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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 6350685" data-attributes="member: 957">And I think it because you are bringing preconceived notions into it.  I've also played Starfleet Battles.  And I've played D&D with a lot of people who have NOT played SFB and a few people who have.  But the vast majority of people I've played with fall into the highly "pro-simulationist" camp.  And I don't think any of them want anything close to the level of precision.  In high school we even discussed a Star Trek campaign and the use of SFB for ship to ship combat was brought up and laughed off as absurd.  It was completely obvious to us that that degree of accuracy would be counter-productive to the RPG experience.  That wasn't remotely a complaint about the merits of SFB battles as a great tactical war game or remotely an retraction of our dedication to "simulation" role playing (though we didn't use that term).  It was simply an obvious understanding of scale and context.And that is the key distinction.  There is no value in comparing degree of accuracy of simulation when the point at hand is whether to have simulation or not.  GURPS may have a vastly better lock picking simulation than 3E.  And a LARP game with a operation-style buzzer puzzle might be an even better simulation.  A game that requires the player to recite random Shakespeare quotes for his character to open locks is not going to get the "simulation" label from me.  Just because I can rank tiers of "simulation" doesn't mean any the games that fall under "simulation" don't deserve it, nor does it mean that saying the Shakespeare game falls outside that label.  And if your game says that the DC of a lock is based on your character level, then it also falls outside that label.  When a game embraces "anti-sim" elements, it is fair to consider that game to be something other than simulation.  Whereas a game that earnestly pursues simulation should probably be called simulation, even if there is a better alternative out there. I don't recall ever being in these "simulation" debates prior to 4E.  I do recall being in debates, even pre 3E in which GURPS, for example, was compared to 2E as either a "much better model" or "far too tedious", depending on which side a person's tastes ran to.  But the concept would be "my sim is  better than your sim".  It wasn't until 4E came along that the overt reject of sim in a range of game elements reframed the debate.  (Not remotely saying non-sim games didn't exist, I'm saying 4E brought the debate into the forefront of the community)It is like we used to argue over whether dates or strawberries are the better fruit.  Now someone throws a can of Coke on the table, gets upset that their Coke isn't accepted as a fruit so claims that clearly a date isn't a fruit because strawberry.  It doesn't make sense.A lot of people like game that are dedicated to attempting to consistently model something and yet still provide a good foundation for role playing.  SFB level of detail is not remotely needed for that.  But there is a lot of room for being between SFB and abandoning the persistent commitment to sim.  If in the context of RPGs you say you get it because SFB, then you don't get it.  If you want to get it, you should try letting go of your preconceived notions and honestly looking from others point of view. Or just decide it doesn't matter to you.  Either way, you may still decide it doesn't work for you, but you might actually get it.</blockquote>

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