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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gban007" data-source="post: 9070656" data-attributes="member: 56488">I don't know, at this point it just feels like it becomes a catch all, if Tolkien's statement is in support of simulationism, then anything can be classified as simulationist, including Permerton's examples of his PBtA play.E.g. that lightning strike one that seemed to cause debate whether simulationist or narrativist - if in the game it hadn't previously been shown that lightning strikes (whether magically triggered or not) can't destroy half a house, then there is no law as such being broken, just a new law being introduced, so it is simulationist.  Whereas I tend to view simulationist as having some sort of goal to measure by - e.g. if Tolkien's world is a purely fantasy setting, where normal physics don't apply, then the non-magical flying elf is fine.  If Tolkien's world is supposed to be a historical view of earth and creatures are supposed to act like earth creatures except where magical causes are in play, then the flying elf isn't fine.Thus it comes down to - if you think Tolkien's statement is in support of simulation, then what is the simulation of?  And the only context in the sentence suggests it is simulating a world where some all powerful authority figure can enact whatever it wants - and I'm trying to make this separate to the author, as an author writing anything he wants isn't simulating something, he would have some goal in mind that we can measure against if simulating or not.    Thus the only goal that seemed to be able to measure towards to say his statement is in support of simulating, is that he is simulating a world where an all powerful figure (perhaps Illuvatar) can make anything he wants happen, bound only (and loosely it appears) by consistency.I can imagine an RPG where everything is decided by dice rolls referring to tables, but the tables are detailed enough to make it a good simulation of a particular setting / time period, vs something that is purely DM authored, and DM is consistent to anything that has happened before but otherwise just makes it all up on the fly and can come up with many weird and wonderful occurrences, and wouldn't be simulating anything.</blockquote>

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