Simulationists, Black Boxes, and 4e

[gizmo33]

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

But who says it isn't valuable?
Maybe it doesn't need to be worth it's weight in silver to be considered valuable. The reason, IMO, is that people price salt in their minds based on what they think is valuable in terms of PCs, who are really millionaires in terms of their wealth. This is "gamist" thinking, as I understand the term. I think the issue is somewhat complicated, but I would compare salt to gasoline - which people say is "expensive", because of the amount they use and it's necessity to support their lifestyle (and because of the potential for supply disruptions), not because it's worth it's weight in silver. No author that I've seen that has called salt "expensive" has ever given an actual example of a price. Those who have discussed it's price in various historical time periods avoid characterization, but comparisons with other prices for the time period (usually labor) allows the reader to form their own conclusion, as I've done.

 

[gizmo33]

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).

BTW - the situation is even worse in the case of the denier because it was devalued to a much greater extent, and contained less silver than it's equivalent in England (the english penny). So the bottom line is that a silver denier is not 1/240 of a troy pound of silver AFAIK.

 

[Scribble]

man... I am SO glad no one I have regularily gammed with in my gamming years has felt the need to rectify the price of salt in my campaign...

 

[Crazy Jerome]

However, I want the rules of the game to be a logical fully-included subset of the rules of the universe, such that when the greater universe does rear its ugly head the rules of the game don't conflict with it. Further, I want the rules of both the game and the universe to make some versimilitudinous (yikes!) sense.

Is that too much to ask?

Lanefan

You've already received the technically correct answer of, "Yes". I'd like to use Gen. Eisenhower's method of "When you have an insolvable problem, enlarge the problem space," to give an answer that might be more acceptable to more people.

A lot of common D&D (and gaming) labels are applied very loosely. For a directly relevant example to this dicussion, consider that we keep hearing that in 4E, "the PCs are special." That's true, but incomplete. Actually, in 4E, "characters made up of classes, paragon paths, etc. are special." Whether or not they happen to simulate a character played by a DM or player is irrelevant. Sure, the DM doesn't need to stat out a 15th level fighter when a similarly capable brute will do, but nothing is stopping him. And for that matter, the exact same thing applies to the minion/non-minion distinction.

So there is a "PC" black box creature producer. If you want an actual PC, you use it. If you want something that simulates fairly closely something more or less like a PC, you also use it. OTOH, if you want something that simulates a monster, or a minon, or an NPC--you use a different black box. No matter which one you use, you get something that is plausible in the simulated world. Just don't get too caught up in the labels. For example, if you wanted a "boss" leader that was potentially very scary but had a glass jaw, suitable for a 1st level group, a moderate level minion might make a lot of sense.

Now, to be fair, if the above was 100% true in D&D, you'd have a "monster as character" write up for every critter in the MM, not just the 12 or so that get it. At some point, you have to make a trade between purity and page count. But that is where the the black box/white box analogy starts to fail, unless you know its roots. Before black and white box, there was "mess of process in a tangle that no one could understand very well, even the guy who built it." Even when you cleaned it up, using various structures, it was still messy and prone to break--more likely to break when tinkered with than anything else. OTOH, the guy who did understand it very well could tinker a lot. So white boxes are not the opposite of black boxes, but simply an intermediate, useful stage--boxed, but still somewhat open for examination. In a sufficiently complicated process, white box practically implies that specific sub components are themselves black box--because that's all black box is--a way of managing complexity.

 

[mmadsen]

Many elements of D&D's design are black box, and many are white box -- and the difference between the two is often just the level of abstraction you choose for viewing the problem.

The beauty of a white box system is that is exposes all the knobs and dials you can turn, which makes the system flexible. You don't have to wait for a designer to publish rules for every little thing. The downside is that the system generally isn't designed for every possible combination of values, and you quickly get results that are, as gamers say, broken.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

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.

So are there simulationist gamers that don't mind a serious metagame? Is simulationist a euphemism for "one who requires the rules to fade into the background"? I am curious about this. It might really change my understanding of GNS.

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.

I had just thought that I had pinned down what category I could file myself under, and now I am back to confused. I am completely unfased by a metagame. I would have been once. I designed my own combat system at one time because the RAW D&D system was not realistic enough. I wanted less abstraction. Now I find abstraction to be liberating in that the rules don't have to be the physics of the world. Much easier to handle that way.

