What Does "Simulation" Mean To You? [+]

[soviet]

My favorite part of GNS theory is the separation of creative agenda from the particular techniques that we've come up with so far to support it. Most posts here are about techniques, not simulationism itself as a reason to play.

Ron Edwards' Simulationism: The Right to Dream defines Simulationism as play where the group's highest priority is sincere exploration of the shared imaginary world for its own sake.

I think the essay is insightful and mostly even-handed, until the end -- the part I really disagree with (and seems to come out of nowhere) is when he says: "It's a hard realization: devoted Simulationist play is a fringe interest." Huh?

It depends how much work "devoted" is doing here I guess, but I think Simulationism is hardly fringe! I think it's actually the most mainstream mode of RPG enjoyment.

Couple observations to support that:

• TTRPGs from 1974 to 2000-ish steadily became more simulationist (until they collapsed under their own weight and spent years being dissed by influential game theorists). Edwards doesn't explain why they evolved in this direction for so long.
• Computer games have become steadily more simulationist, at least until 2020ish. Enhancing graphical and physical fidelity is a simulationist technique! At the same time, games became simpler, shallower, and easier to play*. The market clearly prioritizes the "VR" experience over gamist qualities like difficulty and tactical depth, at least up to the point of a 2020ish+ AAA game (VR headset gaming hasn't been hugely successful).

* It's crucial to understand that Simulationism and ease-of-play are totally orthogonal. It's not inherently clunky, crunchy or slow to prioritize exploration of the imaginary space. Simulationists don't necessarily enjoy crunching the numbers or following complicated procedures themselves. "Easy" sim games (like, you know, The Sims) are massive!

Putting it together, I think the best explanation is that people love Simulationism, it's just hard to do with traditional TTRPG tech.

VTT-first TTRPGs are potentially a very interesting tech upgrade to support Simulationist play.

Great post.

I think Rolemaster is massively underappreciated as a genuinely well-designed and evocative sim game. To my mind second edition from 1984/1989 is the platonic ideal of such an RPG. I constantly see threads here along the lines of 'D&D hit points are realistic actually, you can only do so much' and I shake my head and think about what they did to my boy while muttering 'Rolemaster solved this in 1984'.

It has this really unfair reputation as an uber-complex 'Chartmaster', but aside from chargen/levelling and keeping track of some status effects in combat it's mostly less complex than modern D&D. It has more maths, but that isn't the same thing. What seems to have hurt it reputationally is that they published I think seven or so Companions full of much more complicated, largely unplaytested optional rules that combined poorly, and that in 1994 they published a new edition called RMSS that escalated the complexity way too far and created a sort of 4e D&D-like schism.

If I became a tech billionaire I would buy the rights to RM2 (and the old MERP books, seeing as I'm a billionaire) and republish it 'as was' with a cleaner layout and a separate book of GM/operations advice from the original authors (if they are still around) and modern day designers who can talk about Sim - including Ron Edwards himself.

 

[Reynard]

Coming back down to techniques, I think of the weapons v armor table in AD&D 1e as more gamist than simulationist.

I think this is wrong because the motivation (as far as we know) for Gygax was to model something, not create a useful or fun gameplay element.

 

[Celebrim]

There's a difference between "could survive" and "no chance of dying" at least if some attempt at modeling reality is the goal. There are other ways to do it than rolling hit point damage, of course, so we don't have to toss the baby out with the bathwater. But if the player says "20d6? I've got 200 hp! No problem." you are not likely to be calling that part of the game "sim."

I think that is fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of simulation and of heroism in the context of D&D.

The big misunderstanding here is a 15th level Wizard in D&D can do a passable imitation of Dr. Strange, but DMs want to insist that 15th level fighters are still ordinary mooks and not Captain America.

A simulation isn't an attempt necessarily at modelling this world's reality. It's modelling the reality of the fantasy world. And in the fantasy world, big heroes do big flashy heroic things like falling thousands of feet without dying. That's not doing it wrong. That's the expected behavior and outcome. Doing it wrong is just ruling Captain America died because he jumped out of an airplane without a parachute. A correct simulation says he should just be able to do that, or heck if he can't land in the ocean (which would be as hard as concrete at that speed because water is heavy and has to be displaced) then he can always just land on his shield made of magical metal that only obeys the laws of physics when its wielder wants it to.

