Simulationists, Black Boxes, and 4e

[pemerton]

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"?

Not necessarily "fade into the background", because when playing RM (the game I play the most) the rules are very much there and in your face. It's more that, at every moment of rules resolution, you know what in-game state or property is represented by the mechanical operation you are performing. There is no fortune-in-the-middle in RM.

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.

I am a lawyer, and accept your points about interpretation in relation to normative rules. But descriptive rules (eg those of natural science) are arguably different, and not in need of interpretation in the same way.

Simulationism (especially purist-for-system) aspires to produce rules that can be treated as descriptive in that way (although they are also normative, as they dictate the parameters of player action in playing the game). It's a difficult task. It's a cause of tremendous rules bloat in RM, for example. There can be a ton of frustration - but also a type of bizarre satisfaction in making it work. At the moment, my group is using this system as an extremely intricate simulationist chassis for vanilla narrativist play.

The next game I'm hoping to run, once my current RM campaign finishes (it's getting close to its end) is a modified version of HARP. This is roughly RM light for character build and action resolution mechanics, but with quite different XP rules from official RM (I am using a version of those rules at the moment for RM), and with Fate Point mechanics, both of which are intended to give the game a much more narrativist focus.

I had just thought that I had pinned down what category I could file myself under, and now I am back to confused.

<snip>

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.

<snip>

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.

That all sounds to me like vanilla narrativism, not illusionism, because the player control is genuine and the GM is just one (perhaps pre-eminent, but not overwhelming) participant among others.

I think that Ron Edwards, in his GNS essays, overemphasises the artistic dimension of narrativism. He is quite critical of pastiche, for example, whereas I think that material that is mostly pastiche can still have some sort of (perhaps rather lowkey) thematic or aesthetic significance for the players who actually create it.

 

[mmadsen]

So are there simulationist gamers that don't mind a serious metagame?

Sure, but things get confusing, because a simulationist should only want a meta-game to model meta-physics, where what's being modeled is outside the reality the characters understand.

For instance, the PCs are the heroes of our story. We wouldn't be telling their story if it weren't extraordinary and if they didn't overcome the odds. Thus, they can and should have in-game mechanical reasons to keep getting lucky, even though they don't necessarily have any explanation within the game world for why they survive. (Although in a fantasy game world, having fate on one's side might be palpable and not so meta.)

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.

What you call "fortune in the middle" I would call some degree of abstraction. What we want, of course, is the right degree of abstraction, which isn't always obvious when designing a game and might not always be the same when playing a game.

 

[mmadsen]

I love abstract hitpoints. Nothing about them says what happened.

Of course hit points say what happened. They say that you didn't stun your foe, you didn't lop off his arm, you didn't maim him, you didn't knock him down, you certainly didn't decapitate him, etc.

Also, once you mix in specific maneuvers -- grapple, disarm, etc. -- and spells, then you have a peculiar model where abstract hit points represent luck, fatigue, etc. -- but only against attacks that aim to kill, via hit-point ablation, and not against any other kind of attack.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

Not necessarily "fade into the background", because when playing RM (the game I play the most) the rules are very much there and in your face. It's more that, at every moment of rules resolution, you know what in-game state or property is represented by the mechanical operation you are performing. There is no fortune-in-the-middle in RM.

So it is more of an issue of a consistent one to one cause-effect sort of resolution. The rules can be there, in your face, and as "unbelievable" as needed, just that there is no interpretation of them. The general theme is Input + Rule-> Unambiguous Output. No interpretation necessary.

I am a lawyer, and accept your points about interpretation in relation to normative rules. But descriptive rules (eg those of natural science) are arguably different, and not in need of interpretation in the same way.

Maybe not in the same way, but there is an entire industry of scientific professional journals that would not exist if there was no need of interpretation of outputs (read data). To really understand science, one needs to realize that there is a level of interaction of reality that is so fundamental that is exists in a conceptual space that is outside of what humans can possibly experience. We can observe the outputs, create models of what we saw that describe what we saw, but we always have to keep in mind that the rule we created to describe the event we saw was not the real interaction between the objects in the event. It was just a description, and that is all we can ever get. We continuously revise these rules so that they better describe the totallity of all the events we have observed, but we will never get at the underlying interactions, and it is likely our rules will always have corner cases that do not fit in our existing rules.

