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

[Thomas Shey]

Then that's the die you're rolling.

Like I said before, you can do the math if you really want to in order determine what actually caused you to succeed or fail. The 5e books all put it in this order: d20 + your stat mod + PB + any other mods you have. So let's say you have a stat with a +3 mod and your PB is +2. If the DC is 13 and you roll a 10, then you succeed because of your raw ability (stat mod). If the DC is 15, you succeed because of your skill (skill + PB). If you rolled a 15, then you succeeded because of something outside your own abilities, since neither your stat mod nor your skill were needed here. Yes, you still need to figure out what form that "outside your own abilities" takes--luck, you found all the handholds, those meddling pixies, whatever, but, well, IMO it'd be kind of sad if the game didn't even let you figure out that much on your own.

Though I will point out there's ambiguity if you use your first example rolls a 12. Was that skill or basic ability? You at least have to establish an order-of-operations you're paying attention to in that case.

 

[Enrahim]

What does a simulation do?

It seems to me that the basic-english answer is, "It tells us how and why new things happen, when we put into it what things we already know about."

"How and why" precisely is what "simulation" does. We can't just wish that away by saying "well it's only for success so it's doing the only thing it needs to do".

I am a bit confused about this. When I have been doing simulations, the how things act is generally coded into the simulation, the purpose of the simulation has typically been to see what will happen, and any why-s are left to the philosophers?

Edit: What you seem to describe is deduction or induction?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Er, you really expect the rule to include the millions of specific ways that you can fall?

This is how you get Rolemaster. You don't want that.

It is more than sufficient to just tell you that a failure of skill is how it happened. What you are looking for is a massive overstep by the rules. It's higly limiting on play and harms the game by being that way. There isn't a good reason for a rule to mandate that you slipped on a rock or banana peel.

You need the Misstepmaster supplement, then you can roll on the Manoeuvre on Loose Ground Debris chart IV to determine the exact method of slippage. It will take a lot of time, it will be very specific, and quite possibly not make any sense in the context, but at least we have an answer and no one has to strain their poor brains with any thinking, or worse, have the evil GM to make any sort of decisions!

 

[Faolyn]

Though I will point out there's ambiguity if you use your first example rolls a 12. Was that skill or basic ability? You at least have to establish an order-of-operations you're paying attention to in that case.

Well, the order of operations is d20 + stat + PB. So if you roll a 12 against a DC of 13, your stat mod was what did it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To me it seems weird to think that a failure or success in something would be due to one specific thing that we need to pin point. It usually is not like that. It is combination of different things.

 

[chaochou]

Simulation is simply fake cover for 'GM says' which facilitates railroady GMs to appeal to their own authority.

It's a doublethink tool for GMs trying to hide their authorship of the fiction behind 'this is the plausible outcome' while leaving the 'which I'm choosing to author instead of an almost infinite set of other plausible outcomes' unstated.

The doublethink is important too. Illisionism - which is to say railroading while denying it - relies on all kinds of bogus 'analysis' to act as cover when placed under scrutiny. 'Simulation' is one such piece of cover - probably the biggest and most used. A nonsense word which means whatever the railroader needs it too in the moment .

 

[AlViking]

To me it seems weird to think that a failure or success in something would be due to one specific thing that we need to pin point. It usually is not like that. It is combination of different things.

As far as I can tell the only reason we "need" to do it is because people feel compelled to tell others that they're wrong. No game can define every possible reason for every possible success or failure unless they abstract it to a meaningless level. No chart, set of rules, predefined number range means anything. The only real reason something succeeds or fails is because the randomizer we use indicates success or failure.

Meanwhile any number of non-game simulations use these kind of randomizers and don't really care to explain why things fail, they're more about response and reaction to the failures. Yet they're still considered simulations.

 

[clearstream]

To me it seems weird to think that a failure or success in something would be due to one specific thing that we need to pin point. It usually is not like that. It is combination of different things.

Particularly if we're supposed to suppose it is down to only those things explicitly listed in text... every... single... time.

But if someone wants to make that sort of argument, surely they can cite specific mechanics text to back it up.

 

[Pedantic]

I am a bit confused about this. When I have been doing simulations, the how things act is generally coded into the simulation, the purpose of the simulation has typically been to see what will happen, and any why-s are left to the philosophers?

Edit: What you seem to describe is deduction or induction?

I also found this point confusing. The point of the mechanic is to say what happens. How and why are design level questions that guide which whats are appropriate. A point of critique from the simulationist perspective is often whether the results sufficiently encode for those questions, and do so consistently enough. An outcome that strains credulity too far (say, the surprisingly non-lethal falls in D&D) gets side-eyed for that reason.

There is some back and forth about whether it's appropriate to supercede the rules with on the fly design to do a better job when they fail. I would say that's never acceptable and a poorly simulative rule is a design failure that requires a mechanical solution (or must actually be reflective of a consistent change in the setting being modeled) but some people seem convinced having the GM as an on the fly designer is adequate or even preferable.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I also found this point confusing. The point of the mechanic is to say what happens. How and why are design level questions that guide which whats are appropriate. A
A point of critique from the simulationist perspective is often whether the results sufficiently encode for those questions, and so so consistently enough. An outcome that strains credulity too far (say, the surprisingly non-lethal falls in D&D) gets side-eyed for that reason.

There is some back and forth about whether it's appropriate to supercede the rules with on the fly design to do a better job when they fail. I would say that's never acceptable and a poorly simulative rule is a design failure that requires a mechanical solution (or must actually be reflective of a consistent change in the setting being modeled) but some people seem convinced having the GM as an on the fly designer is adequate or even preferable.

I feel that the GM fixing rarely occurring edge cases and unusual interactions on the fly is fine, but if the normal base execution of the rules produces undesirable results (such as the fall rules) then the rule simply needs to be permanently changed.