And I strongly suspect the problem here is not merely "You're a 15th level fighter but you are still a mundane person." but also, "You don't get to ruin my plans and scenes like that. I trapped you into something and now you are unfairly evading my plans." The GM that decided "Oh you are just dead" doesn't deserve to have players. It's a crappy move. At worst you say, "You know, I hadn't really considered the implications of the falling rules on gameplay, and I don't like them, so expect new rules for falling next session."

Incidentally, I have complex rules about falling precisely because I do care about the implications of falling on game play and I do care about simulating a universe where a ten foot fall can be lethal sometimes (max damage is like 34 with a 1 in 7200 chance of happening) but a ten thousand foot fall is sometimes survivable (min damage is like 3, albeit with like a 1 in 10^25 chance of happening) which makes it very much like this universe. But while the rules on falling make falling risky what they don't do is routinely kill high level fighters because while the standard deviation is very high the average damage isn't. So yeah, a fighter couldn't fall thousands of feet without fear of dying at all in my game world because that the way the math works, but nether will they get punished for trying nor would I find it implausible that they do so because what I'm simulating isn't the real world by a world were mere mortals can ascend to nigh demigod status. And if I didn't want that, I wouldn't be using D&D to do it because that is what D&D simulates.

 

[Celebrim]

This raises* the question: what is the line between an abstraction and a simulation mechanic?

Simulation is what we are trying to achieve. Abstraction is the thing like assuming we can simulate an airplane well enough for these purposes as a rigid body with a single point mass because we aren't trying to actually make it fly and it won't be a danger to lives if it crashes but we will have to do all the math ourselves.

 

[Reynard]

And I strongly suspect the problem here is not merely "You're a 15th level fighter but you are still a mundane person." but also, "You don't get to ruin my plans and scenes like that. I trapped you into something and now you are unfairly evading my plans."

I strongly disagree with your whole take, but this is where I think you are revealing the weakness in your argument: you are imagining some sort of viking hat GM as the only possible explanation for "falling damage should kill you" and it is easily, demonstrably not the case.
Look, if you had so.e crappy GMs I am not going to tell you not to rail against them, but it's not particularly convincing for you to try and apply that logic broadly.
Maybe you just had bad GMs and the rest of the world is okay.

 

[Parmandur]

I think this is wrong because the motivation (as far as we know) for Gygax was to model something, not create a useful or fun gameplay element.

I think that one major fact of Gygax's life that makes sense of his AD&D design decisions is his experience as an insurance adjuster. He was definitely looking to model a range of results in the style of actuarial tables.

 

[Celebrim]

I strongly disagree with your whole take, but this is where I think you are revealing the weakness in your argument: you are imagining some sort of viking hat GM as the only possible explanation for "falling damage should kill you" and it is easily, demonstrably not the case.
Look, if you had so.e crappy GMs I am not going to tell you not to rail against them, but it's not particularly convincing for you to try and apply that logic broadly.
Maybe you just had bad GMs and the rest of the world is okay.

Or maybe I've been the forever GM most of my life hearing horror stories like this about the abuse players have had to endure at other tables. I've sat in on other tables or been in campaigns that sometimes lasted years, but I never had a DM as bad as the one described. If our profession was licensed, his should be revoked.

I have a simple rule. Always try to be the GM I'd want as a player. Not a lot of players out there I imagine want their GM to change the rules of the game in response to an action declaration that results in the death of a PC. I know I wouldn't. That seems to me like logic that applies pretty broadly.

 

[The Firebird]

I think this is wrong because the motivation (as far as we know) for Gygax was to model something, not create a useful or fun gameplay element.

Doesn't he say the opposite? I'm thinking of an article, Realism and Game Logic, from Dragon #16. Quoting from a secondhand source:

"In general, the enjoyment of D&D is the fantasy: identification with a supernormal character, the challenges presented to this character as he or she seeks to gain gold and glory... the images conjured up in participants’ minds as they explore weird labyrinths underground and forsaken wildernesses above, and of course the satisfaction of defeating opponents and gaining some fabulous treasure. This is the stuff of which D&D is made. Protracted combat situations which stress “realism” will destroy the popularity of the game... The players desire action, but all but the odd few will readily tell you that endless die rolling to determine where a hit lands, having to specify what sort of attack is being made, how their character will defend against an attack, and so on are the opposite of action; they are tedious."

