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

[PinkRose]

ASIDE: I think the question should be more Simulation vs Story. It's always a Game.

I think D&D has always been the best of both worlds.
It falls squarely in the middle with enough wiggle-room that those that want more story can get enough, and those that want more rules can focus on that aspect.
It's why we have edition wars, because each edition is a little bit more one way than the other and those that have now been pushed too far are missing that familiar place to play the game their way.
I like to play in more Story-focused games, but I DM with a more rules-focused style.
With D&D, both work.

 

[LostSoul]

With the Story vs. Game question we get right to the heart of the hobby and the roots of D&D. Is the goal of the rules to support "good" storytelling or to place players in a defined space where they are to achieve objectives?

I agree with this (and the rest of the quoted post). I'd like to see 5E sit firmly in the game camp.

edit: As far as simulation goes, I think there should be enough simulation to make the game interesting and no more. The amount of simulation in B/X is what I'm looking for.

 

[Shiroiken]

While I tend more towards the simulation camp, I think Next should target much closer to the middle. The Modular nature of Next should allow most to adapt to their preferred style.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Game vs sim is a legit question. Sim vs story is another issue entirely. PC balance is a good example of a game vs sim issue. If you're making a LotR game, do you try to simulate the setting of the books with PCs of wildly disparate power levels, or do you try to make it a fun (for some) game by making all PCs of roughly equivalent power?

I'm 90% sim, 10% game. I want to interact with the setting through the game fiction rather than the rules, but I do recognize that rules have to be at least moderately playable. In my previous LotR example I'd go all the way sim: Gandalf is an angel, Sam is a serf, and the game is still a blast.

D&D has always accommodated both camps to some degree, and 5E will certainly need to do the same to be successful. I think one of the reasons 4E was so controversial was that it moved too far to the game side, and sim folks were unhappy.

 

[chaochou]

Generally my benchmark for a good game (rpg, video, board) is how many interesting and meaningful decisions I get to make in any given length of playing time.

Layers of mechanical complexity are of value to me only if they result in the addition of interesting and meaningful decisions during play.

I don't think Simulation vs Game is a viable dichotomy. Something can be good at both, if it both models a situation well and provides interesting and meaningful decisions (for example - commercial historical wargames aim to do both). Something can also be a great simulation and terrible game (by not including interesting decisions but simply processing data through an iterative loop), terrible simulation and great game or terrible at both.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I want my cake and eat it too. I want a game that feels like a real living world with real characters so I am more of a simulationist style player and DM. But I recognize that it is a game and we need rules to simulate actions. So I accept we are going to have rules that are totally gamist in nature. I just don't want too many of them. I also don't want to spend weeks healing from an injury yet I don't want PCs no matter their level to fall off a building as high as the empire state building and walk away.

But as long as you don't want the rules to function as 'world engine', they aren't responsible for providing a real world with real characters, this creative spark is and should remain the task of GM and players.

 

[Mistwell]

I want it to be a game that can do either very well, and a DM given the tools to turn the dial whichever direction he wants, however much he wants.

 

[Dausuul]

I've got increasingly distrustful of simple dichotomies for RPGs. While these can be of some value in some or even most games, they aren't universal, and their usefulness is a relative thing.

Agreed. I think the whole idea of a gamism/simulationism axis (or a gamism/narrativism/simulationism triad, for that matter) is fundamentally flawed. It's not a useful way to approach RPG design.

To me, the goal of D&D (on the player side) is to provide an exciting experience for the players, by allowing them to imagine themselves as their PCs and test their (player) skills against the challenges the DM puts in front of them. The challenges may be strategic, to be met with players' tactical skills; roleplaying, to be met with players' roleplaying skills; or, in most cases, a mix of both tailored to the particular group's tastes.

A certain amount of verisimilitude is required for this to work. Verisimilitude has nothing to do with accurate simulation, however. As I've said in several other threads, it's about making the fictional world believable in the moment. The rules are like the set in a play. They don't have to hold up under close examination. If you walk up on stage and look closely at the set, the fakery is obvious. And after the play, you might have a "fridge logic" moment where you realize some details didn't add up. That's okay. It'd be nice if it didn't happen, but it's no big deal if it does.

But the set absolutely must not distract the audience from the play in progress. If the audience is questioning the set, you don't get to stop the play and explain how really, it all makes sense and fits together. The moment they started paying attention to the set instead of the actors, the set had failed. If, during play, you have a moment when people look at the rules and go, "Uh, what?" the rules have failed. It doesn't matter how many explanations you've got. The fact that you have to explain at all means you've lost.

On the flip side, as I said, D&D needs to let the players test their skills both strategic and roleplaying against challenges posed by the DM. Good mechanics support that by helping the DM construct a variety of engaging challenges, and providing a "common ground" of principles by which those challenges will run. That common ground ensures that the players have some basic tools to address those challenges, tools whose workings they understand.

Strategic depth and verisimilitude are not opposite ends of a spectrum. They are goals to be pursued together. There may sometimes be tradeoffs between those goals, but I think those cases are far fewer than people believe, and focusing on the tradeoff encourages the designers to settle for rules that aren't as good as they could be. The thinking is, "Sure, this rule tends to break verisimilitude, but it's good for strategic depth and we want to nudge things in the gamism direction a bit, so we'll go with it." It should be, "Well, this rule is good for strategic depth but it breaks verisimilitude. How can we improve verisimilitude while keeping strategic depth?"

 

[Lanefan]

While I recognize it's a game and thus must have a certain amount of game-first considerations e.g. spells-per-day in any form, where it's both possible and relatively easy I'd prefer at least a nod to realism. Some ways this can be done:

- a simple note that unless specified otherwise by the rules or DM and-or changed by magic, physics (gravity, gas-liquid-solid interactions, mineral composition, etc.) and other sciences (reproduction, evolution, biology, chemistry, astronomy, light, time, etc.) can be largely assumed to work the ways they do in the real world
- in combat, rerolling initiative each round (much easier if you use a smaller die e.g. d6 or d8 and allow ties) to simulate the chaos and unpredictability of war
- in combat, at least a vague mention of facing rules - you can't hold a shield in all directions at once
- for ridiculous cases such as jumping off a tall building or high cliff, some sort of injury or death rules that flat-out trump simple h.p. damage (3e waved at this with the massive damage rule, one of its better ideas)
- a body point/fatigue point system to press home that real injuries (body point damage) are more difficult to heal magically and take much longer to heal naturally

These are all relatively easy to house-rule in for those as wants them, but I'd still like to see them all in the core game as written if only to set a tone.

Lanefan

 

[Elf Witch]

But as long as you don't want the rules to function as 'world engine', they aren't responsible for providing a real world with real characters, this creative spark is and should remain the task of GM and players.

But bad rules that are to gamist in danger can make it very hard to maintain a more simulation style game.