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

[Hussar]

Sorry, going to break my answer into two parts because I have two different answers for you @Faolyn.

The more personal answer is that I do appreciate sim systems. I LIKE them. I've played a lot of them. GURPS, Palladium, Warhammer Fantasy, even a brief stint of Harn. And these systems, which everyone, I think, agrees are sim leaning, are different from D&D. And what generally for me differentiates them is that the systems guide the narrative. It's not "I just make stuff up" when you play these systems. That's WHY I play these systems.

So, to then be told that, Oh, well, no, sim is so much more than that. Sim is just synonymous with RPG. Because all RPG's have mechanics that determine outcomes, and all that is required for Sim is for mechanics to produce outcomes, then all the RPG's I like are Sim is very, very often the path that's trod. It very often comes down to tribalism. Sim=good. What sim actually is is a nebulous cloud of preferences that changes depending on the mood.

I'd prefer a more concrete definition than that. And, to me, the point that sim games share is that sim games produce guidance to the narrative beyond, "make naughty word up".

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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 .

Mod Note:

Howzabout we’re less confrontational in our discourse, hmmmm?

 

[Deset Gled]

My question to you is, why is simulation so important to you?

Well, I'm not @Hussar, and I can't claim to have followed every post up until now, but I'll have a go at it.

Simulation is an important method of communication. I will posit this: the rules of a TTRPG are incomplete. It's one of the factors that separates a TTRPG from a board game or a video game. There will be things in a TTRPG that are assumed, unsaid, or otherwise simply left out of the rule set that will be filled in later by a GM or the players. And, back to the original point, simulation is a way to communicate actions, reactions, and expectations beyond what is explicitly stated in the game rules.

One example of this is gravity. Very few TTRPGs have rules that are so complete they define gravity (what it is, how it works, exact calculations for acceleration, etc). Yet, in most TTRPGs the players can assume that if their (normal, human, etc.) character walks off the edge of a cliff, they will fall down. Unless otherwise explicitly stated by the rules or by the DM, the assumption of a realistic simulation of gravity clearly communicates to all involved the basic reaction of something falling if its weight is no longer supported.

Further to this example, what type of reality is being simulated can be used to communicate by having things in the game interact with gravity. Suppose the players watch an NPC walk off a cliff and not fall down. Knowing what is being simulated in the game will communicate things to the players. In a fantasy simulation, it communicates that magic is probably being used. In a superhero simulation, it communicates that defying gravity could be a power of the NPC. In a cartoon simulation, it communicates that the NPC hasn't looked down yet. But in any case, awareness of the simulation communicates details, even without explicitly saying everything that is going on.

The stricter a simulation is (whether it's simulating reality, fantasy, etc), the more everyone involved can rely on non-explicit communication from expectations. The looser a simulation is, the more a game will rely on rules, rulings, or other explicit communication so that everyone knows what's going on.

This isn't the only good thing about simulation, of course. But it's one that I feel is often overlooked.

 

[Enrahim]

This obviously is not true. Causality is completely different in these cases. If the character attacks an orc and the orc dies from it, the causality is the same in both the fiction and the mechanics. This is not true for the runes.

And this is not a trivial matter, but one that will become apparent at the table, as the in-character and meta decision making diverge.

If a character who is a greedy and curious treasure hunter sees the runes, it might make sense for them to say: "I might not be an expert, but I've seen some runes on my adventures. I'll have a gander, mayhap these runes mark a location of a great treasure!"

Now in mechanics this means that the player of this character gets to decide what the runes mean on a good outcome, but as their skill is not as good, than the rune expert's they have a high chance for them to cause them to be something bad. But as none of this is true in the fiction, there is no reason fro the character to behave otherwise. What's the etiquette here? Is one supposed to play one's character like the world behaves like they think, or should we metagame and take the completely different reality of the rules into account? Will we perhaps now have a writers' room discussion between the players, where they decide what character's should hope and invent reason for the other characters to wait for the rune expert to examine the runes?

I think you are laying out the case well if we indeed had been looking at the player mailing a decission about what outcome they prefered. However consider the following interpretation of the situatuation:

The characters find the runes. The player of the runes expert is asked what their character thinks the runes might be when observing them from afar. The player is the natural authority to ask such a question, and it ask about a here and now state - the mental state of the expert. No causality concerns are being violated here as far as I can see?