That said I've seen that article cited as proof Gygax didn't like simulationism, but he had a way of taking strong stances that make isolated quotes unrepresentative. Certainly he is more interested in simulationist combat than modern d&d.

 

[pemerton]

Simulation in gaming means an attempt to a realistic or at least consistent model of a world, given a set of assumptions or premises. In GNS theory, the simulation advocates are the ones that want to use the game to be transported to a virtual-reality world of understandable rules and interactions.

This isn't what simulation means in GNS/the big model.

You can read here what simulationism means in GNS: The Forge :: Simulationism: The Right to Dream

Summarised, and so with some nuance ignored, it is used to refer to play that prioritises engagement with the shared fiction per se over some other aesthetic experience (creative expression, or beating the dungeon, or whatever) that might result from engaging with the shared fiction.

A few different versions of this sort of prioritising of engagement with the shared fiction per se are: playing to enjoy the experience of the setting, as mediated/presented by the GM; playing to enjoy the scenario/story that the GM is presenting (the original DL modules are classics of this, but you can see this as a goal for a lot of contemporary adventure path play); playing to see what sorts of events/outcomes the mechanical system generates (RQ, RM, GURPS and Champions/HEROs are all RPGs often played in this sort of spirit).

 

[pemerton]

I don't think about simulationism in TTRPG as really about "modeling". To me, it's more about introducing procedures into play that reduce or eliminate occurrences of narrative contrivance. Nothing happens in the fiction for reasons of "making the story more impactful" or "ensure the protagonists reach a desired conclusion"; all events and resolutions are generated by a dispassionate algorithmic tool.

That would be how I think of them, yes. They're designed mechanics to avoid even the appearance of "contrivance".

From many years of these discussions, I think avoiding any hint of "contrivance" (where the GM or player makes decisions based on what would be interesting or challenging) is the primary goal of simulationist procedures.

A lot of the support for simulationism comes with the attached idea of "I want to feel like I'm in a real place." And far more than any particular rule or technique, what disturbs that sense are reminders that the table activity is functionally storytelling.

Narrative "contrivance" is avoided because it's a reminder that the setting is actually a created entity. Participants know it's "not real", but don't need continual reminders of that during the course of play.

When I think of my experiences GMing Rolemaster (at first weekly, and then fortnightly, for 19 years), I don't think that avoidance of narrative contrivance was at the core of it. After all, I made decisions about situations and scenarios that were replete with narrative contrivance (eg recurring meetings with NPCs; a PC's mentor is kidnapped; there just happens to be a challenge set before the PCs which they have a reasonable chance of dealing with; etc).

I think one important part of the procedures of a game like RM is to disclaim decision-making: the dice (and associated tables, algorithms, etc) tell us what happens. And I think that is why the same sort of techniques can be used in a system like Torchbearer (which relies heavily on random events tables at many points in play): they disclaim decision-making.

Vincent Baker had an interesting discussion of a related issue here <anyway: 3 Resolution Systems>, and the resulting aesthetic experience:

Case 1:

1. When you want to describe the weather where the characters are, roll. On a success, say what the weather's like there. (On a failure, it's 76°, few clouds, with a pleasant little breeze.)

2. When your character's taking strenuous action, if it's oppressively hot where your character is, you get -2 to your roll. . . .

Case 2:

1. When you want to give another player a die penalty, make a roll. On a success, a) say what's making life hard for their character, and b) give them a -2 to their roll. . . .

In case 1, the more time and conceptual space between those two rules' applications, the more real the oppressive heat will seem. For instance: you make a weather roll at the beginning of the session, declare that it's oppressively hot, and so for the entire session all the players roll -2 for all their characters' strenuous actions.​

The gap of time and conceptual space between declaring that it's hot and a player suffering a penalty to their character's roll separates (i) the decision to author bad weather from (ii) the consequence for the player. This is how it is a type of disclaiming of decision-making.

And one way to establish the "conceptual" space that Baker describes is to vary case 1: instead of getting to choose on a success (with the weather being mild on a failure), simply roll on a table to see what the weather is.