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

[Mallus]

Go has no story.

On the other hand, go players don't usually give their stones names. Or give them imaginary families. Or imagine them having drinks with friends. Or lengthy conversions. Or falling in love. Or going shopping.

You know, the kinds of stuff that PCs do in, ahem, story-less D&D campaigns.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I'm of the opinion that a good game does at least one thing really well, and does other things at least passably well. Note that there is no trying; there are good games, and there are poor-to-mediocre games that tried to be good.

D&D has always made a poor simulation of anything but D&D, so if 5e were to go the simulation route, I'd expect it to be substantially different than anything that's come before. And seeing as how D&D Previous is all about the past, I don't see that happening.

Maybe its gamey side will be great though, who knows?

 

[Lanefan]

On the other hand, go players don't usually give their stones names. Or give them imaginary families. Or imagine them having drinks with friends. Or lengthy conversions. Or falling in love. Or going shopping.

You know, the kinds of stuff that PCs do in, ahem, story-less D&D campaigns.

I've seen (but, thank the gods, not played in) D&D games where other than the characters having names, none of the above occured or was really even able to occur. Just a series of (almost always combat) encounters, tied together only by whatever adventure module was being run and by the fact it was the same group of stones...er, characters...in each encounter; because that's all the DM cared about.

Ya-awn.

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

I think you pretty much nailed it Lanefan. You certainly could play DnD that way but pretty much everyone would say that that is the least enjoyable way to play.

Adding in the story - character, plot, stuff like that is where the role playing part lives.

The whole rules as simulation argument continues to baffle me since the majority of what I do as a DM - create campaigns and settings - almost never actually engages the rules. The rules only come in during actual table play.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The whole rules as simulation argument continues to baffle me since the majority of what I do as a DM - create campaigns and settings - almost never actually engages the rules. The rules only come in during actual table play.

I find that reading rulebooks for exact text is impractical during play, but eminently practical during prep. I end up doing most of my worldbuilding and formal prep in the form of meticulously researched NPC stats and magic items. A lot of the history of my world is embedded in flavor text for artifacts and the like.

Conversely, in a game, I'm generally a proponent of getting an OK answer now rather than a perfect one later. There's a lot of roughing it, a lot of "eh, that sounds like a Diplo, so roll it" and just making up a response based on how the die roll makes me feel. I carefully allot spell slots/spell points, but frequently don't bother to track them at all for NPCs because it just isn't worth the effort. I'll frequently skip around and narrate large parts of things without bothering to engage rules. And I'm by far the most hardcore RAW DM of any gamer I've ever met; plenty of DMs are just completely making rules up as they go.

If we were to accept the rules as a model for how play unfolds, this would happen:
Take three cases. In one, you're rolling an attack and need an 11 to hit the target's AC. In another, you're rolling a save against a death effect and need an 11 to make the save. In the third, you're rolling a Knowledge check to produce some interesting bit of history that has no life or death implications. Assume no other rules that alter those probabilities are in play.

If the rules were how actual play worked, those checks would each succeed 50% of the time. In fact, that isn't what happens at all. In fact, the players are likely to engage in a number of cheesy "it fell off the book" tactics for rerolling dice, distorting the probabilities in their favor to the extent that the DM is willing to indulge them. On the other hand, the DM is also likely to "cheat" wantonly, perhaps fudging the AC to alter the battle to his desired level of difficulty or based on how much time he has for the session. Saves vs death get fudged all the time if the DM doesn't want the character to die. And for minor things like knowledge, the DM may do anything from throw in the info for free without a check to juking the DC to meet the circumstances. Hard rules get ignored all the time in favor of players' ideas, DMs' goals, or simply because of ignorance or time constraints.

So to me, what unfolds is that the offscreen reality is assumed to work the way the rules describe, even if you're only occasionally actually using the rules to determine what happened offscreen. Conversely, the in-game experience is a freeform free-for-all, in which the literal rules text is only one influence on what unfolds and in which the deviations from the rules are eminently knowable.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think it is much more complex than just a matter of simulationism vs gamism.

Personally, I am not interested in simulationism details. Simulationist discussions seem to me neverending, since every layer of details added to increase realism soon reveals its limits, and for every corner case solved with an additional rule there is a new corner case springing up because of that rule.

At the same time, disassociated mechanics bother me a lot. I do not care for "fun" in rules, I do not want abstract disassociated rules in a RPG just because they are "fun to use", I have hundreds of board games or card games for those.

