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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PrecociousApprentice" data-source="post: 4245860" data-attributes="member: 61449">So in essence, a simulationist game can only be achievable if the participants agree to confine their simulationist tendencies to areas that the game handles well in a sim fashion, and agree to play by less sim, say nar or gam, when the game decides to venture into the areas usually referred to as corner cases. To me this seems to imply that a game be either railroad or "illusionist sim", and that no true sim gaming is possible. I can't remember the terminology that was used in the GNS literature (maybe incoherent?), but this was understood about D&D from the beginning of GNS theory. It is interesting that the same thing might apply to all sim. Are all games at least abashadly gam or nar?This goes right along with my statement that no ruleset can be infallible. The ability to play sim is dependent on metagame elements like agreeing not to exploit the holes in the sim platform. I have nothing against this. I just feel like I should point out to those players that self identify as simulationists that every game contains a metagame on a very significant level. I and many like me who like 4e have been disparaged by many sim players that 4e and gam/nar play is not good enough because it can't hold up to the ideals of getting everything right in game without a metagame. Metagame is unavoidable by the simple fact that it is both a model (hence not the real thing) and a game (hence not reality). So for either one, there is a level of "something else" that is involved in the playing of the game, namely real life.I think that this is an area where many simulationists come to be mistaken that sim requires no metagame. There is no need for an overt conversation about social contract at this point, because they have had an ongoing dialogue about it for years. This doesn't mean that the dialogue was overt. Just that a significant body of unwritten rules about how gaming should be done has been established. Maybe they think that early on they were just bad RPers, and now they have matured and are better. They might also think that when they play at other tables, these players just don't get it. In reality, these other players just are obeying a different social contract, meaning that they play by different metagame rules. Yes. Restriction to a small subset of possible play outcomes is necessary for sim play, especially purist for systems. Sandbox is by definition not restricted in it's possibilities.I like some constraints. I find it funny that a lot of the complaints about 4e by self identified simulationist players is about the constraints on play that 4e imposes on players or character actions.This is an intriguing idea. The idea that a game can have significant rules content that is of one style, while other areas are of a completely different style. Would this create a coherent game without the need for metagame handwaving?I think that it would be very possible to create a more meaningful theory and terminology for discussing RPGs than GNS theory. I do not have a huge amount of experience with other systems besides the various iterations of D&D (Shadowrun various editions, Marvel Superheroes, Vampire, a little TriStat d6, a little Exaulted), but I think that now with 4e coming out, we could at least create a better way of talking about the various D&D editions than the obviously very limited vocabulary of GNS.</blockquote>

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