Why use D&D for a Simulationist style Game?

[I'm A Banana]

A lot of this convo strikes me as the Amazing Power Of Jargon To Confuse Things Further.

Setting aside the obfuscating jargon for a second, we get the original claim that D&D rules are used by the players of the game as a common ground to answer questions about what happens in your imaginary world when desires conflict (Batman does not want to be hit by the cards, the Joker wants to hit him, who wins? Ask the rules), and a question about why anyone would ever play D&D like that.

The best answer I can imagine is that the players who play this way are basically following the instructions given to them by every edition of D&D.
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The intro to OD&D specifies that the rules are "guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign," explicitly saying that the DM crafts the game and uses the rules at their option. This implies that the rules are open to facilitating whatever campaign the DM wants to craft. The Holmes revision similarly indicates "The game is limited only by the inventiveness and imagination of the players."

The intro to 1e specifies "You interact with your fellow role players, not as Jim and Bob and Mary who work at the office together, but as Falstaff the fighter, Angore the cleric, and Filmar, the mistress of magic!" This implies that you should be acting in character and making character choices based on what your character would do.

The intro to 2e gets very explicit in that a key step of distinguishing a role-playing game from a board game is "Now imagine how you would react in that situation and tell the referee what you are going to do," and goes on to say "The player makes decisions, interacts with other characters and players, and, essentially, 'pretends' to be his character during the course of the game." This all points to a game where your decisions should be based on what the story is in the moment.

The intro to the Red Box says "The Dungeons & Dragons game is a way for us to imagine together...you, along with your friends, will create a great fantasy story..." And then, "...you will be like an actor, pretending to be that character." This is explicitly about imagination, role performance, and story-creation, pointing to a game whose primary function is to pretend to be an imaginary person.

The intro of 3e is also pretty explicit: "A character can try to do anything you can imagine, just as long as it fits the scene the DM describes."

Even 4e: "The DM makes D&D infinitely flexible - he or she can react to any situation, any twist or turn suggested by the players, to make a D&D adventure vibrant, exciting, and unexpected."..."The DM sets the scene, but no one knows what's going to happen until the characters do something -- and then anything can happen!"..."In an adventure, you can attempt anything you can think of. Want to talk to the dragon instead of fighting it? Want to disguise yourself as an orc and sneak into the foul lair? Go ahead and give it a try." (this is a bit contradictory with 4e in practice, what with its 'know what your NPC's are to be used for before you use them' and similar, but the framing is certainly there like in the editions before it)

And now 5e: "It's about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents....Unlike a game of make-believe, D&D gives structure to the stories, a way of determining the consequences of the adventurers' action. Players roll dice to resolve whether their attacks hit or miss or whether their adventurers can scale a cliff, roll away from the strike of a magical lightning bolt, or pull off some other dangerous task. Anything is possible, but the dice make some outcomes more probable than others."
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In all these ways, the D&D game has told people that you play the game mostly by making in-character decisions based on the world you and the DM are describing, and, in fact, that this is part of what distinguishes a role-playing game from other games (which is why OD&D and 1e are more vague about it -- the TRPG wasn't a game genre yet back then, Gygax didn't necessarily know how this thing 'worked').

From those descriptions, it sounds like a rule that would tell you that your character could only eat three sandwiches in a day would be a rule that wouldn't fit in this kind of game well, since you wouldn't be deciding to eat a sandwich based on what your character would do in this situation, but based on whether or not the rules would allow your character to eat another sandwich. Such a rule would not have a comfortable place in a game about pretending to be a character (unless your character had some pre-existing reason that they could only eat three sandwiches?).

I mean, the intros are pretty consistent. OD&D probably goes the furthest to suggest that this might go the other way around (that the rules might determine what your character is capable of attempting rather than describing what happens when your character attempts a thing), but even before TRPGs were a thing, OD&D was saying that the rules flowed from the desires of the players and the DM, not vice-versa.

