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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6354100" data-attributes="member: 42582">For my part, this doesn't help me grapple with the current discussion because it makes all RPGs count as sim: after all, all RPGing involves procedures for taking declarations about character actions within the fiction ("My guy fires his gun at you") to outcomes within the fiction ("The gun shot hits; you're dead").But the post in the OP, to which [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] was responding, made a stronger claim than this. The post also said that in an RPG, the procedures for moving from action declaration to action resolution and outcomes tell us what the fiction is like. It is that additional constraint that makes a game sim, in Hussar's sense. And Hussar's point is that many procedures in D&D do not satisfy this constraint.Hit point attrition via attack and damage rolls, for instance, is a procedure for going from action declaration ("My guy attacks your guy with his sword") to action resolution ("Whack, your guy is dead!"), but in the course of doing that they don't tell us what the fiction is like. For instance, when the combat is still ongoing, and my guy has lost 10 hp and has 15 hp left and your guy has lost 20 hp and has 3 hp left, the mechanics don't tell us what the fiction is like. They don't tell us how many cuts your guy has on his body. Or how serious those cuts are. They don't tell us whether my guy is bleeding or not. They don't tell us whether the fight looks more like The Princess Bride or Basil Rathbone vs Errol Flynn (which I gather was Gygax's inspiration) or looks more like a Tarantino movie (which is how many players and GMs on these boards seem to narrate things).That's the sense in which D&D combat is not a sim system.My response to this is similar to my response to Savage Wombat, and to Kamikaze Midget further upthread.The way in which D&D is sim compared to chess is nothing more than the way in which it is an RPG rather than a board game. By those standards, Prince Valiant or Marvel Heroic RP or Nicotine Girls is also a sim game. But we all know they're radically non-sim RPGs.The quote the OP references makes particular claims about the relationship between RPG mechanics and RPG fiction, that I've unpacked earlier in this post. It is those claims that are the focus of the discussion over whether or not D&D is sim. There are RPGs for which those claims are true: Rolemaster, Runequest, Classic Traveller, Chivalry & orcery, etc. But D&D is not one of them.That's not a criticism of D&D. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is eminently capable of explaining what his motivations are for starting and participating in this thread. Mine are to make the point that you can be an RPG, and a very fine RPG, without satisfying the relationship between procedures of action resolution, and content of fiction, that the quote referenced in the OP asserts must obtain if a game is to be an RPG.</blockquote>

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