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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9662649" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yeah, I was thinking of this one yesterday evening cycling home.Well, I think it's a flaw to try and bring them all under the same taxonomical label!The phrase &quot;narrative RPG&quot; has the same flaw - one reason I don't use it.Sure. I'm not a meteorologist or climatologist, but I'm pretty well trained in political history and social theory, which informs how I think about government, society, religion, economics etc in my FRPGing. But I would not describe what I'm doing as a simulation of anything - eg when I think about a feudal kingdom, and incorporate my knowledge of actual history, I don't think of myself as &quot;simulating&quot; the processes that governed mediaeval Britain or France or Syria, etc; when I introduce an important religious actor or order I don't think of that as a simulation of St Bernard or of the Knights Templar, etc.So I think I find phrases like &quot;copied from&quot; or &quot;based on&quot; or &quot;inspired by&quot; more explanatorily useful than &quot;simulation of&quot;. I think it's another case where a metaphor gets used in a way that distracts from accuracy.As just one practical example - when my friend and I started our Aedhros and Alicia game, here is how we arrived at the initial set up:So we drew on a different campaign's events to help establish the starting situation - the postponement of the wedding of a powerful figure affected the sale of the cargo that a ship had been carrying, thus explaining how Alicia finds herself at the docks with no money and no pay owing.In doing that, we have established some in-fiction causal explanations that make some sense. But I would never describe it as a simulation.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9662649, member: 42582"] Yeah, I was thinking of this one yesterday evening cycling home. Well, I think it's a flaw to try and bring them all under the same taxonomical label! The phrase "narrative RPG" has the same flaw - one reason I don't use it. Sure. I'm not a meteorologist or climatologist, but I'm pretty well trained in political history and social theory, which informs how I think about government, society, religion, economics etc in my FRPGing. But I would not describe what I'm doing as a simulation of anything - eg when I think about a feudal kingdom, and incorporate my knowledge of actual history, I don't think of myself as "simulating" the processes that governed mediaeval Britain or France or Syria, etc; when I introduce an important religious actor or order I don't think of that as a simulation of St Bernard or of the Knights Templar, etc. So I think I find phrases like "copied from" or "based on" or "inspired by" more explanatorily useful than "simulation of". I think it's another case where a metaphor gets used in a way that distracts from accuracy. As just one practical example - when my friend and I started our Aedhros and Alicia game, here is how we arrived at the initial set up: So we drew on a different campaign's events to help establish the starting situation - the postponement of the wedding of a powerful figure affected the sale of the cargo that a ship had been carrying, thus explaining how Alicia finds herself at the docks with no money and no pay owing. In doing that, we have established some in-fiction causal explanations that make some sense. But I would never describe it as a [I]simulation[/I]. [/QUOTE]

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