So I wonder: why would anyone NOT play the game this way? Why would you NOT presume the rules were there to adjudicate what happens when the player tries "anything"? Why would you instead presume that the rules define what the player can try to do?

 

[pemerton]

First off, few gamers today, and even fewer back in 2001, have any idea what 'sim' or any other GNS term means. They're theoretical modelling tools talked about by handful of people on the internet.

Ron Edwards, John Kim and others didn't invent the word "simulationism" used to describe RPGing. Gyagx discussed it in his DMG. Lewis Pulsipher talked about it in the pages of White Dwarf over 30 years ago (thread here).

The absence of simulationist mechanics in D&D was noted almost from the get-go. This is especially true of its combat mechanics, which relied upon an abstract action economy, a to hit mechanic that combines armour and dodging into a single AC and that builds both the combatant's attack skill and the defender's parrying skill into a single d20 roll, and hit points that include aspects of dodging plus "meta" factors like luck while eschewing actual wounds or injuries. Games like Chivalry & Sorcery, Runequest and Rolemaster were all about replacing these abstract and fortune-in-the-middle mechanics with mechanics that could be treated as process simulations. These games also change the non-sim feature of D&D PC-building (classes, levels, XP) and replace them with skill systems, PC improvement based on training (typically in-the-field training - so adventuring makes you better at adventuring), etc. (Rolemaster still has classes and levels, but these are just the vehicle for a point-buy skill system. AD&D 2nd ed went somewhat more simulationist in its XP system, especially dropping XP-for-gold, but still kept the non-sim class and level structure.)

And the people who came up with the GNS theory have always had trouble defining 'simulation'

If you look at post 31 upthread you'll see pretty straightforward characterisations of the two main types of sim that GNS/Forge-ites are interested in: purist-for-system sim (RQ is the poster child) and high concept sim (CoC, Ars Magic and Pendragon are all exemplars).

Their reasons for grouping these two styles together as sim are somewhat idiosyncratic to their broader analytical concerns; on ENworld, I think most posters would see the two styles as pretty different. This thread is mostly about purist-for-system sim, which you might also call "process sim", and that is what I am focusing on in this post.

D&D as a 'gamist' system? Then why does it have five different kinds of coins, and dozens of different kinds and sizes of gems, rather than use an abstract wealth system? Why does the equipment guide include things like carts, chickens, and backpacks, along with the weight (down to the fraction of a pound) of each item? Have you read the AD&D DMG? It includes costs per day for masons, sages, architects, and other labourers. The exact dimensions, costs, and maneuverability of all kinds of sea-going vessels.

The point of all this, in Gygax's game, is to create challenges for the players: can you optimise your load? Can you win in the minigame of your ship vs the pirates' ship? Can you optimise your expenditure on masons, sages, etc?

This is all "gamist" in the Forge sense, in that it is about winning the game. ("Gamism" in the typical ENworld sense is something completely different - it is used to describe a game that uses lots of metagame mechanics"). In AD&D the game you are trying to win, on many occasions, is a game of logistical optimisation. You can see this in Gygax's discussion of "skilled play" in the closing (but pre-Appendix) pages of his PHB; and in the example of the wizard and fighter packing their gear in Appendix O of his DMG.

D&D is has elements of sim. Because, like all RPGs, it's tied to a narrative that evokes the real world. The mechanics have to remotely match the narrative, and mechanics that are impossible to narrate become problematic.
Mearls had a good example of this in one of his Legends & Lore articles. When fighting a big monster (say a dragon) the players might opt to duck behind a pillar for cover. They don't need to know that cover exists as a mechanic or know how it works. But they're doing the action anyway because it makes sense: keep a big hunk of stone between you and the giant monster with a breath weapon. That's inherently simulationist.
The player could turn around and push over the ruined pillar, potentially bringing the roof down on the dragon. Unlike cover, there are no rules for "topping a pillar" or "roof falling on dragon" but the action can still work and have positive consequences because the game reflects the narrative.

