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

[pemerton]

I don't see a significant difference here, nor with these and 5e. In all cases we have numerical measure of diegetic character capability and numerical measure of diegetic challenge of the task

In BW, as per the example I gave, there is a pretty tight correlation between the fiction and the difficulty. This is the underpinning of the explanations, and exhortations, in the rulebooks and commentary about using the obstacle system to establish the nature and texture of the setting.

I'm not familiar with how this is done in 5e D&D. For instance, I don't know what it tells me about a (near-, semi-)vertical surface that the DC to climb it is 15.

something completely unrelated happening,

To me, this suggests that you don't know how to play or GM Burning Wheel.

 

[AlViking]

Really? You got a flat tire and there is absolutely no way you could know how it happened? There's no puncture in your tire? No damage? The tire is just flat? Wow, that's interesting. You start up your phone. Sure, I have no idea how it works either. But, if your phone was just started, all on its own, without you doing anything, would you be perfectly fine with that? There's a direct causal chain here. A pretty simple to follow narrative. You picked up your phone. You turned it on. Seems like the narrative pretty much writes itself.

In D&D, your tire is flat. You have no idea why it's flat. You failed your driving skill check, and you now have a flat tire. The system tells you absolutely nothing to like those two things. And, as it was just pointed out to me, the DM is FORBIDDEN from adding any new information into the fiction. So, how does this work?

Good grief. LEARN THE WORD. For something to be diegetic it MUST EXIST for both the audience and IN the fiction. The easiest example of this is music where the audience can hear the song, the character in the movie turns off the radio and the music stops. Why did the music stop for the audience? Because it's diegetic - turning off the radio in the fiction turns off the music for the audience. IOW, for something to be diegetic, the audience MUST KNOW how a result occurs. They can see, on the screen, right in front of them, playing out in full color, the character walking over and turning off the radio and the music stops. That's diegetic.

So, yes, for something to be diegetic, the audience and the characters in the world must be able to follow the same causal links. You can't have post hoc justifications in a diegetic system. That doesn't work because you can't have post hoc justifications for the audience. Is that clear enough?

I've already answered. The reason you fall of a cliff is because as a player your didn't hit the target number. Any other answer no matter how it the answer is determined is justification and fluff after the fact. As far as diegetic, look it up in a dictionary if you're confused.

Nothing new here.

 

[clearstream]

But, unlike D&D, you have a basic answer of "Why did the attack miss"? It missed because the opponent dodged the attack. Again, it doesn'T HAVE to tell you what it looked like. It only has to provide ANY information. And that's exactly what it's done. It's provided a kernel of information. The attack was dodged. You are free to narrate that in a million different ways, but, all those ways MUST fit within the concept of "This attack was dodged".

So you are content to know that in D&D, attacks can miss due to the disadvantage imposed by their target dodging?

That's TONS of information. More than enough to inform a narrative and discount others.

Can you say how you discount weaving, when the player says ducking?

You folks seem awfully stuck around this idea that the argument is that the system must provide exact, clear, complete narratives. That's never, ever been the point. It's that the system must provide ANY infomation. So long as it provides any information, it satisfies my definition. The reason my definition works is because it makes differentiating between sim and non-sim systems very simple.

That's not true at all. You have some threshold in mind for a level of information that satisfies you. That's arbitrary.

Does the system provide any information as to how a result was achieved? Yes? Then it's a sim system. No? Then it isn't. Easy peasy. I'm frankly utterly baffled why this is so contentious to be honest.

I'm baffled too, seeing as D&D so obviously supplies information meeting the standard of "any". (Emphasis mine.)

 

[AlViking]

Sorry, but, haven't you repeatedly talked about how your game world is decades old? That you've been building this world for many, many years? I'll admit, there's a lot of names in the thread, and I might have you mixed with someone else. If that's so, sorry for getting you mixed up with another poster.

My main world is decades old. Occasionally I create a separate world for a different group or as a change of pace.

 

[Hussar]

I don't know how you do it so quickly. I think a lot of work done by DMs beyond the essentials is a labor of love. A DM can do a simple sandbox setting with no more detail than the module B2. For me it is important I know the fictional persons, human or otherwise, in the primary playing area. I don't know that detail outside the sandbox. I know more world of greyhawk gazateer type knowledge though it is easy to just take a 1/3 of that world and make that your starting setting.

Ptolus is a great city based sandbox. B2 is a decent simple sandbox.

Ptolus is what, nearly a thousand pages long? Does rather prove my point I think.

In something like Ironsworn, in Session 0, the group decides the Truths of the setting - a series of ten or fifteen overall themes of the setting - how heavily or sparsely populated is the area, how long have humans lived there, how common are monsters, how common is magic - that sort of thing. Pretty high altitude stuff. Once that's decided, you make characters and start play. A couple of die rolls and you have a starting settlement typically with some sort of problem. From there, everything is created by the group in play. You travel out to explore - make an Undertake a Journey roll. What did you find? Well, one of the players around the table can answer that. Once that's established, play continues. Within a handful of sessions, you have factions, plots, and all sorts of fun stuff going on.

Put it this way. We played Ironsworn for about a dozen sessions. Within that time, we established a cosmology, brought in two or three major plotlines and a half a dozen sub-plot stories; I have no idea now how many NPC's, I'd have to check my notes, half a dozen or so communities, and I'm sure I'm forgetting other stuff. It was an absolute blast. Prep? Did none. Zero. Zip. Nada. All done in play.

