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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9028284" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I've posted the above because this is the example I was asking about. The GM narrates that there's a bear near the camp and that it heads into a the river, and after 10 minutes it catches a fish, and then leaves. This was sited as sufficient to meet the threshold for a simulation for RPG purposes. As far as we can tell from this example, the GM decided the bear was there because it was plausible for the bear to be there. Nothing more is shared about how this was determined. So the only qualification for something to be a simulation, as far as we can tell from this example, is that the GM has decided it's sensible based on the information within the game. Plausibility. I'm trying to understand what makes the above a simulation, and if it is a simulation, what game doesn't qualify. What game wouldn't allow a GM to narrate a bear catching a fish in a river? I am only fleetingly familiar with Hillfolk, but I'm reasonably sure the GM could decide that there's a bear catching fish in a river. As for Diablo... I think there's a distinction to be made with computer games and tabletop games. Certainly tabletop games involve some amount of translation that's typically not present in video games. When we play a game like D&D, there's what happens at the table (we roll a d20 and add a number and compare it to a target, etc) and then there's what happens in the fictional game world (the fighter swings his sword and hits the ogre, etc.). That translation is skipped in video games, so the comparison isn't really apt. We could imagine that picking up the loot takes time, or any other veneer of sensibility over the mechanics... but we don't. I don't follow the first paragraph above. As for the second, I think it touches on the question... how is it brought about? Is it just plausibility, as Max has suggested? Is there something more? Realistic in what sense? If it's only plausibility, than I'm struggling to imagine a game that doesn't allow it.</blockquote>

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