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.

Fortune in the middle makes it possible for the result of a game action to make sense in the story every time, and in the way that the players/GM want, instead of relying on the rules to be perfect and create that "sense" inherently. I really think that if simulationists require that the rules always give them "believable" results, without narrative interpretation, then they are really in for a TON of frustration. I think that I read somewhere that you are a lawyer. You should understand that rules must be interpreted in order for them to have any consistent meaning. Fortune in the middle allows this. Fortune at the end relies on the inherent infallibility of the rules to get it right. We all know that the rules are not infallible.

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).

I really like it when the GM is able to act more as a moderator than as a dictator. Players should get a significant level of narrative control, but this should be negotiated with the GM so that a consistent plot and world can be created. This might actually be thought of as giving the GM authority over the game world and plot elements, and giving the players more authority over the action resolution of their characters. I think that I might need to think about this more to fully flesh this idea out, but the point is that there should be some sort of sharing of narrative control. This is a very tough ballancing act, requires very mature players with no interpersonal issues, and probably a lot of work by the GM. The stage should be set by the GM, a direction negotiated between players and GM, and hopefully both parties will be creative and mature enough to create the stories of legend.

Almost as an asside, the PbP gaming that I have done and read has seemed to somewhat get at what I like about roleplaying. It is interesting that since the players and GM post at different times, with little imput from each other outside of the game, then there is really a great deal of sharing of narrative control. It was somewhat scary at first, but if done well, it can create some amazing stories. If not done well, it becomes the competing amature novelist olympics. I hate that. Ballance is everything, and consistent plot is still essential.

 

[pemerton]

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?

<snip>

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?

Without answering that question, one can still say that simulationist play is enhanced by mechanics that accord with, and plausibly model, whatever is being simulated, and may be disrupted by mechanics that are obviously metagame (ie have no correlate in the gameworld).

The most obvious feature of 4e D&D that may be disruptive to simulationist sensibilities is hit points. What in the world (any world, at whatever point of focus) do they represent?

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

I love abstract hitpoints. Nothing about them says what happened. You get to add the cool in whatever doses you can handle. Same with all the other metagame stuff. Fluff to taste.

 

[Campbell]

Without answering that question, one can still say that simulationist play is enhanced by mechanics that accord with, and plausibly model, whatever is being simulated, and may be disrupted by mechanics that are obviously metagame (ie have no correlate in the gameworld).

The most obvious feature of 4e D&D that may be disruptive to simulationist sensibilities is hit points. What in the world (any world, at whatever point of focus) do they represent?

I actually think Action Points will bother most simulationists more, particularly when you consider Paragon Path features and Paragon Tier feats that allow you to use APs to exercise direct narrative control.

As an example, consider First Reaction. It allows you to spend an Action Point not to be surprised even after you have failed a Perception check. It doesn't just lack a game world correlation, it directly contradicts the rules mechanism in place for determining what happens in the game world. The character was never surprised despite the fact that the player failed the Perception check.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Without answering that question, one can still say that simulationist play is enhanced by mechanics that accord with, and plausibly model, whatever is being simulated, and may be disrupted by mechanics that are obviously metagame (ie have no correlate in the gameworld).

How tautological of you. But I was answering the comment that 4E might be bad for Sim. Until you answer my questions ("Sim what?"), you can't assess its suitability to "model whatever is being simulated."

The most obvious feature of 4e D&D that may be disruptive to simulationist sensibilities is hit points.

Disagree. HP don't cause me more problems than any other abstraction causes, and fewer than some. I think the most obvious problem for Simulationists are Minions. They're a pure strain Narrativist/Gamist construct that have null HP and never register damage (just hits and misses). Any possible model that works for PCs, NPCs, Monsters, inanimate objects (even a glass pane has HP and hardness) breaks down on contact with Minions. There's no coherent and internally consistent model, which is a precondition to effective Sim.

Interacting with a Minion is a bit like a Skill Check, but that's just weird. How do you square that with every other creature operating by different rules. What happens when Minions are fighting house cats and 0th level commoners, not PC's? Etc. All sorts of problems.

What in the world (any world, at whatever point of focus) do they represent?

I think that question has been exhaustively and ably answered on many threads on this board. No need to go into it here.