Simulationists, Black Boxes, and 4e

[VannATLC]

Salt is worth its weight in gold, when you have few, if any, other methods of preservation.

And refining and obtaining salt is actually quite a lenghthy and time consuming process.

Pepper is also worth mint.

 

[pemerton]

PrecociousApprentic, I just wanted to respond to a couple of your very interesting posts.

See, to me it boiled down to the fact that the two editions went about design from opposite ends of the game. 3e said that it wanted to have an amazing number of options for world/monster/PC design. Then everything that is 3e as we know it was an emergent property of this design. The 15 minute adventure day, the 14 class 15th level PC, CoDzilla....

4e decided to design from the other end of things. There was a relatively specific output desired. Limiting the level of emergent properties was a design goal. They decided that at every level, they wanted a specific play feeling to be had. They wanted a certain amount of complexity, and didn't want further complexity to emerge. The the mechanics were designed to accomplish this.

<snip>

Which ruleset will appeal to which players? They both are toolboxes, but the toolboxes are designed to build different things. One is for creating emergent properties, and one is for output oriented design. Neither is superior, but I would say that those that prefer "D&Disms" are likely to like 3e, and those that have a specific design output in mind will prefer 4e. Either can be simulationist or not.

I think many simulationists can find the intervention of mechanics which have no in-game meaning a bit confronting, however, because such mechanics foreground the metagame in a way that is at odds with the immersion, be it the "verisimilitude" immersion of purist-for-system or the "genre" immersion of high-concept.

Tunnels and Trolls would be another example of results-oriented rather than emergent/process-oriented design, and I find it hard (not impossible, but hard) to imagine really satisfactory simulationist play using Tunnels and Trolls.

This is why I still have a problem with the GNS theory. You are assuming that the game mechanics actually exist from a character's perspective, and like any natural law, can be discovered by them. This to me is the only way to explain why anyone has a hard time with aligning their fluff and crunch. Simulationist gaming has become such a catch all that it is losing any meaning, and people then keep throwing out simulationist to mean "a player or game that equates game mechanics with the physics of the world." This may be a valid interpretation of simulationist, but is not the only way to interpret it. Some simulationists might be the "internally consistent ruleset" type. Others could be the "ruleset should not only accomodate but encourage and facilitate a certain genre/theme/literary world." I do not think that either of these types of simulationists would inherently have a problem with rules being in your face. They would also take different stances on when and how the rules are interpreted. When a term is used for many different things, some of which can be opposite and contradictory, the term loses a great deal of power.

I agree that purist-for-system and high-concept are very different things. But I think both aim at a type of immersion which can be disrupted by a flagrant metagame - and once fluff and crunch are divorced in the manner you are describing the metagame can become rather flagrant.

If you are able to let the mechanics guide the narration of their result in game fluff, but not require that the fluff be the actual output of the mechaincs, then no. How well this analogy works is not dependent on how much "realism" you need. I need a lot of "realism" but I don't need my mechanics to give it to me.

I take the implication of what you are saying here to be something that I also thought when I read the OP, namely, that the "blackbox" model is just another label for "fortune-in-the-middle" action resolution.

And again, I think there is a reason why simulationist games tend to aim for fortune-at-the-end: it helps keep the metagame suppressed.

And strangely enough, someone whose opinion on the matter I greatly respect has recently told me that I am not necessarily the narrativost that I though, but an "illusionist' simulationist. I like the output focused (read exception based or black box) design paradigm.

If you are an "illusionist" simulationist who nevertheless likes the ouput focuse/FiTM approach, does that mean that you are happy to let the GM do the narration? Once the player is doing the narration, the game might be tending towards narrativism (because the GM is no longer creating an "illusion" of player protagonism).

 

[Irda Ranger]

Tunnels and Trolls would be another example of results-oriented rather than emergent/process-oriented design, and I find it hard (not impossible, but hard) to imagine really satisfactory simulationist play using Tunnels and Trolls.

