NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 9028394" data-attributes="member: 6787650">(A) I thought you were asking which RPGs weren't about simulation, not which RPGs "didn't allow" GMs to have bears catch fish for other reasons. It's very hard to imagine a GM in a game of Hillfolk narrating a bear catching a fish because in Hillfolk, narration is mostly the job of the players: Hillfolk is a game about players talking to other players in character, and as part of setting the scene a player might say, "In this next scene, Bob approaches Alice as she's watching a bear catch fish, in order to talk about how guilty he feels for tattling on her sister Eve." Bob's player must have an emotional agenda in mind, such as wanting Alice to forgive him, and after the scene everybody will vote on whether they think Alice granted his "petition" or denied it, and based on the result somebody gets a drama token. Can you see how that's very different from a play agenda that's about attempting to faithfully model a gameworld? The bear is just scenery--nobody cares what the gameworld is doing.Hillfolk/DramaSystem does have procedural scenes where it matters what the gameworld is doing, but as I said Hillfolk's mechanics for such scenes are so rudimentary (and the scenes themselves are so pointless unless Alice does something like say "I will forgive you if you can catch a deer for me", leading to a procedural deer-hunting scene for Bob) that it's clear simulation is not in any way a priority for Hillfolk, and you could sub out Hillfolk's deer-catching rules for OD&D rules or GURPS or whatever.(B) The translation in Diablo 2 from rolling numbers and doing math on them to swinging swords and damaging monsters is there just as much as it is in D&D/etc. The GM may do the rolling dice and math for you, or the computer may do the rolling dice and math for you, but in both cases random numbers are generated and math is done and the swords get swung and monsters get damaged. And what does that have to do with the discussion anyway? You didn't address in any way my observations on Diablo 2's lack of interest in simulation (as opposed to Game or Drama). It's not like Diablo 2's designers couldn't make you take more than an instant to pick up 5655 gold pieces. They could have made you stop and start scooping coins into your pouch, which gets heavier and weighs you down more and more as it gets full. They deliberately didn't, even though it's unrealistic, because simulation of a realistic world isn't a design priority for Diablo 2.(C) Realistic in the sense of being self-consistent and not falling apart under examination. And again, you're asking the wrong question: it's not "what game doesn't allow it [an attempt at dispassionate extrapolation, not involving the players except through their characters, who act within the world and need to see realistic effects]?" but "what game doesn't involve it [an attempt at dispassionate extrapolation, not involving the players except through their characters, who act within the world and need to see realistic effects]?" And again I will point to Diablo 2 and (for the most part) DramaSystem. Dispassionate extrapolation is mostly irrelevant to both of them.</blockquote>

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