So in a nutshell, I want associated rules to functionally represent what's going on in the story, but I don't want those rules to take over and for minutiae to dominate the table time. I am neither a fan of simulationism nor gamism, and yet I am a huge fan of RPG, how do you explain that?

Overall I think 5e is generally not aiming, and that actually feels good enough to me. There are some elements which are irking gamist (weakly associated mechanics) here and there for my tastes, but they don't dominate the feel of the game because they are quite few. There is a reasonable level of simulationism/realism in almost everything, with the promise of optional modules for those who want more, but nothing beyond basic realism is really required.

Furthermore, there is a "third side" which they are increasing focus about, and it's neither simulationism nor gamism. I don't know how to call it, maybe narrativism but I'm not sure... It includes the bundling of skills into backgrounds that represent your role in society, the random tables for magic items minor properties, the flaws/bonds/ideals system and tables, the traditional alignments but without hard mechanical implications... All this stuff is (1) strictly optional, and (2) not really based on rules.

Simulationism generates rules. Gamism generates rules. Narrativism (or whatever it might be called) may generate rules, but in 5e it actually doesn't. All those stuff above are not really based on rules (note: backgrounds have rules, but they don't have more rules compared to just picking proficiencies freely), and I really hope the designers resist the temptation (at least in core) to listen to those gamers who want rules and mechanical implications for all the above. This aspect of D&D has been neglected in the past 2 editions IMHO. We got stuck in the idea that for everything there must be a rule, but a RPG is so much more, and IMHO it is refreshing to have so many interesting rules-free stuff to care about (but only if you want to). Incidentally, I think this makes D&D less nerdy and potentially increase the customer base.

 

[GSHamster]

For instance, one feature of 4e that I have noticed over several years of playing it is that it produces adventures closer to "the reality found in legends and fantasy fiction" than I get from more traditional fantasy RPG rulesets, and this is for at least two reasons: (1) it does a better job of enabling high-level "mundane" PCs like fighters and rangers to be mechanically comparable in their effectiveness to magic-users; (2) it produces more dramatic pacing during ingame moments of crisis (especially but not only combat) than do those other more traditional RPGs. "Metagamey" abilities like martial encounter powers are utterly central to both (1) and (2).

In my opinion, this goes back to the Combat As War vs Combat As Sport paradigms. Most fantasy books, myths, and legends are written as CaS. (Excluding obvious CaW books like the Black Company, and maybe trickster myths/legends.) But simulationist games fall into CaW very easily, as CaW tends to be what is most effective in the real world.

So oddly enough, if you wish to simulate heroic fantasy, you are better off in a gamist world, rather than a realistic simulation. The gamist world leads to CaS, which mimics heroic fantasy better.

 

[howandwhy99]

The OP's question may lead to bad thinking from highly prejudiced theories about what games are, like GNR, GNS, and the Big Model. Instead of limiting ourselves to these two aims for D&D, why don't we try and pinpoint some more?

What's more important for you in D&D?

1. Simulating how a creature works in your imagination in the rules so you can play a game with that construction?
2. Discovering the complexities and inner workings of a bunch of patterns which make up a game?
3. Escaping actual reality for a fantasy reality existing only in your imagination or perhaps someone else's imagination?
4. Pretending to be someone you're not?

For me, there is another option which is not simply D&D, but how D&D was designed if not always played for 25 years

Dungeons & Dragons: Learning how to perform a social role in a fantasy reality, like wizard, where that role is defined by game patterns you can master all while being able to pretend be someone else - though its not mandatory.

Everything the Referee says during play is determined by an unknown code of rules which you can then game to learn more about and master.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

And that's where I think WotC headed into the wrong direction with D&D. Because books with character options and optional rules sell well, their games rely a lot on rules. And as I see it, way too much rules. So many rules that they distract from the point of playing the game. With 3rd edition, making character builds has become a way of playing the game. Which in itself would not be something bad for people who enjoy it, but it shows how over-complex the rules have become.

I agree.

I'm not a big fan of wargames, but recently game some of them a shot at a convention. Of the ones I played, the ones with the most complex rules were the least fun and took forever to play. I noticed, however, that in the games with lighter rules a number of players complained that the games were too "simple."

The same if true for rpgs. Some people really, really like very complex rules systems, for a number of different reasons. Some people prefer the simplest rules that are still effective. Most people probably fall somewhere in-between.

