The Death of Simulation

[Charwoman Gene]

Simulation has been eliminated as a design goal in 4e.

This is a fact.

D&D 4e is not ideally suited to sandbox play or rules-emergent world building.

We don't need 40 Threads that amount to whining about this fact. Butt-kicking and story building, it's got them covered although details there can be argued, but the only way to salvage simulation is to SCRAP 4e as it exists. That's not happening. I am really tired of people slagging on every detail that is run over by the non-simulation train.

I feel bad for simulation players and DMs, it reflects the sandbox experience I wish I could find others to enjoy with me. 3e was kind of a heyday for you. But its done, if you want to protest, speak with your wallet and voices, but let the criticism focus on what can be fixed.

 

[marune]

Simulation has been eliminated as a design goal in 4e.

This is a fact.

D&D 4e is not ideally suited to sandbox play or rules-emergent world building.

We don't need 40 Threads that amount to whining about this fact.

D&D was always more gamist than simulationist.

4E design rightly seems to be clearly/explicitly gamist, however I won't be sure until I read the DMG.

IMHO, that's a good thing because the gamist/sim mix in D&D was often incoherent.

Also, I don't like gamism called Butt-kicking, because solving mysteries for instance can be as much gamist as dungeon crawl.

Also, for story building, sorry but D&D never supported it and 4E won't change that.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Hit points and levels never made the game very "simulationist" in my opinion. The abstraction is just too far away from anything concrete in the real world as to be counted for simulating something.

 

[Anthtriel]

D&D was always more gamist than simulationist.

4E design rightly seems to be clearly/explicitly gamist, however I won't be sure until I read the DMG.

IMHO, that's a good thing because the gamist/sim mix in D&D was often incoherent.

The argument is that people should accept it and move on. But given that they are a couple of people around here that openly state they have no interest in 4E (other than to complain about it), that appeal likely won't bear fruit.

Also, I don't believe any one is pure gamist, or pure simulationist. We don't know all the details yet, and 4E could still be interesting even for those leaning on the simulationist side, or be too gamist for the others.

 

[Khur]

The only way to have raw simulation in any version of D&D was to scrap big chunks of it and rebuild.

I find it kind of strange that anyone thinks 3e was a heyday of D&D simulation, other than in very liberal comparison to earlier editions. D&D has never been a simulationist game, and 3e was no exception. Sure, you had rules that let a character die of exposure or from drowning, and neither subsystem felt very heroic or fun. As many others have pointed out on these very boards, such 3e rules were, at the very least, inconsistent. When they dealt with hp, they strayed from simulation as quickly as anything else that dealt with hp.

Take Sidewinder, Grim Tales, and Forbidden Kingdoms as public examples, and a version of the rules I did for a gritty Eberron campaign as an experiential one for me. Lots of changes were required to make the d20 system even approach a lower cinematic norm. Much more would be required to make it seem anything like realistic, or simulationist if you prefer.

I might take exception to the idea that the D&D game never supported story building, and the idea that 4e won't change that, but I'm not sure what that assertion really means. We'd need to start from a commonly defined "story building" and commonly defined "support."

 

[Wormwood]

Simulationism is notoriously difficult to kill.

I say nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

 

[Professor Phobos]

D&D was never all that simulationist.

 

[Belorin]

Chainmail was about as simulationist as D&D got, it went downhill from there.

Bel

 

[Wolfspider]

Simulationism is notoriously difficult to kill.

I say nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

That idea is Alien to me....

 

[WyzardWhately]

A game being "simulationist" has nothing to do with realism.

The two concepts are largely unrelated. Simulationist arguments essentially mean that the rules are the game-world's laws of physics, and vice versa. So, essentially, what they are saying is that the rules should reflect the way things are supposed to work IC. You can run an absolutely simulationist game where a guy with a hundred hit points can fall a hundred feet onto a stone floor, take his 10d6, get back up, dust himself off, and be merely bruised. It doesn't have to reflect the real world at all. The simulationist, however, needs to have an explanation of why the game-world's physics feel like that, and the characters who live therein will be aware of it and know that that's how the world works. So, if someone who is known to be an all-star badass dies from falling off a horse, they're going to be rightly shocked and expect some deeper conspiracy, unlike in the real world where, to be frank, happens.

Simulationism only requires that the game follow some kind of internal logic, and that the characters be able to determine what that is. What breaks sim is when gamist or other elements violate that internal logic, not when it violates real-world principles and experience.