The Death of Simulation

[pemerton]

Ardoughter, I'll defer to skeptic's reply for an affirmative account (espcially of theme) - but in short, yes, story and theme isn't just an account of the heroes and their doings.

Apoptosis, I don't want to (and don't know that I could) shoot holes in your examples - at least not in a close-reading, line-by-line refutation sort of way.

But I would note that Champions, which you flag as Sim, is one of the games that Ron Edwards talks about drifting into narrativism. (He also discusses drift of T&T from gamism to narrativism.) And I can see how that happens (for Champions, not T&T) - it has many of the same features as RM (in terms of complex character build, choices in action resolution etc) which allow the mechanics to be used as vehicles for players to make thematic statements.

I'm not just focusing on player choice (because D&D always allowed choice of hair colour for a human PC, for example, but whether that narrative control is there or not is almost always peripheral to narrativist concerns). I think that 4e really does open up a few places where those choices can matter: the approach to confict, the control over the outcomes of conflict that more sophisticated mechanics give, the PoL stuff about adversity, etc.

In the end, if you don't buy my theory that's fair enough: it's pretty speculative and perhaps generalises dangerously from my own play experience. But it really was what struck me when I read the 4e pre-release info and started to discuss it on these boards (starting with the hideous nightmare of the "Why is it important?" thread) - that finally D&D might have crated room for people to try to do something with an RPG that (as Ron Edwards says) I think they reallly might enjoy, without the mechanics (and the GM who is applying and adjudicating them) getting in the way all the time.

At the moment the main thing pressuring me to abandon my theory is Skeptic's point about XP.

 

[pemerton]

The presence of a right or preferred answer does not mean that a character knows or agrees with this "cosmic rightness". And what happens when the cosmos thinks what your character is doing is wrong? Are you evil? What if the cosmos doesn't reign in.

I think it is very difficult to play a PC in a certain way, and affirm the validity of that choice at the gaming table, when (i) the gameworld decrees that PC evil, with no chance for narrative intervention by the player in that determination, and (ii) the rulebook (PHB, ch 6) describes those alignment mechanics in such a way as to presuppose that there are no evil PCs (as defined by that rulebook), only evil antagonists.

It's not necessarily impossible, and Kamikaze Midget posted some ideas (although I wasn't really able to follow all of them) in the Blood War thread from a week or two ago.

Further, to invoke a little philosophy 101 here, alignment is traditionally agent evaluation and act evaluation (and I feel that some 3e authors really muddled and damaged this by more explicitly defining good/evil acts). Taken in this light, interesting question might take the form of "what would a good person do in this situation" more than "what is right"?

I don't fully follow you here. Part of the problem (not with your post, I don't think, but with alignment) is that different things get run together.

Thus, alignment is sometimes apparently a virtue theory (the good person = the virtuous person; the neutral person = the person who appreciates the importance of virtue but doesn't instantiate it in his or her own life; the evil person = the amoralist).

But sometimes it seems to be a deontological theory of action (a good action is one that is right/permissible, an evil action one that is not - there are no neutral actions on this account, and superogatory actions can be labelled "extra good" or "paladinesque").

At yet other times it seems to be a type of consequentialism, whether utilitarian (from memory, either the DMG or PHB in 1st ed AD&D defined LG by reference to the Benthamite maxim "the greatest happiness of the greatest number") or some other sort (sometimes it seems that to be good means minimising the amount of evil actions performed by onself and others).

However we understand it, though, it is hard to imagine coherent affirmations of the following: "This is what a good person would do in this situation, but doing that is not right". Not impossible (eg Michael Walzer on so-called "dirty hands") but hard.

And if the in-game alignment labels "Good" and "Evil" are to be divorced from their ordinary moral meanings of "good" and "evil" - so that doing Good is not necessarily good, and likewise for evil - then the point of those labels completely vanishes. We may as well call them Team A and Team B and be done with it, and let the players and GM form their own opinions on whether or not Team A is good or bad. (At the moment a paladin in my RM campaign is in the process of forming the view that Team A - his team until now - is probably not good at all, or at least rather too ruthless for his taste.)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Take a look at theme's and fiction's definitions on Wikipedia.