In medical science it is well inderstood that if one were to read medical journals at a pace that is greater than average for every second of every day for a year, then one would be almost nine hundred years behind at the end of the year, for just the information and rules published in that year, in medical science alone. And we still do a terrible job at predicting things in medicine that are relatively fundamental to the science.

A system of role playing that requires rules that are infallible in implementation and never create a "what the heck was that?" moment in the game would be so unweildy so as to be unplayable, if they were comprehensible in the first place. This is the reason for abstraction, fortune in the middle, and metagaming. They allow you to just hand wave the result to whatever you want so the game remains fun, comprehensible, and playable. Anyone who thinks that their simmulationist game will never have corner cases either uses liberal doses of abstraction, metagame constructs, does not understand the game, or isn't really playing it. Even in natural sciences this is true.

And I am not sure the natural science analogy is accurate for RPGs. RPGs are not for explaining data or predicting future events for which we have massive amounts of data to support. RPG rules are for organizing play and distributing power in a social context. It is actually much more like law than it is like science, even if rolling dice confuses the issue.

Simulationism (especially purist-for-system) aspires to produce rules that can be treated as descriptive in that way (although they are also normative, as they dictate the parameters of player action in playing the game). It's a difficult task. It's a cause of tremendous rules bloat in RM, for example. There can be a ton of frustration - but also a type of bizarre satisfaction in making it work. At the moment, my group is using this system as an extremely intricate simulationist chassis for vanilla narrativist play.

I am intrigued that you would use what has been reported to be a very hard core simulationist game for narrativist play. How do you accomplish protagonization of the PCs with what I have heard is a purist for system style game? It seems like giving ultimate power to the rules is by default deprotagonizing.

The next game I'm hoping to run, once my current RM campaign finishes (it's getting close to its end) is a modified version of HARP. This is roughly RM light for character build and action resolution mechanics, but with quite different XP rules from official RM (I am using a version of those rules at the moment for RM), and with Fate Point mechanics, both of which are intended to give the game a much more narrativist focus.

Why not 4e? Seems like it should be very easy to accomplish a narrativist agenda with 4e than most non-nar games. Why are you wed so much to a heavy sim game?

That all sounds to me like vanilla narrativism, not illusionism, because the player control is genuine and the GM is just one (perhaps pre-eminent, but not overwhelming) participant among others.

Back to where I started. I agree. I don't feel confident in my ability to distinguish vanilla from pervy, as I think that 4e will be a relatively complex rulset, but yes I do think that story is pre-eminently the focus of my games. I likes me some butt kicking in there as well, but I really don't mind a little abstraction. I definitely like the fortune in the middle. No need to get stuck at the "Why did that happen?" moments. Make it up.

Of course hit points say what happened. They say that you didn't stun your foe, you didn't lop off his arm, you didn't maim him, you didn't knock him down, you certainly didn't decapitate him, etc.

Also, once you mix in specific maneuvers -- grapple, disarm, etc. -- and spells, then you have a peculiar model where abstract hit points represent luck, fatigue, etc. -- but only against attacks that aim to kill, via hit-point ablation, and not against any other kind of attack.

I suspect this might be why WotC made most combat maneuvers tied to HP. This retains the luck/endourance element of the keep on fighting mechanic that is HP. The damage on a miss mechanics also might fit in this category. The attack roll determined if the character was sucessful with his goal. His opponents' luck/endourance/fighting spirit might have been lessened anyway. The abstraction allows you to narrate in a way that makes sense to the story.

 

[Nom]

Slightly off-topic: part of the issue with GNS terminology is that it uses "narrativism" and "simulationism" in ways that are often not what people default to thinking. If you take simulationism as "modelling driven" or narrativism as "story driven", you'll end up at a different point than GNS. Further, it talks about modes of play, rather than design principles. Under GNS, it's meaningful to talk about how a system supports narrative play, but less so about a narrative design process.

