Why do RPGs have rules?

[FormerlyHemlock]

I've been in situations where the party has been in an epic fight and lost. We died, but dang it was a fantastically fun adventure and end fight. Yes, we had fun TPKing! Usually it's not so fun, but sometimes it is. Same with losing. Losing is more often fun than TPKing because it leads to other challenges such as escape, revenge, etc. that are very fun.

Fair point, but hopefully it wasn't so much fun that you'll deliberately seek to TPK yourselves again. That's all I meant.

 

[chaochou]

I've yet to see proponents of 'simulation' use it in any way in which the phrase 'plausible in the mind of the GM' doesn't act as a direct substitute.

It seems lower than the lowest possible bar for any rpg.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No, but in an RPG context, "You set up camp near the river. Shortly before dusk you see a large brown bear head to the middle of the river. After about 10 minutes it catches a large fish and carries it off to eat."

That's plenty enough to be a simulation of what a bear might do in the woods. There is another thing that bears do in the woods, but this site doesn't allow us to say such things.

In an RPG context you don't need to create a scientific model that takes all kinds of things into account in order to be a simulation.

What RPG isn’t a simulation according to this description?

 

[Maxperson]

What RPG isn’t a simulation according to this description?

Those where the DM isn't trying to simulate anything. Dungeons with layouts and inhabitants that make no sense. Cities located in areas where no city would ever rise. And so on.

Plus, you're now trying to equate simulating one thing(such as the bears) with the entire game being run like a simulation, which just isn't true. You can have instances of simulation and/or entire games run like simulations.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

What RPG isn’t a simulation according to this description?

Ones where the GM's or designer's agenda is entirely focused on Drama or Game.

For example, I don't think any aspect of Diablo 2 is intended as a simulation. It's all just a platform for a hack and slash loot game. I don't think there's a single aspect of the game that arose from the designers asking themselves, "what would logically happen here?" Town portals, loot popping out of dying monsters, zero to hero in 8 hours... It's all done to be a fun game, not a coherent world.

As far as TTRPGs go, Hillfolk/DramaSystem has such rudimentary procedural scene resolution mechanics that it practically screams "use another system for these bits if you care at all about simulation!"

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is only true if you mean "fun" in a very broad sense such that being miserable is "fun" sometimes.

There's an argument that it can, for some people under some circumstances be "satisfying", but its in the collecting-brown-stamps kind of way. I think saying that the goal of RPGs is to have an experience that is satisfying is probably more generally useful than saying having one that's "fun".

Is losing or even TPKing fun? I hope not! Players should try to avoid it! But they should avoid it by taking better actions in future games, not by failing to show up at the game table next session.

Unfortunately, that tends to depend on a lot of factors including their trust of both the intentions and judgment of the GM.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Unfortunately, that tends to depend on a lot of factors including their trust of both the intentions and judgment of the GM.

Yeah, and even if they completely trust the GM, losing a character and a set of relationships you're invested in can be emotionally brutal. I get that. How to make game sessions that contain TPK, and continued play afterwards, still enjoyable is a whole branch of the GMing art and I'm still learning it myself. The Felltower gang has a lot of relevant experience: Felltower TPK: The Gnoll Story - Gaming Ballistic

One of the best suggestions I've ever heard is to give closure by showing impact. Instead of just deleting a dead character from the narrative, you can show how NPCs react to their death, show what changes. My post-game writeup of the next PC death is definitely going to be a vignette of an NPC coping with grief, and then finding some way to constructively move forward (probably by stepping up and into the dead PC's shoes).

 

[Micah Sweet]

But ZERO about #1 has the slightest thing to do with simulation whatsoever. These are simply fictional arrangements of plot. If you think this is a simulation then every novel ever written is a transcript of a simulation! Lord of the Rings, yup! Foundation, yup again! A Wizard of Earthsea, sure thing! You see the problem here? There's no model (mathematical or logical formulation/system of equations which calculates current state from prior state) and no good initial system state to run a model against. Its just some completely arbitrary statements about a very few of the people in this world coupled with some explication of one or two of their motives which happen to be salient to the topic at hand, and a few fairly vague statements about what "will happen" (not calculated, simply stated as truths).

Obviously a non-toy example probably contains maps and keys which establish additional details, a few more (mostly very minor) NPCs, etc. That isn't going to materially change the situation. The GM in this example could decree that almost anything happens, and easily justify it with additional facts, suppositions about the mental state of the characters, additional ideas about their resources, motives, the existence and motives/resources of additional persons, or entirely other factors (a drought has been ongoing, causing a huge wildfire which burns half the local farmlands, driving a vast number of people to the temple, forcing Viktor to change his plans). This is exactly what I'm driving at, the world descriptions are too thin to constrain the possibilities, and actual simulation is simply not possible, or even desired.

Your entire argument is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and I can't for the life of me understand what you're trying to accomplish here beyond giving simulation fans a hard time.

 

[clearstream]

What RPG isn’t a simulation according to this description?

Immersionism or simulationism is a mode of play. We're not looking simply for facts about the game text that explain it's simulationist aspects, but also for facts about the players through or in which those aspects will manifest as immersion or simulation.

As @FormerlyHemlock implied, it's brought about by an agenda.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Immersionism or simulationism is a mode of play. We're not looking simply for facts about the game text that explain it's simulationist aspects, but also for facts about the players through or in which those aspects will manifest as immersion or simulation.

As @FormerlyHemlock implied, it's brought about by an agenda.

I'm not saying I disagree but I do want to note that I don't understand the sentence in bold. It's Greek to me!

I think of simulation as a GM activity, an attempt at dispassionate extrapolation, not involving the players except through their characters, who act within the world and need to see realistic effects. Immersion on the other hand is an experience the players have, which for some players is tied to the quality of the simulation they're "in". Too many plot holes disrupts the Matrix.