I jumped into Pathfinder a while back because I was having such a hard time finding players or GMs in the area who would play anything BUT that. The first thing that struck me was how unnecessarily complex the rules are in areas that really didn't need complexity. I had forgotten what I disliked about D&D 3.5. The core book is huge. A tighter game could have been created that only took up half that amount of space.

 

[pemerton]

In my opinion, this goes back to the Combat As War vs Combat As Sport paradigms. Most fantasy books, myths, and legends are written as CaS.

I can see what you're saying, but personally I have some reservations about putting it that way, because it seems to beg the question already in favour of one rather than another approach to constructing the fictional events that make up a roleplaying experience.

For instance, in LotR the orcs from Isengard and Mordor don't fight in a spirit of "sport" rather than "war". They are savage, do not honour the laws of war (eg they desecrate the bodies of the dead and hurl their heads into Minas Tirith to try and break the defenders' morale), and use underhanded tactics like blowing up walls. From the perspective of the protagonists the war is real and bitter.

The difference from real life is that the heroes consistently get lucky, roughly in proportion to their dedication and commitment. So Aragorn receives the Palantir just in time to learn of the pending amphibious assault from Umbar. At the same time he receives a reminder and a portent to take the Paths of the Dead, which happen to be the only way to get to the south coast in time to stop the corsairs. Which portent happens to be brought by his Dunedain comrades, whom he will need to join him as part of his strike force. He then travels the Paths of the Dead and arrives in the south just in time. Then a change in the wind brings him to the Pelennor just in time to help turn the tide of battle there. A series of contrivances by the author bring about the dramatic result; but from the perspective of the protagonists this is just how things happen to unfold. They are not engaged in sport, but in dire warfare.

I think simulationist rules tend not to produce such contrivances. Hence they also tend to discourage that sort of emotionally committed risk taking by the players. In the end they can discourage all risk-taking full stop, and you get thief-on-a-rope Tomb of Horros of scry-buff-teleport assaults in high level Rolemaster or 3E.

Simulation (I actually prefer the term immersion) is simply a way for players to experience the game world through the eyes and sensibility of a game-world character

My own experience is that when simulationist mechanics yield the result I have just described, they can actually harm immersion because they discourage certain sorts of emotional commitment (alternatively, they support immersion but all the PCs are somewhat amoral, calculating mercenaries - I think "murder hobos" is the technical term!).

What you're saying here is harmony (in poetry, music, dance, song, and even stories) doesn't result in emotional or intimate fulfillment.

I don't think I was saying that at all. I didn't say anything about harmony, nor about the various art forms you mentioned.

I was saying that simulationist RPG mechanics tend not to produce emotionally and dramatically satisfying situations and resolutions to those situations. My evidence for that claim is many many years of play experience with systems like Rolemaster, Runequest and Traveller.

In my view the explanation is, ultimately, fairly simple. Emotional and dramatic satisfaction depends upon contrivance; whereas the aim of simulationist RPGs like those I've described tends to be to avoid contrivance. For instance, in a fantasy adventure story, if a protagonist is ambushed (or otherwise attacked by an overwhelming force) the author will typically write in a dramatic contrivance to ensure that the protagonist is able to escape, or be captured rather than killed, etc. (For instance, in LotR the hobbits are kidnapped rather than killed at Amon Hen; Gandalf arrives in the nick of time with Erkenbrand and the Ents at Helm's Deep; the ring is dropped in Mt Doom before Sauron's host can win the battle outside the gates of Mordor; etc.)

Systems like RQ, RM or Traveller are not designed to foster that sort of contrivance. For instance, in a simulationist system of that sort, there is generally no resolution framework which lets (say) Gandalf's player (in a Helm's Deep scenario) or Eomer or Merry's player (in a Ride of the Rohirrim scenario) or Han Solo's player (in a Death Star assault scenario) invoke some sort of "fate" or "destiny" or "this is a really big deal for me and my friends" ability that would help his/her PC arrive in the nick of time. Rather, it is all worked out be reference to impersonal movement rates and terrain rules and the like, with the emotional stakes or investment of the protagonists having no bearing on the resolution.

Go is a finite game, but D&D is an infinite game with imperfect information. Neither of them are storygames where participants trade off storytelling rights.

I'm not sure who you think you're arguing with here, given you're replying to a post in which I said that D&D does not inherently involve telling stories.

The very particular game design you are talking about is a storygame, not a role playing game or D&D.

<snip>

In my conversations in the past with you I'd have thought you believed all personal existence is necessarily narrative stories and its relation to the outside world is what made those stories fictional or non-fictional.