I find it interesting that you have to actually pick two non-roleplaying games to find examples of not being able to tie the narrative to the mechanics.

<snip>

Choosing to hide behind a pillar can be done in a gamist RPG or a Narrativist one as well though. In a Gamist game, Cover gives X bonus. What that cover is, doesn't really matter, so long as you can gain cover. In a Nar game, you could claim cover and then add in the pillar (the James Bond RPG allowed you to spend Bond points on exactly this), or you could use the pillar and gain cover as needed.

None of that is particularly simulationist. Sim play is not "How do we make a coherent story". Sim play isn't concerned overly with story elements. Sim play is a means to model HOW something happens in play.

Hussar is correct here. You can't identify a game, or an episode of play, as "simulationist" or "gamist" based on a recount of the fiction.

So from the fact that a player can declare as an action "I hide behind the pillar" or "I try to bring the roof down on the dragon by toppling the pillar" tells us nothing about whether the game is, or is being played as, simulationist, gamist or narrativist.

What makes 4e a non-sim game is the fact that when a player declares such an action the GM will ascertain the DC from a DC-by-level chart, and then narrate in the appropriate fictional details; and if the attempt to push over the pillar succeeds, will determine the consequences for the dragon from a damage-by-level chart, and similarly narrate in the matching fiction al details.

Whereas what makes RQ or RM a purist-for-system sim game is the fact that the GM will ascertain the DC by first establishing the nature of the pillar in the fiction, and then reading a DC off an appropriate chart; and if the attempt to push over the pillar succeeds, the damage dealt will be determined by reference to some general principles governing the injuries inflicted by falling heavy objects.

AD&D handles pillar-pushing via STR checks or bend bars rolls. These are closer to the 4e than RQ/RM style of resolution; the chance of success is appropriate to the character (based on stat, whereas in 4e level is more important). 3E, on the other hand, handles this closer to RQ/RM, as it at least purports to set a DC based on the fiction. What differentiates 3E from RQ/RM, in my view at least, is that at a certain point the DCs and associated numbers (eg natural armour bonuses for high-CR creatures) become completely disconnected from any conception of what they correspond to in the fiction. So we have locks with DCs of 20, 30 and 40 but no real sense of what these varying difficulties correspond to in the fiction. This is why I don't regard even the skill system in 3E as genuinely satisfying purist-for-system design constraints.

I am curious do you feel the same way about those who were fans of 4e's nod to narrativist play? I mean there's FATE, MHR, Heroquest along with a slew of other games more suited to narrativist play much better then 4e was

How so? I think 4e is perfectly well suited to light narrativist play out of the box. It is obviously a much heavier system than the others you mention, and probably lacks the capacity for depth of HeroWars/Quest (but I wouldn't say that MHRP is all that thematically profound!), but I think it goes without saying that if you are playing 4e then you enjoy a heavy system.

The 3E skill system at low-to-mid levels (where my points about the disconnect between numbers and fiction don't really bite) is probably equally suited to purist-for-system play. But that still leaves you with the action economy, hit points etc in combat. Plus classes and levels in PC building. And many other elements not very well suited to those sim considerations. And AD&D doesn't even have the skill system.

 

[Hussar]

I'd say that that's someone besides the point though. All three styles and combinations thereof can be approached from an "In Character" way. And D&D has never really pushed the idea of you should always act in character either. The intros say that, but, then the mechanics are a mostly gamist mishmash of rules that tell you what happens when you try to do something.

Sure, immersion is important. I agree and I want to be immersed. But, by the same token, there are all sorts of elements in every edition that talk about stepping outside the character and performing all sorts of activities. There's nothing inherently immersion breaking with having one player (not the DM) at the table, from time to time, dictate bits and pieces of the scene.

Sure, the majority of the scene will be the result of the DM, but, DM+players =/= lack of immersion. Not necessarily anyway. That varies from table to table.

