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  1. - Top - End - #271
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    OK, since people are starting to argue about this: What does it mean for a system to be a neutral judge?

    As far as I am concerned almost every rule set ever is a neutral judge because they do not care about who is using them.
    As opposed to a biased, **** GM. Rules are neutral, GMs are not. Not even me.

    Quote Originally Posted by ComradeBear View Post
    The issue with that is that they would have to account for all possibilities to be truly neutral. Otherwise there will always be some inherent bias.

    Essentially, the goal of having the rules be Entirely Neutral and Able To Function All By Themselves In All Situations is impossible.

    Hydration would be another potential sticking point. Having no rule at all suggests that you don't need to drink at all. Having an arbitrary number of times you need to drink ignores the difference in water needs between people of various sizes and makes for ridiculous situations where Giants and humans can have equally sized societies built around water sources of equivalent size. Which is plainly not sensical.

    Hence why I asked to what degree specificity is needed to create verisimilitude. Because every lack of specificity eventually breaks down. The question isn't "Do you want specificity," It's about HOW MUCH specificity is needed. With examples of what they feel needs to be specified AND what DOESN'T need to be specified.
    Quote Originally Posted by ComradeBear View Post
    I'm speaking of the previously stated ideal of having the rules be a Neutral Judge that requires no GM judgement and will always behave as expected. That DOES require that the rules account for all possible situations.

    The problem comes on trying to make rules for the entire universe as a whole, hence why Warhammer has multiple associated games. Each one deals consistently with its slice of the universe without really worrying about the other parts because they will not behave the same. (A game about being Inquisitors by necessity has different needs than a game for having large-scale battles.)

    So in essence, we come back to the previous questions. What parts are important TO YOU that need to be modelled? Because if you answer "everything" then you need to make sure it covers Everything, which will by necessity be a complicated system. If what is vitally important to model well is combat and magic, and we don't care if there is any rules for social interaction of any sort, then that will change the approach.

    Do my questions make more sense now? If you want it to model everything well then it either needs to be extremely far-reaching or extremely flexible, but something in the middle will be insufficiently flexible AND insufficiently specific, and ends up worse than the other two options. (Hence why D&D struggles to be both. Because it isn't particularly great at either end due to trying to be between them.)
    D&D is about adventuring, killing monsters, looting their homes, and resource management. One would therefore expect D&D to have good rules covering water consumption that take into account the size of the imbiber, and include rules for getting sick from drinking bad water. And it does.

    Marvel Superheroes is about... something different. It does not require detailed rationing rules for standard gameplay, and so does not include them.

    One does not expect the game to simulate all of reality, but one does expect it to simulate the portion of reality clearly critical to its central themes.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2016-10-18 at 08:46 AM.

  2. - Top - End - #272
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Even the most simulationist game doesn't need to simulate elements that are covered in a fictional tale about the same genre in a few lines, if not ignored entirely.

    You don't need rules for how often you have to stop for a potty break in D&D because it's just assumed you do when you need to, and that you can hold it when it's not convenient. In a game about long road trips where every second spent stopped is a hazard in its own right (perhaps a race across the country for a treasure or across the world for fabulous reality TV prizes), keeping track of the bladders of one's passengers may actually be relevant.

    In D&D, if for some reason it did become relevant, the module would either provide some one-off rules, or the DM would likely assign a Constitution check to "hold it" after a certain point made it plot-relevant.

    (I actually had a DM do this in X-Crawl: we'd been given tacos in the green room, and they...weren't the highest-quality meat. Since voluntarily leaving the Crawl removes you from your team for the rest of it, and all the restrooms were outside the exit doors...)

  3. - Top - End - #273

    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    What is more important to a superhero game?

    Rules that help you calculate whether or not Superman can leap any given building in a single bound based on factors like height of the building, gravity of the planet he's on, force of his jump, etc.

    Or rules that help give you the story beats of a superhero story.

    I submit that the former is entirely missing the point.

  4. - Top - End - #274
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    The point isn't that the D&D rules don't simulate potty breaks.

    The point is that the rules are for adventurers doing adventuring things. Not npcs living their lives. Not adventurers running a side business. Not even macro economics.

    For a clear example of why D&D is not actually intended to be a world simulator, see dungeonomics at critical hits, where many of the articles are about taking D&D rules meant for adventuring to and using them to simulate a world. To hilarious to read about unintentional consequences. (Also probably fun world to play in if you like taking the piss during gaming, but that's a different matter.)

    Link for reference:
    http://www.critical-hits.com/blog/ca.../dungeonomics/

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Koo Rehtorb View Post
    What is more important to a superhero game?

    Rules that help you calculate whether or not Superman can leap any given building in a single bound based on factors like height of the building, gravity of the planet he's on, force of his jump, etc.