Back on topic:

At the design level, I draw a distinction between "simulationist" (not the GNS usage) and "abstractionist" task resolution. A "simulationist" resolution system attempts a tight coupling between rules events and games events, regardless of level of abstraction. "You are trying to do X, so this result means Y and this means Z." In contrast, an abstractionist model breaks that coupling, and treats the rule and story views as parallel rather than connected. There's no obligation to be able to point to a specific resolution event and a specific story event and show that they are necessarily the same event. Note that I'm using "event" at a very small-scale here, without concern as to dramatic significance. "A swings a sword at B" can be a single event, even if it's just another swing and wouldn't feature in any sort of summary.

In a sense, this is similar to "fortune in middle" and "fortune at end". But I'm focusing on the details of the mapping process between story and resolution mechanics, rather than how fortune is handled. My description is equally applicable if there's no fortune at all.

A simulationist design wants its mechanics to be descriptive. A abstractionist design wants its mechanics to be evocative. Usually, both want their mechanics to work at both a resolution and story level; it's how they reconcile these two levels that differs.

 

[Nom]

More thoughts:

Process vs result driven modelling is a fair comparison. But we need to be careful talking about "black boxes". 4E is quite happy to open up its black boxes and show you the underlying math and mechanics. The critical point is that the contents of the black box are not trying to simulate events, but enable outcomes. The 4E principle is that a game element has whatever mechanical representation is required to create the desired game experience. The mechanics are a black box to the story, not to the players.

This leads to the possibly surprising outcome that a single creature might have different stats depending on how the PCs interact with it. 4E thinking would happily have a thug have normal stats when having a solo bar brawl with a PC, but minion stats when he's just a background figure in a large melee.

To the simulationist, the "real world" and the mechanical representation are expected to conform. To the abstractionist, the "real world" is vested in the story, and the mechanics are used to make a "game" out of the story and support whatever scene is currently being resolved. PCs, being heroes, generally have fully described and unchanging mechanics in both systems. But in an abstractionist system, the rest of the world can change mechanics as the story demands. In a strongly simulationist system, this is "cheating" of the highest order. Not cheating against the players, but cheating against the world.

 

[Lanefan]

More thoughts:

Process vs result driven modelling is a fair comparison. But we need to be careful talking about "black boxes". 4E is quite happy to open up its black boxes and show you the underlying math and mechanics. The critical point is that the contents of the black box are not trying to simulate events, but enable outcomes. The 4E principle is that a game element has whatever mechanical representation is required to create the desired game experience. The mechanics are a black box to the story, not to the players.

Which is fine, provided it can be done without...

This leads to the possibly surprising outcome that a single creature might have different stats depending on how the PCs interact with it. 4E thinking would happily have a thug have normal stats when having a solo bar brawl with a PC, but minion stats when he's just a background figure in a large melee.

...this. And it can be done.

To the simulationist, the "real world" and the mechanical representation are expected to conform. To the abstractionist, the "real world" is vested in the story, and the mechanics are used to make a "game" out of the story and support whatever scene is currently being resolved. PCs, being heroes, generally have fully described and unchanging mechanics in both systems. But in an abstractionist system, the rest of the world can change mechanics as the story demands. In a strongly simulationist system, this is "cheating" of the highest order. Not cheating against the players, but cheating against the world.

Absolutely, and thanks for putting it so well. It might have taken me years to come up with this, but it reflects my feelings exactly.

To me, Thog the Thug is - and for consistency's sake, has to be - the same creature with the same stats and mechanics whether he is:
- in a bar brawl with a PC,
- a background figure in a large melee,
- a significant opponent of the party,
- a PC himself,
- a henchman or hireling in a party of PCs, or
- just some guy wandering down the road.

The only difference comes in detail: if Thog is a PC then everything about him down to his shoe size will probably be statted out by his player. If he's just some guy wandering down the road, a name race and gender might be all you'll ever need. Everything else lies somewhere between these two extremes. BUT: if for some reason you take Thog-as-guy-wandering-down-the-road and stat him to the nines you'd better end up with an exact clone of Thog-as-PC or else your world has a severe believability problem.