My point is, people talk about playing D&D as a world simulation. That the mechanics of the game define the world. The mechanics are essentially the physics engine in a First Person Shooter. They define the reality of the world. Now, there are games that do this. And there are games that do this really, really well. D&D is not one of them, and I wonder, if modelling the world is the goal, why you use D&D for it.

The thing is, ten pages into this thread, no one's really been able to point to anything that says, "Yeah, D&D works great for this".

 

[pemerton]

we get the original claim that D&D rules are used by the players of the game as a common ground to answer questions about what happens in your imaginary world when desires conflict (Batman does not want to be hit by the cards, the Joker wants to hit him, who wins? Ask the rules), and a question about why anyone would ever play D&D like that.

That's not the question at all.

The rules of 4e are used by the players of the game as a common ground to answer questions about what happens in the shared fiction when participants are disagreeing over what new elements are to be introduced into it. But they are not simulationist mechanics, and they were being explicitly excluded by the post that prompted [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s OP.

In particular, Hussar was responding to this:

Because the rules are tools for answering questions about the fiction, however, they can't be separated from it. When the rules say that Batman can only throw 3 Batarangs per day, that is a statement about the fictional world.​

That is a claim about the rules that goes beyond their role in providing a common ground for regulating the fiction. It also imputes to them a particular role in determining the content of that fiction (roughly, any constraint that is part of the rules must correspond to some sort of ingame causal constraint). 4e's rules don't play this role.

Hussar was also responding to this:

The rules have no authority over what Batman chooses to do, only over the results of his decisions.​

This is a specification of a distinctive way in which the rules might regulate the creation of the fiction: namely, they do not regulate action delcarations by players, only the adjudication of the outcomes of those action declarations. No rules for any edition of D&D have ever exemplified this, because they all include combat action economies that ration action declarations in a way that are independent of the results of prior action declarations. (At the moment I'm playing a DungeonWorld PbP. DungeonWorld is different from D&D in this respect, as it has no action economy, or at least not one that I've discovered yet. It's fully fiction-first.)

In 4e the rules have a lot of authority over what a player can choose to have his/her PC do. In addition to the basic action economy, there are all sorts of acquisition and rationing rules around action points, power use, hit point recovery, etc.

This doesn't make 4e any less of an RPG. (Nor is D&D, other editions, any less of an RPG than DungeonWorld even though the latter is more fiction-first than any edition of D&D that I've experienced.)

I never actually said that HP are meat. That's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. I just said that they're objective. However your luck/skill/toughness/etc are reflected in your ability to not be killed by swords, it is a fact of the world that doesn't change depending on who looks at it. It's simply true that your 100hp fighter or elephant can withstand that number of "hits" before dropping. You can pretend that it doesn't exist - that it's simply narrative convention, which doesn't correspond to anything - but you would be wrong.

How can Hussar or I be wrong about how we play the game? If I assert that in my game PC hit points are primarily a metagame device for tracking the momentum of victory - if you're losing hp faster than your enemies are its running against you, and vice versa its running your way - then who are you to say that I am wrong?

If I state that, in my gameworld, "luckiness" is not an ingame property, but rather that abilities like hit points, rerolls etc take place at the metagame level, and that in the game they reflect nothing more than coincidence or "good fortune" - ie random chance happening to run the PC's way - then in what way am I wrong?

You can play hit points as real within the fiction if you like - a "luck shield" which gets hammered away until eventually it is worn down and the final hammering actually hammers the PC's body (I would note an oddly different "luck shield" from that provided by a luckstone or a prayer spell or whatever) - but the rules don't mandate such an approach. And it wasn't the approach intended by the original designers, so it's hardly as if the approach that I (and Hussar) prefer is in some way deviant.

If you replaced hit points with wounds/vitality, that would not make the game any more or less narrative or sim.

But done well it would make the game a lot more palatable to traditional purist-for-system players, who want the resolution processes of the game to reflect, in some tenable if approximate fashion, actual real world processes of fighting with swords. The original version of wounds/vitality was authored by Roger Musson over 30 years ago, and published in White Dwarf as "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive". He is quite overt about his purist-for-system motivations: part of his objection to the standard D&D combat system is that hit points try to mix the physical and metaphysical, which Musson compares to trying to mix oil and water.

