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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9028928" data-attributes="member: 82106">I am just trying to understand. You said that a depiction of a bear fishing in a river was a simulation, but when the outcome of people going into a forest is depicted as some of their friends/allies/something are attacked by a bear, that depiction of bear activity is not a simulation. I'm honestly confused, I see no substantive difference between the two, except in the forest case the bear was only described second-hand (the PCs only saw the NPCs that saw the bear). In none of the definitions above do I see anything about how the situation was depicted or by whom. I mean, its also rather confusing in that I don't see an 'imitation of a situation or process', I see a telling about one. A simulation of blood flowing would presumably involve some sort of fluid flowing in something, not people talking at a table about it.In terms of "the act of pretending" being a simulation, yes people say they 'simulated an activity' of some sort, lets say playing boffers is simulating a sword fight. But again, I'm not seeing that. I see people talking about bears. I think we can dismiss the computer simulation (or anything in the same general category like mathematical models). I honestly remain puzzled. I mean, I get that imagining bears in various situations in a shared fictional depiction is being equated with something real, but that's the problem here. The boffers, or lets say a model of human circulation using straws and water, those can at least claim to hold some of the properties of the thing simulated, ACTUALLY hold those properties. A story of a bear is not a bear, or even a simulacrum of a bear, its just a story. It holds NONE of the properties of a bear, whatsoever. And that is the heart of my objection, every definition of simulation has the concept of properties or relationships that both the simulation and the thing simulated have in common, but RPGs never have that (well, maybe LARPs).</blockquote>

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