D&D 5E Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

[3catcircus]

I think it would depend on the nature of the thing that's being simulated and how well the game does it.

This.

Game mechanics should "feel" like they are simulating something. It doesn't have to be a perfect simulation or even a realistic one, so long as it "feels" like it is.

Hit points are a perfect example of why gamist mechanics don't "feel" right. Originally, in OD&D, they worked, because the entire framework of the mechanics supported hit points - first level fighters got one hit dice, heroes got 4 - they maxed out at 61 hit points. That's it - 61 hp at 10th level. As things progressed, the framework changed, but hit points continued to be accrued in a similar manner, but with different dice used and additional modifiers. Now, we've got PCs and monsters with 3-digit hit point totals.

Compare that to a game like Twilight:2013 (my favorite non-D&D game). All creatures (human and animal) have a base hit point total that is solely due to a combination of strength and constitution (or that game's equivalent) - their base hit points are [10 + Muscle + 2 x Fitness]/4. That's it.

They then use multiples of the base as trip points for injury. (1 hp = a slight wound - a scratch, 2x base hp = serious wound, etc.) At each of these trip points, more serious penalties occur (reflected in the form of modifiers to dice rolls) as well as the possibility of going into shock or starting to bleed out. A critical head wound, for example, renders you unconscious and taking more than 2x your critical hp to a limb has a chance of catastrophically amputating it. If you are in shock, any additional effect that would cause you to go into shock instead makes you unstable. When you are unstable, at the end of each round, each of your hit locations that have a wound level increase that level by one until one location exceeds critical at which point you die of blood loss - unless someone gives you first aid to make you stable.

Compare these two examples: a giant box of hit points during which you are fully capable until you hit zero, or a system where the seriousness of the injury depends upon the amount of damage, resulting in degradation of capability.

Which one is more "realistic" in terms of "feeling" like that is how it could work based on "real life" (where most people equate tv shows and movies with real life, having never seen actual combat or injury impacts on human performance)? Does the TW:2013 system simulate how it really happens when someone gets stabbed with a dagger or shot with a rifle? No, but it is certainly closer than D&D's hit points.

And that is what matters - does it feel right?

 

[Libramarian]

A game ability for players to create contrived outcomes shortcircuits game play. They are only applicable to rules for shared storybuilding. We've been through this before. You don't want an RPG you want a set of rules to tell a story with other people. That isn't role playing or what Dungeons & Dragons is designed for.

That's absolutely false. How can you possibly justify endless reams of different books for game element constructions with this position? At every given point players can make a choice based on anything they can imagine (a finite actuality), but games aren't about choices. They are about options and D&D has billions, maybe trillions, but they are still finite in number, even if only discerned from the referees responses and never ultimately known to the players.

You and both know we have degrees in Philosophy. We've both read Ayer, W.V.O., probably Rorty, and other relevant to the discussion. I don't need a primer. Quine believed he reached an absolute conclusion. A certainty. He believed he proved logic to be ultimately indecipherable. Logic pattern = game patterns and game play being pattern recognition as it is, he wouldn't advocate for anything outside literary theory either. (Well he might have in the 50s, but not anyone after the Positivists) All this went down in the last years of the 1970s and by the early 80s certain English departments became untenable to be around given some of their professors believing authorship was some "all-knowledge" everyone did. That the universe was built with text and all that. It isn't -necessarily- so. Our Indie scene is an off shoot of some latter-day culture warriors still battling for the denouncement through ignorance of pattern recognition. Except we lose everything interesting, unique, cool, fun, and self-identifying to games when we follow the Big Model (a paint-by-numbers copy of post-structural theory found in some Literature departments).

Fantasy / Reality. That is the real divide games must maintain for players.
Not fiction / non-fiction. These are referential terms.
No one is claiming D&D is depicts reality. Games don't depict reality. They are the things in and of themselves players play. They don't refer to reality when playing them except at the loss of paying attention to the game.

Accepting Quine's vocabulary would be like going to the root of the divergence of the post-philosophy movement and claiming we should begin on only his side for our discussion. Why would anyone start a debate by denying their own position?

(You should know if you don't already, I don't have a position here. Not pro-pattern recognition at least. I'm simply advocating for the rejection of narrative absolutism as has become the contemporary group-think in game theory. Games actually aren't stories.)

I don't think you're being fair to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or the Forge's Big Model. The Big Model calls out Gamism and Simulationism as valid creative agendas and I think Ron Edwards' essay on Gamism is actually very good. Pemerton basically understands classic D&D-style gamism, he's just not interested in it. I gather that he ran Rolemaster for many years, which (AFAICT, never played it) encourages the players to spend even more time in emotionally neutral planning and simulation than early D&D.

The early Forge discussions were biased against simulationism, but I think because they saw RPG theory at the time as dominated by implicit simulationism ("simulationist by habit") so they were trying to shake this up by taking an anti-simulationist stance* towards game design. This approach created many dud games that nobody plays anymore, but I think it was an interesting experiment. I must recognize that to some extent I owe my nuanced (as I like to think of it) understanding of the supportive and "texturizing" function of simulationism to all the hours those guys wasted playtesting games like The Pool and Donjon.