In his system "hit point" loss corresponds to exhaustion, from dodging blows - and he explains how other acts of exertion, including spell casting if so desired, might be modelled in terms of hit point loss. Wounds correspond to actual physical injury - and they inflict action penalties and a chance to die. And can be coupled with a hit location system if desired.

This is all about making the game more palatable for traditional purist-for-system sensibilities.

 

[pemerton]

the D&D game has told people that you play the game mostly by making in-character decisions based on the world you and the DM are describing, and, in fact, that this is part of what distinguishes a role-playing game from other games (which is why OD&D and 1e are more vague about it -- the TRPG wasn't a game genre yet back then, Gygax didn't necessarily know how this thing 'worked').

From those descriptions, it sounds like a rule that would tell you that your character could only eat three sandwiches in a day would be a rule that wouldn't fit in this kind of game well

Yet the rule that you can't eat more than one sandwich per combat round has been part of the game since day zero, and it is still there. So either the designers got the nature of their game wrong, or you did!

This idea that metagame rules are not part of RPGing seems to me to be nothing more than an attempt to tell a whole lot of people that they're doing it wrong. And it just becomes weird when it's in the same post that defines a game that has always had a strict action economy as the acme of non-metagame RPGing.

 

[Sadras]

My point is, people talk about playing D&D as a world simulation. That the mechanics of the game define the world. The mechanics are essentially the physics engine in a First Person Shooter. They define the reality of the world. Now, there are games that do this. And there are games that do this really, really well. D&D is not one of them, and I wonder, if modelling the world is the goal, why you use D&D for it.

The thing is, ten pages into this thread, no one's really been able to point to anything that says, "Yeah, D&D works great for this".

I'm not going to debate whether D&D is or isn't for simulation-style games, I will probably get tripped up in the theory and various definitions. I will answer, that I use D&D instead of RM for world simulation due to the preference for lighter rules. I have played RM (a few months), and my experience from it was that it was a rules heavy game. Perhaps my impression was wrong - I was a lot younger.

I will agree the granularity of detail makes the RM engine better for simulation-style gaming, but that does not mean that D&D is all the way on the other side. Like someone said earlier which I tend to agree with, its objective-based simulation.
Of course various versions of D&D, as discussed, catered more/less to a greater detail for simulation within the system. I don't think one needs to have pages & pages of tables for simulation. A few examples or pointers in the DMG would be enough to point a DM in the right direction to produce the desired effects for a sim approach to an action. D&D, IMO, is the rules-light version of sim - generally for the vast majority of us, I imagine its easier to DM.

 

[Imaro]

I think where I take issue here though, is that making D&D work as a simulation takes far, far more than "minor adjustments". The idea of HP being real, for example, isn't a minor adjustment, it's a complete change to the intentions of the game. Heh, to bring up a personal bugaboo, ruling that looking at a medusa turns you to stone requires actually specifically changing what the rules say.

It's not that you are making minor changes here. The changes are actually pretty wide reaching and to reach any sort of modelling, you pretty much have to change every single rule.

I disagree, especially when it comes to 3.x. With the OGL there were so many variants published of numerous mechanics that it was in fact trivially easy to find one to suit your playstyle. As a quick example... Want more sim style hit points then use the wounds and vitality variant found in both Unearthed Arcana for 3.5 and the Star Wars roleplaying game... Want more sim armor use the DR variant also found in Unearthed Arcana. These are basically house rules that were codified in that book but which others have used since D&D was first played. I don't think they take all that much work to implement but YMMV. In the end as I alluded to in my previous post it was pretty easy to find the type of mechanics that fit your style during the 3.x/OGL era if you really wanted to change things.