Six months of play? We'd have epic storylines by that point. Players would likely be on the third or fourth generation of characters. I'd actually really like to give a spin when we finish up our current D&D campaign - there's some additional books I'd love to try out. Add in some method for hexploration - there's a flower system (and that's not the right name, but, that's what comes to mind) that I've found that would be fantastic for this. Six months? Good grief, I'd have a setting with Ptolus levels of detail.

 

[pemerton]

I've already answered. The reason you fall of a cliff is because as a player your didn't hit the target number. Any other answer no matter how it the answer is determined is justification and fluff after the fact.

But that is neither diegetic - the roll of the dice is not something that the characters in the fiction are aware of - nor simulationist. It's just stating that if a player fails a climbing roll, their PC falls.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But, unlike D&D, you have a basic answer of "Why did the attack miss"? It missed because the opponent dodged the attack. Again, it doesn'T HAVE to tell you what it looked like. It only has to provide ANY information. And that's exactly what it's done. It's provided a kernel of information. The attack was dodged. You are free to narrate that in a million different ways, but, all those ways MUST fit within the concept of "This attack was dodged".

At no point was that attack parried. And, because the attack was dodged, it would have hit but the defender moved out of the way in some way and no contact was made. That's TONS of information. More than enough to inform a narrative and discount others.

That's why it's a simulationist mechanic.

You folks seem awfully stuck around this idea that the argument is that the system must provide exact, clear, complete narratives. That's never, ever been the point. It's that the system must provide ANY infomation. So long as it provides any information, it satisfies my definition. The reason my definition works is because it makes differentiating between sim and non-sim systems very simple.

Does the system provide any information as to how a result was achieved? Yes? Then it's a sim system. No? Then it isn't. Easy peasy. I'm frankly utterly baffled why this is so contentious to be honest.

But this is just about the level of detail. D&D AC does actually provide some information how it prevents attacks from hitting, it is due some combination of armour deflection, parrying and dodging. Is this less detail than knowing that the attack was specifically dodged? Yes. Is it still "any information?" Yes it is.

And I fully admit, D&D combat is gamey as hell and rather poor simulation. But it still fulfils your criteria of proving "any information."

And of course, that is just one aspect of the game, one widely recognised to be not very simulationistic. How about skills? They still provide some information and indeed about just as much as skills in RQ do.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't think the player wanting to ignore the setting and/or campaign concept is "a mild request." People who want to play wookiee jedi is a Star Trek game are a problem, as it tells me they are not interested in playing a Star Trek game in the first place, so this will be just first of the many issues.

There’s a big difference between a Wookiee Jedi in Star Trek (where both concepts belong to a separate IP) and wanting to play an ancestry that’s in the core rulebook of the game being played.

The apples-to-apples comparison would be a Star Trek game where Vulcans aren’t allowed.

 

[TwoSix]

Maybe. But can you imagine the experience might differ between those two ways of doing things? Isn't it great that there is indeed someone out there willing to put in the effort to enable that other experience for those that really know how to value it?

To me, the issue is that the number of DMs who think making a super-specific setting is great fun vastly outstrips the number of players interested in exploring them.

Like, I have a bunch of fantasy setting ideas I’ve loosely fleshed out over the years. If I had groups that wanted to explore them, that would be great. But I’m experienced enough to know that desire to explore someone else’s setting simply isn’t a common player motivation.

 

[Enrahim]

On "I believe them": multiple posters in this thread have talked about how they find playing (say) Dungeon World or Burning Wheel or some other game that is generally described as non-simulationist more immersive than RPGs which rely heavily on GM narration to tell the players what their PCs know and believe. So now, do those games turn out to be simulationist after all?

Or to put it another way: the boundaries of "simulationism" in this thread seem to be drawn based on the casual universalisation of particular experiences and preferences - eg because this particular poster imagines (though they have no play experience) that playing Marvel Heroic RP or a fantasy variant thereof would be un-immersive, they posit that it is un-immersive in general and hence not simulatioinst.

On "noetic satisfaction", "exploration" and "investigation", coupled with "my role as GM": this seems to me to be obviously pointing towards RPGing where a principal activity in play, perhaps the principal activity, is the players declaring actions that prompt the GM to tell them things about the setting: either things the GM has already prepared/authored, or things that the GM works out by extrapolation from what they have already prepared/authored. If this is what is intended by "simulationism", then I think it would be help to be clearer about it.

If that is not what is intended, then lets talk about player contributions to the subject which is investigated, explored, intuited and cognised. In my 4e game, the player of the wizard routinely articulated - speaking for his PC - theories of how magic worked, what its potentials and limits were, etc. These would inform his use of his Arcana skill, his approach to rituals etc. To me those seem to be simulationist moments of play, based on the ideas @clearstream has set out. But they have nothing to do with GM authority over the fiction.

You quoted me, so I feel like replying.

In my view I have yet to come across an RPG not able to provide me a simulationist experience per my understanding of @clearstream 's description. If that is the defining criteria for "simumationistic", then yes I would consider all RPGs simulationistic.

Trying to label GM directed RPGs as simulationistic seem to me as arbitrary as labeling games that has mechanics that in it self has a form that can resemble a simulationistic. Yes, the game has a component of a type that you in theory could get some simulation value out of. But will you actually get it? Well, that depends on the actual mechanics/GM.

I cannot speak for other than myself, though. Others in this thread seem to have strong opinions about "aproperiate" labeling, that in no way harmonises with my own.