It would help, I think, if you took more seriously what I wrote rather than so readily projected your preconceptions onto it. Given that I denied that D&D must involve storytelling, I can hardly have asserted that it is a "storygame" (whatever exactly that is?). But D&D inherently involves fictions - collections of imagined, non-real objects and events that figure in the resolution of players' moves.

As for all personal experience being narrative stories I have never asserted this, nor ever believed it, given that 20 years ago I wrote a MA thesis defending an empiricist conception of phenomenal exprience along the lines of G E Moore and A J Ayer.

At any given point in D&D, the game construct is finite.

I don't agree with this. At any given point in D&D, the options open to the players are, in practice, unlimited. For instance, if the GM describes the PCs walking across a stony ground, the players have whatever options they can think of to investigage stones, pick them up, try and use them to advantage (eg throwing them at nearby things to see what happens, etc).

By your understanding then is non-fiction non-story commonplace personal experience then? Now perhaps are you saying thought experiments about reality aren't stories because they don't have some narrative format? But why then persist is claiming they are fiction? Fiction is a narrative term that limits thought experiments to literary theory - something I doubt most any thought experimenter wants to be confined within. They don't want their results to be fictions, they want a better depiction of reality (what non-fiction stories refer to).

Fiction is not a narrative term that limits thought experiments to liteary theory. Quine, for instance, one of the greatest of American analytic philosophers and in no sense a literary theorist, was writing in Word and Object and other books 50-odd years ago about the fictional character of thought experiments, counterfactual claims, and the like, and their relationship to scientific method.

In contemporary anlaytic philosophy, I would say that "fiction" is contrasted with "falsehood" in this way: a false statement is one which is uttered with the intention that it be evaluated in relation to the actual world, and when so evaluated turns out to be false. (Mistakes, lies, etc are all falsehoods in this sense.) A fictional statement is one which would be false if evaluated in relation to the actual world, but which when uttered is intended to be evaluated in relation to some non-actual, imagined state of affairs. (A countefactual statement is on some views a form of fictional statement, but not on all views, as many think that the states of affairs against which counterfactuals are evaluated aren't imagined but rather real.)

The results of special relativity obviously are not fictions. But the thought experiments used to help illustrate and prove it are. There never was a train running down an infinitely long track at a quarter of the speed of light. It's imaginary - a fiction.

(How can investigation of a ficiton help establish a truth? Any number of ways, but in the case of special relativity it's in part because the specification of the fiction inclues details that can be plugged into non-fictional rules to do with motion and geometry.)

I find that reading rulebooks for exact text is impractical during play

<snip>

In fact, the players are likely to engage in a number of cheesy "it fell off the book" tactics for rerolling dice, distorting the probabilities in their favor to the extent that the DM is willing to indulge them. On the other hand, the DM is also likely to "cheat" wantonly, perhaps fudging the AC to alter the battle to his desired level of difficulty or based on how much time he has for the session. Saves vs death get fudged all the time if the DM doesn't want the character to die. And for minor things like knowledge, the DM may do anything from throw in the info for free without a check to juking the DC to meet the circumstances.

For what it's worth, none of this descibes play at my table. Dice are rolled on the table and their results read and applied. If we don't want PCs to die, we play a game whose resolution rules don't lead to PC death. If a particular result is necessary for the game to proceed then dice won't be rolled ("say yes or roll the dice").

Simulationism generates rules.

I think we have to be careful with some of these generalisations. For instance, Runequest is much more of a simulationist game than any edition of D&D, but has much fewer and simpler rules than 3E or 4e D&D, and probably than at least some ways of playing rules-and-option-heavy AD&D.

Simulation is adding a Green Dragon to the area because the environment is a Jungle . Simulation is giving the GM enough information that they actually create a world and not just put together balanced encounters. Simulation is interpreting what a player wants their character to do into the rules without requiring them to have the specific action on their character sheet. I want the tools and information to have the world make sense and that can be set on top of the rules. I do not want to hand-wave crafting a sword.

I don't know - by these criteria nearly any RPG is simulationist if played in the way you describe; but some fail because they don't have crafting rules. That's a slightly idiosyncratic requirement, in my view. As best I recall Runequest doesn't have such rules; but it is one of the few games to have detailed rules for tithing and provision of other religious services in order to progress through religious hierarchies. But it would be equally odd to say that all games, if they're to count as simulationist, must have rules for that sort of religious progression.