Now the expert's frame of mind is established as a fact in the fiction. The expert then proceed to read the runes. The potential outcomes of this action should take into account previously established fiction. The expert's frame of mind is such an established part of fiction. Further the expert's level of expertise seem relevant for determining how important this established part of the fiction should be in terms of determining outcome. No escape from fiction or break of causality happening yet.

Now the limitation of the shape of the rules present themselves. The single roll is only able to select among 2 different outcomes. That is that among the wast number of imaginable outcomes of reading the runes only two of them can be selected as possible at this stage. This is an enormous active colapse of any in-fiction probability distribution. How to decide which two outcomes to chose? Further remember that this roll is not in the game presented as determining success or failure, but to determine between a favorable and unfavorable outcome.

I have as such a really hard time seeing how you can justify not having the runes being read as the way the expert thought they might being one of the two possible outcomes. It would make sense that this is aligning with the side that is increased in probability by high skill. The other outcome the game appear to delegate to GM's discretion, but likely with some guidelines. (Edit - it could in particular be that the negative outcome should align with lower skill. In this case runes meaning something else than the expert expected seem to satisfy this criterion)

So here we do have a causality issue. A decission made outside the game collapsed the possibility space i the fiction in a way that cannot be accounted for in the fiction itself. But how is this different from the GM choosing exactly what to narrate on a success or failure in D&D?


And note, when ask about their character's assessment, the player could come with a corrupt answer. But a GM could also come with a corrupt answer to any of the judgement calls they are making. For purpose of analysis this game appear to assume players to be held to the same standards as a GM i this regard. As such this would be outright cheating the game, and not something that should be needed to be taken into account when analysing the game as it is meant to be played.

 

[pemerton]

Fighting the orc is abstracted. It isn't disconnected from the in-universe fiction.

The Cunning Expert conjecturing what the runes say is abstracted. It isn't disconnected from the in-universe fiction - namely, that this person, being a Cunning Expert, is apt to make reasonable conjectures about what Strange Runes say.

 

[pemerton]

This obviously is not true. Causality is completely different in these cases. If the character attacks an orc and the orc dies from it, the causality is the same in both the fiction and the mechanics.

In the fiction, what caused the Orc to not dodge the attack? What caused the Orc's footwork to be anticipated by the attacking PC?

All the mechanics do is correlate likelihoods: the likelihood of this character beating this Orc correlates to the likelihood of this roll of a d20 and a damage die reducing the Orc's hp to zero.

This is the same in the rune case.

And this is not a trivial matter, but one that will become apparent at the table, as the in-character and meta decision making diverge.

If a character who is a greedy and curious treasure hunter sees the runes, it might make sense for them to say: "I might not be an expert, but I've seen some runes on my adventures. I'll have a gander, mayhap these runes mark a location of a great treasure!"

And? What problem does this cause?

Now in mechanics this means that the player of this character gets to decide what the runes mean on a good outcome, but as their skill is not as good, than the rune expert's they have a high chance for them to cause them to be something bad. But as none of this is true in the fiction, there is no reason fro the character to behave otherwise.

I still don't see what problem it will cause, in my game of freewheeling fantasy adventure, for a player to have their PC conjecture that some strange runes mark the way to a tresaure.

I mean, here is a thing that happened in a session of Torchbearer 2e that I GMed last year:

Telemere then decided there must be some other secret room or cache, and tested his Beginner's Luck Stonemason to find it. Golin - whose Creed is that Elves are lost in dreams, and need grounding in reality - declined to help him; but Fea-bella - whose Creed is that These are dark times, so all Elves need help! - decided to help, even though she thought it was hopeless.

The test failed, and so Telemere found nothing. Rather, Golin - watching from atop the shrine - saw a vessel sailing down the river towards them. He recognised it as a pirate river galley, especially when it ran up the Jolly Roger!

Rather than strange runes leading to treasure, it is a secret room or cache in an ancient stone building. But the structure of the resolution is the same (allowing for the technical mechanical differences between TB2e and MHRP). And it caused no problems at all. There was no "disconnect". What there was, was an interesting moment between the characters, and the chance for a twist when the roll failed.