* It's true that you still see the influence of this nowadays when posters here say things like "D&D has never been a very good simulation so therefore it should be even less simulationist" which really doesn't make any sense by itself.

 

[Campbell]

The Big Model has several problems, but I don't think they reside where people think they do. Chief among them is unfortunate terminology and the idea that for a coherent game that a creative agenda must be followed absolutely. We are all interested in games where we make meaningful decisions that will shape the arena of play - otherwise we would not be playing games. We are all interested in the details of the fictional play space - otherwise we would be playing some other sort of games.

What is most contentious about the Big Model is an argument for exploring the emotional landscape of our characters and that this is something which we should model with game mechanics is the Big Argument behind the Big Model. It is staking a claim that games can be an emotionally satisfying experience beyond the thrill of victory or defeat.

When talking about what came out of the Forge the important thing to me is to consider the context of their dissatisfaction. It wasn't really games like AD&D(1e). Rather it was stuff like the Dragonlance modules, Ravenloft, and games like classic Vampire and Ars Magica that promised emotionally resonant game play, but failed to offer meaningful consequences for player decisions. The point was to make games that meaningfully allowed this exploration of dramatic rather than procedural conflicts.

Much like the Agile Manifesto in programming - it's not about not valuing what came before. It's about valuing other features more.

There were good things that come from this:

• A reemphasizing on actual play results that had been lost in many of the games of the 1990's
• Transparent rules text that explain how authors view the way their games are meant to be played.
• A strong self publishing culture
• A movement away from "Good GMing" towards "Suitable GMing" - not every game or group should be run in the same way.
• Considerations on the immediacy of consequences and player choices.

The important thing is to not to get lost in the theory and realizing that practical application of play techniques and processes is what matters.

 

[Campbell]

I'm just going to offer a quick explanation of jargon here. When I talk about the fiction I'm referring to the parts of the setting that current player decisions will affect - not some conch passing story. I'm making the distinction that what I value is the current situation and its immediate fallout. I care about the greater setting, just not nearly as much as the parts players and their characters immediately interact with.

For my part the games I enjoy most fit strongly into the more game play centered "story games" and traditional games that embrace some elements of "story games". Examples include Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, Cortex+, 13th Age, Post GMC World of Darkness and D&D 4e. I strongly value skilled play. I just prefer that it include elements like characters who are motivated by more than their best interests, emotional connections, and thematically strong fictional elements. I am not much of a fan of Donjon and The Window.

 

[Aenghus]

In this case, the experience rewards are supposed to reflect the actual accomplishments of each person. The hero gets full, because she's the one coming up with the ideas and actually engaging the demon in direct combat and whatnot; the hench-person gets partial experience, for taking some of the risks and contributing where possible; the hireling gets nothing for holding the torch and carrying swag.

You could take those same people, rotate their jobs, and experience rewards would shift as appropriate; if your hero wants to hold the torch while you let the hireling make all of the decisions and fight the demon, then the experience rewards would be reversed.

Well, unless the demon is weakened to be an appropriate challenge for the hireling he most likely gets killed. There may be black humour depending on how obvious this is to the players (redshirt jokes are common).

Generally, in most editions, henchpeople are weaker than heroes and hirelings are weaker than henchpeople. They have lower saves, lower hit points, lower stats, lower AC and lesser equipment, all of which will result in lowered survival chances (unless the game is being fudged). The extreme swinginess and random factors of earlier editions of D&D may lead to a hireling surviving when the heroes die (this isn't a plus for me as it's telling me "your decisions don't matter, only dumb luck matters")

Lots of games have promoted unusually lucky hirelings and henchmen to PCs, but it's at much because of emotional attachments formed during play as them being outliers that beat the odds.

As hero levels rise the disparity between PCs and ordinary NPCs continues to widen, such that it becomes hard to ignore for those that dislike it. It's possible to fight this by reducing the initial disparity and only playing at low levels, but I think this is a less common game style.

These are issues revolving around the "PCs are special/ PCs are ordinary" dichotomy, which is a matter of taste with no single objective answer. Most campaigns I've seen are middle-of-the-road on this issue, treating PCs closer to ordinary at low level, and closer to special at high level, but factors such as quiet fudging to keep PCs alive moves them toward special IMO.

 

[Libramarian]

What is most contentious about the Big Model is an argument for exploring the emotional landscape of our characters and that this is something which we should model with game mechanics is the Big Argument behind the Big Model.

I think putting it this way, that we should "model" a character's emotional landscape with game mechanics, is actually am example of what is meant by the term "simulationist-by-habit" where you're using simulationist language (modeling) by default even though you mean something a bit different. I think a better way to put it would be to say that the Forge wanted to develop game mechanics that do a better job facilitating, coordinating and stimulating player authorship of emotionally resonant fiction. But otherwise I agree with everything you said.

