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

[pemerton]

In d&d I don’t always and everytime get what I hope for no matter what I hope for in a successful roll.

Yes, I know. The structure of your play includes the GM using secret information to establish secret fictional positioning which is then used to resolve declared actions that involve looking, searching, wondering, etc - what one could very broadly call actions of "knowing" or "learning" about the PC's surroundings.

We could talk about how those sorts of actions are declared and resolved across a range of other systems - eg how Wises work in Burning Wheel; how reading strange runes (which have been established as a scene distinction) works in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic; how I resolved the Insight check in 4e D&D that I posted about not too far upthread; how the GM of Dogs in the Vineyard actively reveals the town in play - but that would require looking at other structures of play beyond mainstream/conventional D&D.

I hope I find 1,000,000 gold when opening this chest doesn’t occur because I as a player hoped for it and rolled a success.

This example suggests a few things to me:

(1) A focus on character wealth as a type of "victory" marker;

(2) A lack of attention to the framework for declaring and resolving actions.

I mean, it looks like it's supposed to be a "gotcha", about how the game will break (and similar posts were made upthread in response to the runes example, and over the years as well as 1,000,000 gp I've seen holy swords and other D&D-esque goodies). But as I already posted, in the same game as the strange runes the rune-reading PC succeeded in a roll to establish, as an asset, the dark elves' stash of faerie gold, which he ran away with, leaving the other PCs stuck in a fight at the bottom of the dungeon. The action declaration wasn't ridiculous, and its resolution didn't break the game.

And to bring this back to "simulationism": why is what I've just described not simulationist? The game participants had a conception of the dark elves at the bottom of the dungeon, Vault of the Drow style. That conception was explored and developed; one of the participants introduced as part of that the idea of them having a stash of gold; and then the game system allowed that idea to be given concrete form in play. That is "heightened appreciation" of a subject matter. (As per @clearstream's conception of simulation in RPGing.)

 

[pemerton]

Why? D&D shares many similar features to those games. What makes them simulationist but d&d not? The answers thus far have been extremely unconvincing. Like not using hp was once cited but some of those games do use hp…. So what’s common to all of them that makes them simulationist, but that d&d doesn’t have?

I posted it upthread. (And have posted it many times on these boards over the years.) It's not mysterious:

As best I can tell, @Hussar is relying on widespread consensus that RuneQuest, Rolemaster, Chivalry & Sorcery, HERO, GURPS and the like are simulationist RPGs.

They all have quite a bit in common, which mostly reflects how they react against D&D:

*Their rules for PC build tend to produce PCs who are defined in terms that are closer to "total" (ie aspiring to specify everything about this person's capabilities) than the trope-y and limited information provided by the classic D&D class system;

*Their rules for injury involve more than just hp ablation - eg there are rules for wound penalties, knockdown, unconsciousness/"bleeding out", hit locations and the like;

*Their combat rules try to approximate simultaneity of resolution and reduce the abstraction of classic D&D combat while also avoiding the "stop motion" feel of more contemporary D&D combat;

*Their spell rules, if they have them, tend towards power point or exhaustion rules rather than memorisation and/or slots;

*Their overall tone aspires to a type of "seriousness" about the fiction, the setting, etc that is absent from the classic D&D texts (eg OD&D, B/X, AD&D although parts of Gygax's DMG are clearly written in response to and defence against the emerging anti-D&D simulationist aesthetic).​

If D&D gets classified as "simulationist", then what RPG doesn't?

If "simulatinionism" is to be a meaningfully analytical category, I assume it has to mean more than supports the creation of a shared fiction during play. Because all RPGs do that. That's the core of the activity.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Ideally for everyone. If you sketch out your world and before you complete it, you share some details with the players and solicit any input they may have... if they have none, then it's a non-issue. If they do... if they have preferences, then you're more likely to be able to accommodate them in some manner.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with your preferences. But what I'm describing shouldn't impact those, should it? Unless you think simply asking for input from players is some kind of burden, I suppose.

Ultimately I feel the fundamental building blocks of the setting are my responsibility as a GM, and I don't need or want input on those. Intelligent species certainly are pretty fundamental part of the setting for me. You said that you'd personally feel human only as the non-human species do not just add much. I feel that, and in the common approach where there are seven thousand species with vague and overlapping themes and not proper place in the world It will feel like that. So when I build the world, I have relatively limited amount of species, so that they can be thematically distinct, and that I can give them proper place in the world, to make them feel like they belong and that playing one means more than a funny mask. So no, adding more species is not a minor thing, nor is it something I am willing to do at the point when the campaign is supposed to soon begin.

I want contributions from the players regarding the connections and history of their characters, and I am perfectly willing to incorporate their ideas. Like I said before, that's how Artra got sand skiff riding desert pirates. But the fundamentals are nevertheless set.

And as a player I can do collaborative world building, but frankly, in the large scale I do not prefer it. It just often ends up as uninspired mess as there was no unifying vision. I much prefer exploring a cohesive world someone has created.

I like collaboration when it is about contacts, organisations, home bases etc the PCs belong to as it helps to connect the characters to the world. But I feel this best works when done in confines of a world that already has solid structure. More about finding your place in the world rather than defining the world itself.

It may be an artistic choice. But the nature of the comment was not about that. It was about how they would be attacked on sight by the other PCs.

