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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 6354645" data-attributes="member: 1879">Personally I see no narrativist vs sim differences in those two descriptions at all. It's only a (slight) difference in granularity with one system (GURPS) offering the GM more guidance in how to set the DC. To claim that D&D is more abstract is disingenuous. It was a strength check to break the door, ergo it was a strength based activity that broke it open. Whether it was the left shoulder or right or even a kick is not specified. Nor is it in GURPS. So that looks like a wash to me. At no point is it so abstract that you don't know if you opened the door or phased through it by force of will, which might be the case in a truely abstract game like HeroQuest. You know force was applied to the door, in an attempt to open it, rather than destroy it. Both GURPS and D&D use different systems to 'simulate' opening the door vs destroying it. In either system you could also try to disassemble the door by pulling the hinges or use a spell to bypass it entirely, or dig through the wall next to it with pickaxes. And both systems would resolve those choices differently that the str based open door check, and in pretty similar ways. Indeed the only real differences would be the book keeping. (Spending a spell slot vs fatigue frex.)And frankly I've never played D&D with a GM that wouldn't give you a bonus to the roll if you supplied a more effective means to open the door, using the petrified dwarf as a battering ram for example, so that's a wash too. It's just that GURPS as a slightly more granular system demands a slightly higher up front narrative description of the door opening activity. That's not at all the same as saying it's a better sim. IMHO at least. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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