 

[Campbell]

I think putting it this way, that we should "model" a character's emotional landscape with game mechanics, is actually am example of what is meant by the term "simulationist-by-habit" where you're using simulationist language (modeling) by default even though you mean something a bit different. I think a better way to put it would be to say that the Forge wanted to develop game mechanics that do a better job facilitating, coordinating and stimulating player authorship of emotionally resonant fiction. But otherwise I agree with everything you said.

I think you're right about simulation by habit, but I'm not sure that authorship of emotionally resonant fiction really nails it for me. Authorship reminds me too much of conch passing which while fun in its own right is not really what I'm after. I guess the best way to put it might be driven by exploration of character. In many ways it shares some commonality with hard lined gamist exploration of setting, but instead of the sandbox being the dungeon and surrounding environs the sandbox is the character. Authorship fits in so much that players are authoring their characters in the decisions they are making, but not in the sense that they are allowed to define the situations they face.

For me it's fairly important that the GM maintain responsibility for framing situations. Without the ability to make hard moves as it were the game can easily devolve to conch passing and player skill at navigating conflicts can be lost.

 

[pemerton]

I'm still not exactly sure what you mean. Could a battle be lost because Legolas didn't bring enough arrows?

My typical approach is not to worry about this. If I was going to, I would do it either Marvel Heroic RP style (the GM pays a token to declare the out-of-arrows complication) or Burning Wheel style (a "die of fate" roll to run out of cosumables). The traditional D&D approach of keeping a tally is not something I'm really interested in - for me it falls under [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s "bean counting" category.

I am equally opposed to the idea that the PCs are "special" in any way that can't be explained in-game.

<snip>

It's an important aspect of simulation, to me, that the game rules remain neutral in such a thing.

For me, this is not conducive to a satisfying game, for the following reason: if the PCs face mostly weaker threats, they will survive and prosper but the drama will be modest (eg cleaning out giant rat nests isn't that dramatic); if the PCs face mostly dire threats, they will quickly be overwhelmed, if not the first time then over the course of repeated exposure to dire threats.

I am curious as to your views on G.R.R. Martin's AGoT series on HBO?

I know of it but have not watched it, nor read the books.

Do the protagonists die of frequently? If so, that is a significant difference from many stories, and a significant difference I think from typical contemporary ways of running D&D (which tend to be predicated on PC's lasting).

If the protagonists don't die, but do get thwarted, then that sounds like the sort of play Burning Wheel is aimed at. In RPGing terms, the relevant technique is fail forward.

 

[pemerton]

Hirelings have class levels. They simply don't have PC-class levels. They have basic or expert NPC-class levels.

<snip>

But all of the above is my interpretation. There are other ways to go with this.

I agree that this is your interpetation. There is nothing in either the Marsh/Cook Expert book, or Gygax's DMG, to suggest that hirelings are to be modelled in this sort of way.

Mercenary hirelings are modelled using fighter levels, but an express rule is stated that they don't gain levels.

And sages are modelled using spell and HD rules, but there is no indication given that there is a sage class, or that sages can gain levels.

A game ability for players to create contrived outcomes shortcircuits game play.

I'm not sure this is true - Raise Dead as a readily available ability is pretty contrived, but has long been a part of mid-to-high level D&D experience, well before anything was ever published at or by The Forge.

At every given point players can make a choice based on anything they can imagine (a finite actuality), but games aren't about choices. They are about options and D&D has billions, maybe trillions, but they are still finite in number, even if only discerned from the referees responses and never ultimately known to the players.

I think trillions of unknown options are, in play, indistinguishable from an unlimited number.

I also don't accept that they are never ultimately known to the players. Just as one example from AD&D - the "parry" option for AD&D combat is set out only in the PHB. The DMG does not mention it.

by the early 80s certain English departments became untenable to be around given some of their professors believing authorship was some "all-knowledge" everyone did. That the universe was built with text and all that. It isn't -necessarily- so.

I don't see how the fact that modern English departments are full of half-baked philosphers tells us much about RPGing. As it happens I think that Carnap, Quine,Moore and Ayer have far more of use to tell us about language, perception and knowledge than do Heidegger and Derrida, but that view I think has little effect on my RPGing preferences.

No one is claiming D&D is depicts reality.

But if it depicts something, then that something must be a fiction. (Given that it's not reality.)

And I think many people would accept that D&D depicts something.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

For me, this is not conducive to a satisfying game, for the following reason: if the PCs face mostly weaker threats, they will survive and prosper but the drama will be modest (eg cleaning out giant rat nests isn't that dramatic); if the PCs face mostly dire threats, they will quickly be overwhelmed, if not the first time then over the course of repeated exposure to dire threats.

It's not all giant rats, though - a party of level eight characters can fight a bunch of level one or two characters, or even ogres, and it's just as narratively dramatic as if they'd fought a bunch of "level eight" NPCs that mysteriously had lower stats to guarantee that they would be weaker than the level eight PCs.

I mean, how is it any more dramatic for those soon-to-be-defeated enemies to have an 8 written next to their level, rather than a 3? I mean, I guess it's convenient for encounter-building, but that hardly justifies entirely separate NPC mechanics.