-driven play, since the players decide what play is focused on through their choices (where the camera is pointed, you might say), but I know we disagree there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Huh? Authoring a fiction is not "warping reality".

If it's done during active play, I believe it is. I don't want players doing it, mostly, even if I'm a player (this isn't an ego thing).

 

[Micah Sweet]

So according to you, procedural-generation play of the sort flagged in the Classic Traveller rulebooks (1977) or the DMG Appendices (1979) is "reality warping" because the players/participants work out the setting as they go along?

No one ever saw it like that back at that time. It was (correctly) recognised as an alternative way of generating a setting. (That is, an alternative to authorship prior to play.) Why is a pejorative description now being projected onto it?

Is the player doing those things, or the GM?