    Or rules that help give you the story beats of a superhero story.

    I submit that the former is entirely missing the point.

    I submit that the latter is the sole province of the players and GM, and doesn't belong baked into the rules -- promoting "story beats" to the level of driving the mechanics results in the same sort of character and setting incongruities, inconsistencies, and incoherence that large swaths of fiction suffer from.
    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2016-10-18 at 10:25 AM.
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

    Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.

    The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

    The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.

  6. - Top - End - #276
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    I submit that the latter is the sole province of the players and GM, and doesn't belong baked into the rules -- promoting "story beats" to the level of driving the mechanics results in the same sort of character and setting incongruities, inconsistencies, and incoherence that large swaths of fiction suffer from.
    Yeah... because players of a superhero game generally want to feel like superheroes. Old superman Comics didn't devote time to detail Superman's thought process on whether or not he could leap a tall building in a single bound, he just did. A system well suited to telling superhero stories is not going to be the sort of system the promotes the sort of economics or government that encourages modern cities. And the reverse is also true. A system well suited for explaining why cities remain the way they are isn't going to do much to give a superhero story.
    Quote Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant View Post
    We should try to make that a thing; I think it might help civility. Hey, GitP, let's try to make this a thing: when you're arguing optimization strategies, RAW-logic, and similar such things that you'd never actually use in a game, tag your post [THEORETICAL] and/or use green text

  7. - Top - End - #277
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    As opposed to a biased, **** GM. Rules are neutral, GMs are not. Not even me.
    Then all rules are neutral... and will inevitably fall apart SOMEWHERE because all simplified models do.




    D&D is about adventuring, killing monsters, looting their homes, and resource management. One would therefore expect D&D to have good rules covering water consumption that take into account the size of the imbiber, and include rules for getting sick from drinking bad water. And it does.

    Marvel Superheroes is about... something different. It does not require detailed rationing rules for standard gameplay, and so does not include them.

    One does not expect the game to simulate all of reality, but one does expect it to simulate the portion of reality clearly critical to its central themes.
    I'm sure that having hydration rules is pretty edition and splatbook dependent, but even then I question why. Rations in the game basically function as a Proper Nutrition Token and you go through them at a rate of 1/in-game day. There is no concern for keeping rations well preserved, they have no expiration date, and we never check to see if anyone gets food poisoning from them. Why?
    Because the bodily functions part of D&D is not important except when it becomes part of the drama.
    In the desert, d&d likes dehydration rules. Because suddenly its an obvious threat. But in the woods? D&D stops caring because trees apparently radiate Hydration Fields. (It is exactly as possible to become dehydrated in a forest as in the desert, and I speak from experience)

    So it's not actually the case that d&d makes use of dehydration rules always. It only brings them up when its a Clear and Present Danger. You CAN use them all the time, but that is up to the judgement of the GM.

    There is also the needed consideration that unless someone is going to die or the whole point of the campaign is Wilderness Survival, spending time finding a source of clean water takes time away from Going Into Dungeons And Looting Them. It works AGAINST the point of the system. Hence why D&D can sometimes clunk along rather than moving smoothly.

    As for the "Story Beats are for the GM and Players only" comment, I disagree.

    A system can help or hinder the GM and Players in creating the kind of play experience they want. If what they want is a people-focused post apocalyptic adventure that feels more like The Walking Dead than Mad Max, you'll do well with Apocalypse World. The Walking Dead never gives us a count of exactly how many bullets the main group has, because that's not the point. They give us indicators, though. "Running low on bullets" is enough for most people, and we don't need to get into the tedium of counting bullets as an audience.

    If the show spent time going over their detailed list of supplies, then it would miss out on what people watch it for.

    A system bent to much on the specifics can miss the forest for the trees. Which doesn't help any.
    Last edited by ComradeBear; 2016-10-18 at 12:26 PM.

  8. - Top - End - #278
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by ComradeBear View Post
    I'm sure that having hydration rules is pretty edition and splatbook dependent, but even then I question why. Rations in the game basically function as a Proper Nutrition Token and you go through them at a rate of 1/in-game day. There is no concern for keeping rations well preserved, they have no expiration date, and we never check to see if anyone gets food poisoning from them. Why?
    Hydration and Rations rules exist, as far as I know, in every edition of D&D. Except possibly 4th. They typically require X "tokens" or water/food per day, varying based on size of the creature.

    It's actually a pretty decent example of where the D&D game can vary from gamist (generally kept simple in the core rulebooks) to more simluationist (generally in splatbooks like AD&D 1e Wilderness Survival Guide). But it's part of the game for a simple reason: resource management is a core component of what D&D adventuring is about. And logistics management is a subset of resource management. (It's just a frequently discarded subset. But it's still one that's typically included as part of the core rules.)