In other words, commoners should be able to become playable PCs at the drop of a hat, without ret-conning their entire stat block...and that is one place where 4e's design really leaves me behind. (mind you, 3e wasn't much better for this...)

Lanefan

 

[Blackeagle]

To me, Thog the Thug is - and for consistency's sake, has to be - the same creature with the same stats and mechanics whether he is:
- in a bar brawl with a PC,
- a background figure in a large melee,
- a significant opponent of the party,
- a PC himself,
- a henchman or hireling in a party of PCs, or
- just some guy wandering down the road.

It seems if you try to stat Thog up so that he can fill all these roles, then he's not really going to be the best choice for any of them. If Thog, significant opponent, also has to work as Thog the PC, then all of Thog's abilities have to be balanced with use as a PC in mind. That means a lot of abilities that would have been cool for Thog the solo monster have to be ruled out because they'd be unbalancing for Thog the PC. Similarly, Thog the Bar Brawler might benefit from some abilities that would make him a more interesting opponent, but those abilities would be wasted on Thog the Minion. Thog the jack of all trades seems like he will have to be much blander than Thog, whatever the DM requires of him at the moment.

I'm just curious, do you think there's actually any benefit (aside from the warm, fuzzy, consistent feeling) to doing it this way? The warm fuzzy consistent feeling is a valid reason to prefer that approach, but I don't think its going to convince many of us who aren't as attached to the idea of internal consistency.

 

[Lanefan]

It seems if you try to stat Thog up so that he can fill all these roles, then he's not really going to be the best choice for any of them. If Thog, significant opponent, also has to work as Thog the PC, then all of Thog's abilities have to be balanced with use as a PC in mind. That means a lot of abilities that would have been cool for Thog the solo monster have to be ruled out because they'd be unbalancing for Thog the PC. Similarly, Thog the Bar Brawler might benefit from some abilities that would make him a more interesting opponent, but those abilities would be wasted on Thog the Minion. Thog the jack of all trades seems like he will have to be much blander than Thog, whatever the DM requires of him at the moment.

But what's wrong with just saying "Thog is what he is" and going with that, instead of always having to optimize him. (as you can probably tell, I'm not at all a fan of everything always being perfectly suited to its role and thusly optimized)

I'm just curious, do you think there's actually any benefit (aside from the warm, fuzzy, consistent feeling) to doing it this way? The warm fuzzy consistent feeling is a valid reason to prefer that approach, but I don't think its going to convince many of us who aren't as attached to the idea of internal consistency.

The "warm fuzzy consistent feeling" is what world design is all about, and RPG design in my opinion should be about. When I sit down and design a world, I want to end up with something that the PCs were an organic part of before becoming PCs and could easily go back to being an organic part of afterwards; rather than have the PCs be special flowers...until they've earned it through adventuring.

I don't think I've put that very clearly. Every PC is or should be a commoner at heart, and every commoner should be able to join a party and adventure and (after some training) pick up the rudimentary basics of a class. 4e really skips over this step, and has the PCs start as pre-fab heroes without bothering to get them there, while ignoring whatever stages might lie between commoner and 1st-level PC. Which is fine, I suppose, if you want to be bad-ass from the get-go; but also woefully unrealistic. Me, I'd rather earn my badge of badassness in the trenches...or die trying; low-level PCs, after all, are there to be killed.

By the same token, what comes between the "minion" stage and the "skirmisher" stage for a Kobold? There's a *huge* difference between the two...far too big a gap to handwave away. Does a Kobold minion that survives a few battles suddenly wake up one morning with 27 hit points instead of 1? There's a bunch of gradations (or levels, counting up from a negative number to 0?) missing in there somewhere...

Lanefan

 

[UngeheuerLich]

there are different kinds of internal consitancy... and i am missing a bit here and there:

Two comparable monsters (like kobolds), one wears armor and has higher dexterity than the one without armor: who should have higher AC?

Of course the one who does melee... but does it hurt if you give the melee one scale armor to reflect his AC? the result is the same (which is actually the important part of monster design) but you have some kind of consitancy...