Ahnehnois
First Post
Yes, but I don't think abstraction is really the issue either. A simulation can be detailed and specific, or it can be abstract. And that's what I would argue that D&D is: an abstract simulation game.I don't think there is a scale of Simulation vs. Game. There's definitely a scale of Simulation vs. Abstraction (old-school exploration rules and 4e skill challenges are on opposite ends of that). I don't know if "Game" is one end of any scale. It's a game either way, right?
I think the actual conflicts are more along the lines of:
*Realism vs Fantasy (are the characters flesh and blood people who get broken bones, or are they made out of flubber and able to jump off of cliffs?)
and
*Game vs Metagame (do the rules enforce a strict separation of in-game and real-world constraints, or are those ends conflated?)