So does narrativist systems work? From my experience of rpgs I have seen stories emerge from campaings and they are consistient with the definitions of fiction (not very good fiction mind you, the dialogue is usually quite cliched) but theme would be lacking, or a best emergent in the story. The players and DM have to work for it though.

So in narrativist play do they agree on theme or does each player explore whatever theme suits them and do you get a single story or layered one for each character?


Now I can see how a high sim where the party wander about and sees what happens, would not yield much of a narrative.

 

[Roman]

There is a lot of excellent discussion going on here. I have a number of concerns about the game and I agree with those who say gamist concerns should not take precedence over other concerns.

Since this thread is filled with people well-versed in the theory of various gaming styles, I would like to ask whether my concerns about 4E fall into the simulationist camp or something else entirely. I think they are mostly simulationist, but you have a better understanding of what those terms mean.

I don't care for names such as "Golden Wyvern Adept" and the like although I presume 'evocative names' like this might be considered simulationist though I do not oppose them as strongly as some on these boards. I am concerned, however, about the referencing of durations and frequency of action use to gamist councepts such as 'encounters', about the removal of non-combat powers from monsters, about the inability to be bad in a skill and the like. Given these facts, am I primarily a simulationist or something else? (Of course, I like elements of all gaming styles in my games, so the operative word here is 'primarily'.)

Further info on my motivations and opinions (may be relevant to whether I am a mostly a simulationist or something else):

The referencing of durations and frequency of action use to gamist councepts such as 'encounters': It just does not make logical in-game sense to me to have frequencies and durations tied to something so arbitrary and non-existent in the game world. On top of that, I cringe at the thought of players artificially prolonging or cutting short encounters for the sake of their encounter-based powers. Also, I wonder how one should adjudicate the use of such powers outside of encounters.

The removal of non-combat powers from monsters: I want to be able to see what monsters can and cannot do also out of combat and to have it supported mechanically. Furthermore, I don't want my workload as a DM inordinately increased by having to design this myself and it would take a huge amount of work to do so...


The inability to be bad in a skill and the like: I want to be able to create characters, both as a player and as a DM, who follow the rules, yet are not good at certain skills. A couple of examples: A burly fighter from the plains who cannot 'climb', a paladin that is always slow to act, a wizard that commands vast magical might yet cannot walk up the stairs without panting.... the examples abound.

 

[Derren]

Seconded.

That describes my stance (and concerns) on 4E very well.

 

[LostSoul]

Given these facts, am I primarily a simulationist or something else?

Hey Roman;

I was thinking about this from before, and I don't think I can tell from what you've said. A lot of it could just be that you want things to make sense in the game's fiction, but that could be in order to really enjoy or experience the theme. A good sense of what's going on in-game can "multiply" the impact of a thematic statement, know what I mean? It could even be because you want to ground the gamist experience - we play RPGs and not chess, right?

The best way to analyze this is to look at your actual play and focus on the choices of the players (including DM) and reactions to those choices. You also need to look at things for a certain amount of time; I'd say at least over the course of one entire level, though an adventure or module would be better.

 

[Simon Marks]

The referencing of durations and frequency of action use to gamist councepts such as 'encounters': It just does not make logical in-game sense to me to have frequencies and durations tied to something so arbitrary and non-existent in the game world. On top of that, I cringe at the thought of players artificially prolonging or cutting short encounters for the sake of their encounter-based powers. Also, I wonder how one should adjudicate the use of such powers outside of encounters.

Current thinking suggests that "Per-Encounter abilities requires 5 minutes or so of rest to recharge" or that "Per-Encounter" simply means "Once every 5 minutes".

It's a guess, but based on the Book of Nine Swords I think a reasonable one.

