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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5993553" data-attributes="member: 54877">I think various objections to the vegetable/sweet analogy have mostly been answered.  Let me add that, like all analogies, it breaks down when pushed too far--not least because in a broader sense D&D is more "main course" than either vegetable or dessert. I used vegetable talking about the process-sim claim in particular, because I grew up in an area where there was a lot of farming of vegetables, ranging from extremely bitter to very sweet, and this range pretty much fits in an analogy of gaming styles in D&D.  The range has moved from edition to edition, but it has always been rather wide.  Just like you can drift some editions of D&D to be noticably more process-sim than others, if you know what you are doing, you can make some really sweet asparagus.  (And if you don't know what you are doing, it will be one of the most bitter things you ever tasted--which come to think about it parallels a game of D&D where the DM is trying hard for process-sim, but clueless on how to go about it. <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" />) No person with any real experience of a better alternative for process-sim play (and they are legion) would ever say that D&D is directed strongly at process-sim.  Can you drift D&D in that direction?  Sure.  Does it matter which version of D&D you start with if you intend to so drift?  Absolutely.  Is this your best route for process-sim, if you really enjoy it?  No way, if you've got any opportunity to try those alternatives. Contrawise, if someone says they've tried a bunch of those alternatives and found them too lacking in the process-sim equation compared to D&D, I can only conclude that said someone does not have a very intelligible definition of "process-sim" and/or doesn't like it as much as they think they do.  For example, it's not at all uncommon for someone to like a patina of process-sim, but heavily smoothed by DM fiat.  D&D is a darn good system for that, since nearly all of its process-sim is patina. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Me, I like the real thing.  When I want sweet, I want sweet.  Not a vegetable with enough sweet that you can pretend it is a dessert to stay on your diet.  (Well, ok, sometimes that's good too.  Analogies break down; it's what they do!)</blockquote>

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