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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6657000" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Ha ha ha. Inspiration is a funny case. Officially, yes, I use Inspiration. Specifically, I use the DMG variant that allows players to award inspiration to each other for anything that is awesome. In spite of that, nobody ever uses it for some reason and it's been practically irrelevant at my table.Inspiration isn't that hard to integrate into a simulationist approach. All you need is to add an extra constraint on when you spend inspiration, that it must be somehow related to your bond. Voila! Now your spells are slightly harder to disrupt when you're desperate to keep your party members alive; or your negotiating skills are slightly sharper when you're on the trail of a lot of money. I haven't bothered to integrate it in this way because as I say, no one ever uses it anyway and we're having plenty of fun without Inspiration.As a practical matter I do have some non-simulationist rules in play for the sake of my players. Specifically, I employ karma points which allow the players or the DM to break probability. I invented these originally just in case I ever wanted to handle the scenario that makes other DMs fudge dice, e.g. "the BBEG was supposed to get away but you critted him with your vorpal sword and ruined the plot." The idea is that I'd say to the players, in essence, "Hey, you won that round but I'm overruling your results in the interests of fun. But your choices still had an impact, so here's a karma point for you to likewise overrule probability in the interests of fun, when it suits you." In practice I'm such a strong simulationist that I haven't ever used it to save a plot, so what happens instead is that the players occasionally draw upon karma to escape a TPK or to paper over a retcon (e.g. "Oops, last session you won against the umber hulks by leveraging Evard's Black Tentacles, and I trusted you that it covers a 40' cube, but it turns out that it covers only a 20' cube. To fix this I'll declare that you were and are in a wild magic zone which doubles the radius of arcane magic spells. Both you and the neogi were aware of this because you're wizards, and it would have affected the neogi's Fireball if you hadn't Counterspelled it. Because stumbling across a wild magic zone just as combat is beginning is vastly improbably, I will charge you a karma point.") and I use it to make the players' lives more interesting in improbable ways ("an interdimensional portal opens and out comes: 1.) a demonic gargoyle (Nycaloth), 2.) a Fireball which roasts the Nycaloth and all of your remaining cows, 3.) a grey frog thing shouting battle cries and brandishing a sword at the Nycaloth. Now all your cows are dead and you need to find a new fuel source for your lifejammer. Oh, and there's a Nycaloth on your ship."; I'm also saving a karma point to make sure that a certain dragon nemesis locates a PC as soon as he comes back onstage).You could argue that karma is still simulationist, it's just a way of including the actual players and DM in the simulation as omnipotent godlike entities. But eh, however you define it, it is my mechanism for explicitly acknowledging the metagame within the game world and allowing it to have an influence.</blockquote>

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