 

[apoptosis]

Ardoughter, I'll defer to skeptic's reply for an affirmative account (espcially of theme) - but in short, yes, story and theme isn't just an account of the heroes and their doings.

Apoptosis, I don't want to (and don't know that I could) shoot holes in your examples - at least not in a close-reading, line-by-line refutation sort of way.

But I would note that Champions, which you flag as Sim, is one of the games that Ron Edwards talks about drifting into narrativism. (He also discusses drift of T&T from gamism to narrativism.) And I can see how that happens (for Champions, not T&T) - it has many of the same features as RM (in terms of complex character build, choices in action resolution etc) which allow the mechanics to be used as vehicles for players to make thematic statements.

I'm not just focusing on player choice (because D&D always allowed choice of hair colour for a human PC, for example, but whether that narrative control is there or not is almost always peripheral to narrativist concerns). I think that 4e really does open up a few places where those choices can matter: the approach to confict, the control over the outcomes of conflict that more sophisticated mechanics give, the PoL stuff about adversity, etc.

At the moment the main thing pressuring me to abandon my theory is Skeptic's point about XP.

In this regard I agree that hving more player options does allow an orthogonal appoach to narrativism.

I started worrying after I wrote it that indeed, champions with its ability to buy off disadvantages (stating that now this is not something I want my character to focus on, this enemy as dictated by hunted or such is no longer a narrative concern) actually is pretty narratavist. The more I thought about it the reward system (using points you gained while gaming) while not explicity geared that way can be utilized in a very narrativist way.

Hunted was acutally a way to say (this enemy is important to me and my character). Maybe it is that possibly my approach were too ontological and not functionary enough.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

There is a lot of excellent discussion going on here. I have a number of concerns about the game and I agree with those who say gamist concerns should not take precedence over other concerns.

Since this thread is filled with people well-versed in the theory of various gaming styles, I would like to ask whether my concerns about 4E fall into the simulationist camp or something else entirely. I think they are mostly simulationist, but you have a better understanding of what those terms mean.

snip

The referencing of durations and frequency of action use to gamist councepts such as 'encounters': It just does not make logical in-game sense to me to have frequencies and durations tied to something so arbitrary and non-existent in the game world. On top of that, I cringe at the thought of players artificially prolonging or cutting short encounters for the sake of their encounter-based powers. Also, I wonder how one should adjudicate the use of such powers outside of encounters.

The removal of non-combat powers from monsters: I want to be able to see what monsters can and cannot do also out of combat and to have it supported mechanically. Furthermore, I don't want my workload as a DM inordinately increased by having to design this myself and it would take a huge amount of work to do so...


The inability to be bad in a skill and the like: I want to be able to create characters, both as a player and as a DM, who follow the rules, yet are not good at certain skills. A couple of examples: A burly fighter from the plains who cannot 'climb', a paladin that is always slow to act, a wizard that commands vast magical might yet cannot walk up the stairs without panting.... the examples abound.

Well I am no expert either, but yes as far as I can tell you concerns are simulationist, in particular purist for system, in so far as I can tell you want the RAW to be the source of everything in the game world and a creature's stat block or a players character sheet is the full definition of the creatrue or character.

As far as I can tell the per encounter powers and so forth are gamist constructs with out any sim justification. Of course we don't know this with out having the text of the rules. But assuming that they are gamist and just there. Then it looks like you will have to invent rules/explaination to justify them if you want to play D&D in your prefered way.

If you played and/or DM'ed earlier versions of D&D this would not bother you so much since there was so many things not directly covered in the rules that houseruling was necessary and usually based on simulationist concerns. That was probably, inevitable given that many of us were wargamers and were trained by that to think is a sim way anyway.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Nar play demands that you answer a thematic question in your own way; sim play demands that you answer a thematic question in the same way the source material did.

This is in no way accurate, IME.

Both forms of play, so far as I know, require you to answer a thematic question in your own way, based upon the underlying shared assumptions about the game.

RC