D&D 4E Turning 4e into a simulationist game

[Garthanos]

I think this is a pretty valid point. 3e is more 'simulationist' than 4e. Runequest 2 is more simulationist than 3e.

FWIW I once ran a short Dark Sun campaign using the RQ2 rules and it worked brilliantly - I'm not supposing that you will, but if you are interested in looking at a pretty 'simulationist' approach for a DS campaign then you might find some of the basics I posted here Bookshelf - FRPG of some interest.

Cheers

Well D&D 4e lets me simulate some things better than any of the examples . just not everything and I am indeed an RQ2 lover... but climactic fight scenes you see in the movies where the hero and villains struggle back and forth the hero makes a big come back and at some point a grand Finale ... in RQ a bad die roll or three in a row is a death knell. There is no buffer... Fighting multiple opponents is very difficult even if those opponents only have basic ability... you won't see the flamboyant bravado even the lord of the rings characters display in the books (ignoring the movie) in a RQ based setting. It takes serious system hacking to make it less than "randomly" deadly. If you want a system to discourage heroic behavior choices by the players... I would recommend BRP. It fits Elric and Stormbringer style dark fantasy rather well.

 

[Plane Sailing]

True - I suppose my baseline assumption is that 'simulationist' means 'more realistic' (note deliberate use of quote marks).

I wouldn't use 'simulationist' for something like feng shui, even though it is designed to portray wild and wooley kung-fu movies. If there was a consensus that feng-shui was 'simulationist' because it matched its genre, I'd find the term useless and would need to seek out a new one for clarity of meaning.

My preference being that 'simlationist' refers to 'simulating real world to a greater or lesser extent', while the feng shui and any heroic movie portrayal would be called 'theatrical' or something like that. Won't happen

Cheers