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

[Marc17]

I'm going to say Immersion as I'm more partial to (my interpretation of) GDS.

 

[Pedantic]

My understanding is a bit of both. They are simulating a galaxy for folks to explore, and also want interesting gameplay.

NMS definitely suffered for years from having a procedural generation system that created a lot of stuff with nothing to do, though I hear they've done a lot since then through extensive updates.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not familiar with the game. Is the point of the generator to make realistic planets, using data from observations, or is it to make a variety of worlds that will lead to interesting gameplay?

Well, the point is definitely not to make realistic planets. My understanding is the planets are really only a few dozens of kilometers in diameter, but this is big enough and people's sense of scale limited enough (as to what they can imagine) that the planets will generally feel planet sized to the average user. So it's definitely a simulation in that they want people to be immersed in the illusion of realism, but there is no real commitment to realism per se.

 

[soviet]

"Evoke setting through its own procedures" is a great phrase.

Thanks. Buy my books! ;-)

 

[Aldarc]

I would go along with this. Part of the joy of Rolemaster is the sense of 'you input the factors of the situation, and it outputs 'what would happen'. It evokes setting through its own procedures.

"Evoke setting through its own procedures" is a great phrase.

I feel like it's also a great way to describe Germany (though Austria* was worse): "Evoke culture through its own bureaucracy."

* It is one thing to read Kafka, but it's another to experience Kafka through Austrian bureaucracy.

 

[AlexofBarbaria]

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.

The weapon vs. armor table descends from a similar table in the Chainmail wargame.

The funny thing is the simulation got totally mangled along the way as it was translated to the d20 vs. AC alternate combat system.

The numbers were originally the target number to kill an opponent wearing that armor with this weapon. But they were turned into modifiers to the attack vs. AC roll in Greyhawk/1e.

So the mostly flat row of 0s for the Mace originally meant that weapon was equally lethal against any armor (bit overkill for realism IMO). A very different simulation story from what it becomes in Greyhawk/1e -- no modifiers to the default sequence of to-hit probabilities vs. AC.

To me the fact that Gygax didn't care about this indicates that simulation was not his main concern. I think he noticed what I noticed using this table in 1e, which is that it makes weapon selection more interesting for the players.

If he wanted the original simulation from Chainmail and made an honest math mistake here, but never noticed the difference in play, it at least supports my second point that sim rules that play with probabilities are way less impactful than sim rules that introduce new events into the fiction.