  9. - Top - End - #279
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    The problem I have with D&D is that it is generally impossible to make the assumption that the rules work for NPCs the same way it works for PCs. That and many settings and scenarios as-described ignore the implications of their own fantastical elements.

    Example: one of the villains in the 3.5 splat Elder Evils is motivated by the loss of her lover, who was struck dead by a meteorite. As a 10th level Ur-Priest, she could easily cast a Resurrection or even a True Resurrection spell to resolve this problem, but the book gives no indication of this ever having been considered as an option.

  10. - Top - End - #280
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Niek View Post
    The problem I have with D&D is that it is generally impossible to make the assumption that the rules work for NPCs the same way it works for PCs. That and many settings and scenarios as-described ignore the implications of their own fantastical elements.

    Example: one of the villains in the 3.5 splat Elder Evils is motivated by the loss of her lover, who was struck dead by a meteorite. As a 10th level Ur-Priest, she could easily cast a Resurrection or even a True Resurrection spell to resolve this problem, but the book gives no indication of this ever having been considered as an option.

    And to me, that's an incoherent setting. The implications of that sort of spell aren't taken into account consistently.
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

    Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.

    The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

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  11. - Top - End - #281
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Niek View Post
    The problem I have with D&D is that it is generally impossible to make the assumption that the rules work for NPCs the same way it works for PCs. That and many settings and scenarios as-described ignore the implications of their own fantastical elements.

    Example: one of the villains in the 3.5 splat Elder Evils is motivated by the loss of her lover, who was struck dead by a meteorite. As a 10th level Ur-Priest, she could easily cast a Resurrection or even a True Resurrection spell to resolve this problem, but the book gives no indication of this ever having been considered as an option.
    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    And to me, that's an incoherent setting. The implications of that sort of spell aren't taken into account consistently.
    Yeah, that's poor writing on the part of the authors. There's no excuse for not remembering true resurrection when writing a splatbook that includes a 10th level Ur-Priest NPC. It's not like there aren't plot contrivances built in to seal away souls, either. Pick one if you really want to go this route rather than trying to be more creative.

  12. - Top - End - #282

    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Niek View Post
    Example: one of the villains in the 3.5 splat Elder Evils is motivated by the loss of her lover, who was struck dead by a meteorite. As a 10th level Ur-Priest, she could easily cast a Resurrection or even a True Resurrection spell to resolve this problem, but the book gives no indication of this ever having been considered as an option.
    This is not an example of not having the same rules for PCs and NPCs. The wealth by level or even the class rules are better examples.

    Your example is more ''the writer does not understand the rules'', ''the writer does not care'', ''the writer is to lazy to look up details'' or '' ''the writer is not taking into account the complexity of the game world.''

  13. - Top - End - #283

    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    I submit that the latter is the sole province of the players and GM, and doesn't belong baked into the rules --
    Well... I don't think this is a realistic desire on your part. I won't say that the rules are the only thing that matters, GM and players certainly have a part as well. But I will say that rules have at least an equally big part in the feel of a game as the group itself. Different systems feel incredibly different from each other. Hell, 1e D&D feels incredibly different from 5e D&D, let alone different games entirely.

    Rules shape the feel of the game. There's no such thing as a neutral system. And you might as well use the power of the system to shape the feel that you want the game to have.

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Koo Rehtorb View Post
    Well... I don't think this is a realistic desire on your part. I won't say that the rules are the only thing that matters, GM and players certainly have a part as well. But I will say that rules have at least an equally big part in the feel of a game as the group itself. Different systems feel incredibly different from each other. Hell, 1e D&D feels incredibly different from 5e D&D, let alone different games entirely.

    Rules shape the feel of the game. There's no such thing as a neutral system. And you might as well use the power of the system to shape the feel that you want the game to have.
    The right atmosphere/feel is part of the setting, and thus something the rules need to sync with. But to me, that has absolutely nothing to do with "story beats".
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

    Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.

    The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

    The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    The right atmosphere/feel is part of the setting, and thus something the rules need to sync with. But to me, that has absolutely nothing to do with "story beats".
    Story Beats are a storytelling principal that have a very heavy impact on a story being satisfying to read, watch, or hear, specifically related to pacing. An action genre story needs to have things happen more frequently than a Drama or a romance.

    Hitting a similar Story Beat rythm and having the same KINDS of beats will assist in providing the right atmosphere/feel. Rules that help do that are better than ones which prevent it. D&D doesn't feel much like an action movie, because the pace of combat is very slow. Combat in Apocalypse World feels a lot more high-octane because it's much faster, and more stuff happens in a shorter period of time. So when desiring an action-movie feel to combat, AW-based systems have an edge over D&D-based systems.