Thing is, there's a difference here. No one claims that 4e isn't narrativist right out of the box. You can't. It's right there in the rules. Those things that you claim are "anti-sim" are narrativist. You admit that 4e borrows narrativist elements do you not? The concept behind Skill Challenges is pulled straight out of narrativist games. Warlord healing, Come and Get It, and various other player driven narrative mechanics are narrativist based concepts.

Hmmm, I thought we were discussing why "better"options for styles of play aren't used vs. D&D... Are you now claiming that every edition of D&D has no sim elements whatsoever out of the box? I find that assertion a little hard to swallow (since we then get into levels of simulationism in mechanics which I haven't seen codified throughout this entire conversation)... or are you claiming 4e does narrativist play better than other versions of D&D, if so I'm not arguing that... I'm arguing that it is inferior in pushing that playstyle compared to the games I listed? If you believe this to be false, please explain in what way? If not then I don't see how your "use a better system"thoughts don't also apply here...

 

[Imaro]

How so? I think 4e is perfectly well suited to light narrativist play out of the box. It is obviously a much heavier system than the others you mention, and probably lacks the capacity for depth of HeroWars/Quest (but I wouldn't say that MHRP is all that thematically profound!), but I think it goes without saying that if you are playing 4e then you enjoy a heavy system.

Well one way in which those games do narrativist play better than 4e is in the allocation of meta-game resources to affect the narrative... 4e has no balance when it comes to any one particular character's ability to affect the narrative vs. another character's...

 

[Andor]

I think the operative word here would be, "to you". It makes sense to you. Objective HP to me are completely meaningless. A 100HP elephant and a 100 HP halfling barbarian mean that HP have no objective meaning whatsoever. Some things have lots of HP because they are really big, like an elephant or a dinosaur. Some things have lots of HP because they are really fast and nimble, like a halfling barbarian or a kobold fighter. But, HP have zero objective meaning. They are always subjective. The HP you have are based on a number of factors, most of which are "What would make this a more fun game?"

No, no they aren't. As I explained earlier in the thread they are in world derivable by character in the world. Your counter claim was that the GM would have to flub the results to maintain your own mental model. Which is not a counter arguement, the GM can change the law of gravity if he feels like it.

The idea that HP are objective is pretty easily disproven. And note, there are a number of things that make your HP go down without actually physically injuring you. Spells like Phantasmal Killer certainly.

How is that a counter-arguement? That only dispells the idea that HP are purely, and only 'meat points', an idea no one here has advanced. It is at best a strawman argument.

Interpretations of Hit Points differ, as I've said I interpret them as the souls ability to cling to the mortal frame. You should consider btw that in a world where every being is confirmed to have a soul which survives after death every death is a supernatural event, no less magical than a lifeball. Every one.

But, that's not actually how crafting works. When you craft something, so long as you can beat the DC, you cannot fail to craft it. The only question is how long does it take you. You cannot actually fail to craft something.

You literally just said that if you ignore the resolution mechanic there is no chance for failure. In what game exactly is that not true? A craft skill in D&D in a binary resolution system, although you could always make it a skill challange sort of affair. I know a lot of games and I can't think of a single one where a non-magical craft system works any differently.

Never minding, of course, that in gaining those levels, I didn't have to craft anything. I can now make very excellent glassware because I killed lots of goblins.

Are you complaining about the binary resolution system (exactly the same as the one in RQ only with 1/5th the granularity,) or are you complaining about the advancement system? Those are two very different things.

And, of course, you are also limiting yourself to a single edition Saelorn. D&D doesn't begin and end with 3rd edition. Non-Weapon Proficiencies in 2e were even less simulation. And 1e didn't have them at all.

No. 2e NWPs were exactly the same as 3e skills, only less granular. It was still binary resolution, although I'm in a 2e game right now and we use the amount you beat the check by to gauge degree is success, so...

By the way, I'm still waiting for the sim crowd to explain to me how D&D combat, any edition, precludes Final Fantasy 1 style combat. After all, if it's modelling something, then how can something so completely outside of the model be included?