Unless @Lanefan comments on the factors that went into making this artistic choice, I cannot judge. I can only go by what he said... which was to describe the issue with other PCs attacking drow on sight.

What the other PCs will do is of course ultimately a choice for their players, but what the general attitudes in the world are certainly is an artistic choice by the GM.

 

[pemerton]

Hmm. Does that mean that we're classifying 2e era, Hickman revolution AD&D super-trad play as not simulationist? Or is that just style of play just functionally agendaless?

I'm following the general direction of the thread in its account of "simulationism".

As I think you're alluding to, there's a fairly well-known account of what simulationism is that includes Hickman-esque play. But on that account, there's no reason why the strange runes episode of play I described from MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic can't be simulationist play. GM narration and control over the fiction is one way of introducing stuff to explore and attend to in a simulationist mode, but is not the only way.

 

[pemerton]

Not a wyvern perhaps. But other things. IIRC the rune thing was not Burning Wheel, but do you think it could work roughly similarly in BW?

How is reading runes unrelated to the presence of strange runes on a wall? How is runes revealing a way out of a dungeon unrelated to those runes being in a dungeon? I mean, strange riddles and clues on dungeon walls goes back to the earliest days of D&D. (Like the poem in Tomb of Horrors.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

How is reading runes unrelated to the presence of strange runes on a wall? How is runes revealing a way out of a dungeon unrelated to those runes being in a dungeon? I mean, strange riddles and clues on dungeon walls goes back to the earliest days of D&D. (Like the poem in Tomb of Horrors.)

You have a rune reading skill, then perhaps difficulty of the runes. Then from these you draw the odds of runes being good or bad. These things are not related. Furthermore, what the character is doing (trying to read the runes) is different than what the rules are determining (whether the runes are good or bad.) This is not a simulation. I also think it is a bit confused as rules design, as you have stats that are used to determine things not affected by what they're nominally measuring.

 

[Lanefan]

But... you're in charge of the surface folks' reactions. I don't quite understand. They don't HAVE TO react that way if you don't want them to.

Fair; but given that my setting's history includes a long-ago globe-spanning war betwene elves and Drow that eventually drove the Drow underground, I'm cool with it.

I wasn't even thinking about a system. What is it about system that makes it so complex?

When one bans Tieflings from 4e or 5e one is simply dropping a species that already exists in the rules as written. Pretty trivial, in terms of DM-side effort required to strip them from both the rules and the setting.

When, conversely, I'm asked to add Tieflings to my system, which does not already include them in the rules as written and never has (I don't even have them written up as a monster), the amount of rules work required on my part is anything but trivial, after which I then have to find a way to fit them into the setting as if they were always there.

Adding Drow would be easier as I could just extend and tweak the rules that already exist for Elves.

 

[grankless]

Fair; but given that my setting's history includes a long-ago globe-spanning war betwene elves and Drow that eventually drove the Drow underground, I'm cool with it.

When one bans Tieflings from 4e or 5e one is simply dropping a species that already exists in the rules as written. Pretty trivial, in terms of DM-side effort required to strip them from both the rules and the setting.

When, conversely, I'm asked to add Tieflings to my system, which does not already include them in the rules as written and never has (I don't even have them written up as a monster), the amount of rules work required on my part is anything but trivial, after which I then have to find a way to fit them into the setting as if they were always there.

Adding Drow would be easier as I could just extend and tweak the rules that already exist for Elves.

Have you considered collaborating with the player who wants to try playing a tiefling to make the mechanical and fictional core? They're obviously interested, or they wouldn't have asked it in the first place.

 

[grankless]

So anyone that says "I played it, I didn't like it" can just be dismissed by "You played it wrong"? Because that's the answer to everything. I've read up on and watched a couple hours of streams, had numerous discussions around narrative games. I've never had the opportunity to play DW, but I can still form an opinion that it's not for me. All we ever get is "If you really understood it you'd like it as much as I do". It's BS.

We all have preferences, things we like and don't like. Why can't people just accept that?

maybe yall should stop rageposting about the scary and nasty Other Ideas that have polluted your Pure Gygaxian Industry. this thread is full of people actively trying to Deny the validity of non-heavily-prepped-"sim" play. Active hostility to the idea that such play could even have merit. And then you're all like "ohhh but hearing new ideas is offensive to my sensibilities and sooooo upsetting". I know the average user of this forum is a cishet white man in his 50s, but the amount of people who act like they're 7 years old seems to dispute that.

 

[Hussar]

Hmm. Does that mean that we're classifying 2e era, Hickman revolution AD&D super-trad play as not simulationist? Or is that just style of play just functionally agendaless?

Note, just to clarify, I am ONLY referring to the system itself. Your game at your table is a whole 'nother ball of wax. As has been said many times, you can drift any game into any style you like. It's just a matter of how much work does it take to mold that game into that style. Something like Hickman revolution play is a specific playstyle, not a system.

AD&D is not really very sim in its approach. It's got maybe a thin veneer of sim in it, but, again, the mechanics, such as they are, don't really inform the players how any result is achieved. One cannot even point to something like skills, since they don't even exist in AD&D. Why did you character fall while climbing is a secondary question to how did you determine in the first place that the character fell down? So much of AD&D is free form and ad hoc adjudication. I mean, good grief, we can often see saving throws like Save Vs Paralyzation to set the difficulty for jumping across a span. That's about as far from simulating anything as you can get.