I'm not familiar with T&T, but I think 4E will be quite well adapted for my preferred form of "simulationist" play. To use a concept from photography: what's the point of focus?

For instance, when I play Sim City I'm trying to simulate a city with the tools I'm given. It doesn't bother me that I'm handed building blocks like roads, police stations and zoning ordinances with "arbitrary" values. Using the building blocks given is part of the game.

3E allowed you to "simulate" PCs and NPCs given constituent pieces like race, class levels, feats, skill selection, PrCs, template on top of template, etc. You could get bizarre results. 4E has reigned that way back. And that's fine with me, because I don't care to simulate individuals. I want to play Sim Quest or Sim Campaign, not Sim Monster. And I can use the "arbitrary" classes and monsters given by the 4E rules to do that. In fact, 4E makes my preferred kind of Sim play waaaaayyyyy easier because I don't have to spend an hour or two building each little block. I'm really looking forward to it.

Just as another analogy, some people like making miniatures from scratch materials and giving them custom paint jobs. I don't - I'd much rather buy pre-painted minis so that I can get to the fun (for me) part of playing D&D.

So before anyone jumps to conclusions about what kind of rules would be good or bad for "simulationist play", you have to ask: simulating what?

 

[gizmo33]

So much so, that the word "salary" derives from the Latin salarium, which (depending on who you ask) was the pay of Roman soldiers, or a salt allowance paid to Roman soldiers ...

This is probably an urban legend started in the late Roman era - I should cite sources on this if I wanted to be responsible. In any case, the value of salt in the Roman period is documented.

 

[hong]

Yes, Gizmo, salt was very valuable in ancient and medieval times.

Next!

 

[gizmo33]

Salt is worth its weight in gold, when you have few, if any, other methods of preservation.

No it's not. This statement "worth it's weight in gold" must be figurative. The actual counter examples are hardly worth mentioning since you can google them yourself. It involves understanding what coins you are dealing with. For example, a website might tell you that Venetians charged 33 ducats/ton of salt inland in Italy. Now a ducat is a gold coin considerably smaller than the DnD coin, but 33 ducats, obviously, do not weigh a ton.

Medieval English prices are given in terms of quarters, which is the same units used to measure grain. Salt is used in large quantites "when you have few, if any, other methods of preservation", that much is true.

In any case, you've still probably put more effort into thinking about this than WotC did.

 

[gizmo33]

Yes, Gizmo, salt was very valuable in ancient and medieval times.

"Life in a Medieval City" (a book that's pretty commonly available in most public libraries - no Hong, it's not in the comic section) gives salt at 2 denier for 5 lbs. A denier is a silver coin (and NOT the size of a dinner plate, in case you're wondering).

There actually are some anecdotes that I've seen about merchants trading salt to tribesmen for gold dust - but it would be best that people digest the actual, readily available, and mainstream facts regarding salt prices in ancient/medieval times before we debate whether or not these stories are legitimate.

 

[N0Man]

I haven't read all 4 pages, so maybe this has been brought up...

But isn't it a little presumptuous to assume that the mechanics of "how" things are done (such as designing monsters, in the OP) aren't usable by us when we don't even have the books yet? How do we know it doesn't give us mechanics how to design them.

Why not wait for the books and then see if the argument is valid.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

Any debate about 4e contains the unwritten statement "This is all assuming that I have guessed right about what 4e will be like." There is a lot of preview material, but he rules aren't out yet.

 

[mmadsen]

"Life in a Medieval City" (a book that's pretty commonly available in most public libraries - no Hong, it's not in the comic section) gives salt at 2 denier for 5 lbs. A denier is a silver coin (and NOT the size of a dinner plate, in case you're wondering).

The silver denier (abbr. d) is a silver penny; 240 make one pound (or librum, abbr. £). So paying 1/120 of a pound of silver for five pounds of salt would imply that salt is worth much less than silver (at that time and place, in those quantities).

That is cheaper than I would have thought though, because salt has always been considered valuable -- until the industrial era.