 

[pemerton]

Even as GM I don't change the fiction on the fly to help the characters. Once the session starts the fiction is fixed. I don't care if your games aren't like that, it would just be nice if you'd try to understand why it matters to some of us.

I know why it matters to you: you're playing a game where a principal goal is for the players to (i) learn what obstacles/challenges has placed into the setting, and (ii) overcome them.

This is no more "simulationist" than anything I'm doing. As I've posted upthread, it involves a lot of "author stance" - more author stance than is necessary and typical in most of the RPGs I GM, which are easily approached in "actor stance" because all the player has to do is declare actions as if they were their PC, without worrying about what the GM has authored and having to poke and prod at the GM's world to learn it.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think you are laying out the case well if we indeed had been looking at the player mailing a decission about what outcome they prefered. However consider the following interpretation of the situatuation:

The characters find the runes. The player of the runes expert is asked what their character thinks the runes might be when observing them from afar. The player is the natural authority to ask such a question, and it ask about a here and now state - the mental state of the expert. No causality concerns are being violated here as far as I can see?

Now the expert's frame of mind is established as a fact in the fiction. The expert then proceed to read the runes. The potential outcomes of this action should take into account previously established fiction. The expert's frame of mind is such an established part of fiction. Further the expert's level of expertise seem relevant for determining how important this established part of the fiction should be in terms of determining outcome. No escape from fiction or break of causality happening yet.

Now the limitation of the shape of the rules present themselves. The single roll is only able to select among 2 different outcomes. That is that among the wast number of imaginable outcomes of reading the runes only two of them can be selected as possible at this stage. This is an enormous active colapse of any in-fiction probability distribution. How to decide which two outcomes to chose? Further remember that this roll is not in the game presented as determining success or failure, but to determine between a favorable and unfavorable outcome.

I have as such a really hard time seeing how you can justify not having the runes being read as the way the expert thought they might being one of the two possible outcomes. It would make sense that this is aligning with the side that is increased in probability by high skill. The other outcome the game appear to delegate to GM's discretion, but likely with some guidelines. (Edit - it could in particular be that the negative outcome should align with lower skill. In this case runes meaning something else than the expert expected seem to satisfy this criterion)

So here we do have a causality issue. A decission made outside the game collapsed the possibility space i the fiction in a way that cannot be accounted for in the fiction itself. But how is this different from the GM choosing exactly what to narrate on a success or failure in D&D?


And note, when ask about their character's assessment, the player could come with a corrupt answer. But a GM could also come with a corrupt answer to any of the judgement calls they are making. For purpose of analysis this game appear to assume players to be held to the same standards as a GM i this regard. As such this would be outright cheating the game, and not something that should be needed to be taken into account when analysing the game as it is meant to be played.

It’s not even if the player is mailing it in. Experts can conjecture what something means with no evidence, and in such instances they are likely to be wrong. What makes this a case of the expert conjecturing with evidence as opposed to without, because I see no evidence for the basis for this runes conjecture?

Saying the expert made the conjecture is simply not enough.

 

[pemerton]

In the game example, it's clear (in the metagame) to all participants that what the runes say is not locked in and never has been

All "not locked in" means here is not yet established as part of the shared fiction. It's obvious that there is something or other that, in the fiction, the runes say. But it isn't known yet, because hasn't yet been authored. Just as a GM might tell the players "From atop the wall, you see an army marching across the plain." And there must be some or other number of soldiers in that army. But the GM may not have made it up yet.

won't be until someone succeeds on their "Hey, maybe they say this!" roll.

That's not an accurate account of the mechanics. For instance, if the roll fails there's a good chance the meaning or significance of the runes will be established.

This to me is the equivalent of the real-world archaeologist simply fabricating what the runes say and then convincing the world he's correct

Well, to some people, D&D combat is the equivalent of a real world duelist winning a fight by solving some simple geomertic and arithmetic puzzles. What follows from that?

 

[clearstream]

I suspect he's arguing with people for whom it is important that they're kidding themselves.

To participate in TTRPG is to serially pretend that things that are false are true. The debates are not  whether folk are kidding themselves, it's under what conditions and evidencing which features.

I think that's a bad way to argue, but what do I know, most of the people in this thread seem to be arguing in weird ways to no good purpose.

I'll have you know that I am arguing in weird ways to an excellent purpose. Only persons of ill-repute and unappealing complexion would fail to see that.