It doesn't. It also doesn't preclude dance fighting. So what? All combat systems are abstract at some level. In RQ a sword blow (aside from a critical hit) is only very slightly more detailed than a D&D sword blow (in that I know I hit the arm instead of just somewhere.) There is nothing in the RQ rules to prevent the FF1 combat either, is there?

To me, the fact that one character has 100HP and an elephant has 100 HP, has absolutely no bearing on the in game fiction. None whatsoever. There is no way to tell, in game, those numbers. They exist completely outside of the reality. There is no means by which someone in game can tell how many HP something has.

Yes, there is. They can stab it with a pin and count how many poke it takes for them to die. To maintain your stance requires the GM to cheat when they do so in order to keep the narrative distance your position requires.

The mechanics of HP and combat do not model any event. They don't tell you anything other than a combatant is alive or dead.

If I use something like a wound/vitality system, now the model informs the narrative. I know whether or not an attack has actually physically wounded the target and by how much. That's a pretty simple example of a simulation. You can certainly get more detailed than that, but, you need at least that much detail before you can actually claim you have any sort of model.

No, no you don't. You keep getting hung up on sim when you really mean granularity. Any combat system has flaws and places where the sim breaks down or gives absurd results. For example in RQ if I get an arm chopped off it doesn't reduce the amount of damage to the torso it takes to kill me. Why? Didn't I lose any blood? Am I immune to shock? Why am I not taking a penalty to maneuver checks now that I'm off balance?

Same goes with the Profession skills. Nothing is told about how you made that money. Who gave you that money? What did you do? All we know is you spent X time, and made Y money. That's not a simulation of anything. That's pure gamism. There's no model there. Spend time, add ranks (which can be added even though you've never actually DONE anything related to your skill) and you make more money.

Put it another way, what is a skill rank measuring? Expertise in a skill? But, how is that expertise being gained? What does having three ranks in a given skill actually mean?

And what is the difference between having a 33% in a skill in RQ and a 38% in a skill? Oh right, 5% chance to succeed in a binary resolution system, just like +1 to a skill in D&D.

My point is, people talk about playing D&D as a world simulation. That the mechanics of the game define the world. The mechanics are essentially the physics engine in a First Person Shooter. They define the reality of the world. Now, there are games that do this. And there are games that do this really, really well. D&D is not one of them, and I wonder, if modelling the world is the goal, why you use D&D for it.

The thing is, ten pages into this thread, no one's really been able to point to anything that says, "Yeah, D&D works great for this".

Actually several people have said, repeatedly, that D&D does D&D great.

All game engines are resolution systems. All of them portray, sim if you will, game worlds. And all of the have flaws. All of them.

 

[evileeyore]

I'm not going to debate whether D&D is or isn't for simulation-style games, I will probably get tripped up in the theory and various definitions. I will answer, that I use D&D instead of RM for world simulation due to the preference for lighter rules. I have played RM (a few months), and my experience from it was that it was a rules heavy game. Perhaps my impression was wrong - I was a lot younger.

Rolemaster isn't jokingly referred to as Rulemaster or Chartmaster for no reason.

Younger Sadras was hitting that nail on the head. Rolemaster is a heavier, weighter, system. It's the main part of what turns people from RM (when they are the type to be turned from it).

I will agree the granularity of detail makes the RM engine better for simulation-style gaming, but that does not mean that D&D is all the way on the other side. Like someone said earlier which I tend to agree with, its objective-based simulation.

I've read what they wrote a few times and I'm not sure those words really go together coherently. To me it just means "gamist". But I'm sitting firmaly across the table from you on this issue. I like D&D fine for it's wahooey, non-reality basedness. I like the old game where I could emulate the whacky antics Cuchalain or Hercules got up to... which "D&D is sim" starts to erode.

Of course various versions of D&D, as discussed, catered more/less to a greater detail for simulation within the system.

No, they catered more or less to granularity (3e is particularly gritty, OD&D is smooth). Granularity is not sim, it's just gritty.