    D&D feels like really complicated chess or a very small-scale wargame, because that's basically what the combat is. There is a reason why the D&D miniatures wargame was a natural extension of D&D combat with little by way of problems.

    In short, Story Beats means "genre-based pacing" or it means "the important stuff that happens in this genre." Both are acceptable. A system that helps with those two is good. One that does not is not as good.
    Last edited by ComradeBear; 2016-10-19 at 12:42 AM.

  16. - Top - End - #286
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    I don't think D&D was designed as a story-telling tool, rather story was injected into a tactical game, but it does come out feeling like a 500-700+ page fantasy epic, or a long running TV show. (Or it has felt like we are starting one, I have never played a campaign to completion.) On the other hand when I have played some Powered by the Apocalypse, the feel is that of a 90-minute action movie.

    In D&D, the general trend is towards stability. Combats are resolved, healing is plentiful and characters level up and grow stronger. In the Apocalypse Hacks I have played, you survive combat, live on with scares and there is a very real chance ending up in a worse situation then when you started. One is not better than the other (although I enjoy the lower time investment of the latter) but at the same time they conjure up very different feelings.

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by ComradeBear View Post
    Story Beats are a storytelling principal that have a very heavy impact on a story being satisfying to read, watch, or hear, specifically related to pacing. An action genre story needs to have things happen more frequently than a Drama or a romance.

    Hitting a similar Story Beat rythm and having the same KINDS of beats will assist in providing the right atmosphere/feel. Rules that help do that are better than ones which prevent it. D&D doesn't feel much like an action movie, because the pace of combat is very slow. Combat in Apocalypse World feels a lot more high-octane because it's much faster, and more stuff happens in a shorter period of time. So when desiring an action-movie feel to combat, AW-based systems have an edge over D&D-based systems.

    D&D feels like really complicated chess or a very small-scale wargame, because that's basically what the combat is. There is a reason why the D&D miniatures wargame was a natural extension of D&D combat with little by way of problems.

    In short, Story Beats means "genre-based pacing" or it means "the important stuff that happens in this genre." Both are acceptable. A system that helps with those two is good. One that does not is not as good.

    So really, "story beats" is a borrowed term given a different meaning for RPG discussions? https://www.google.com/search?q=story+beats

    What you describe doesn't appear to be the same thing as how the term is used in writing.
    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2016-10-19 at 09:22 AM.
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

    Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.

    The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

    The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.

  18. - Top - End - #288
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    I don't think D&D was designed as a story-telling tool, rather story was injected into a tactical game, but it does come out feeling like a 500-700+ page fantasy epic, or a long running TV show. (Or it has felt like we are starting one, I have never played a campaign to completion.) On the other hand when I have played some Powered by the Apocalypse, the feel is that of a 90-minute action movie.

    In D&D, the general trend is towards stability. Combats are resolved, healing is plentiful and characters level up and grow stronger. In the Apocalypse Hacks I have played, you survive combat, live on with scares and there is a very real chance ending up in a worse situation then when you started. One is not better than the other (although I enjoy the lower time investment of the latter) but at the same time they conjure up very different feelings.
    Indeed. I wasn't suggesting one was wholesale BETTER than the other, but when it comes to being fast paced and having lots of drama quickly, PbtA systems are going to have a huge advantage over d20 systems. IF that's what you want.

    Though I will say that I find Apocalypse World reminds me most of shows like The Walking Dead in most campaigns I've played of it. For the following reasons:
    Focused heavily on the PCs (main characters).
    The state of their community is very important.
    Combat happens maybe once or twice per session, and is very brief and high-risk.

    That's why I liken it more to TWD than to Mad Max. But ymmv.

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    So really, "story beats" is a borrowed term given a different meaning for RPG discussions? https://www.google.com/search?q=story+beats
    I was going based on the wikipedia page for Story Beats, but what you listed doesn't directly contradict the pacing definition. It's just a more vague description. A Beat is "an important piece of story that advances the plot" but what that piece is may vary. Hence their long list of things Story Beats might be. (I'll also note that was google brings up for me is probably different from what it brings up for you.)

    But yes, it will have a different application for different venues of storytelling.
    Last edited by ComradeBear; 2016-10-19 at 09:27 AM.

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    I don't think D&D was designed as a story-telling tool, rather story was injected into a tactical game
    Eh, more like an exploration game that was informed by tactical games, that later had story injected into it and even later became more of a tactical game.

    Quote Originally Posted by ComradeBear View Post
    Though I will say that I find Apocalypse World reminds me most of shows like The Walking Dead in most campaigns I've played of it.
    Absolutely. Fate's fairly similar, though it gets there by a different route, too. But both seem to pretty deliberately target that sort of media as a desired play mode.
    Last edited by kyoryu; 2016-10-19 at 10:32 AM.

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by ComradeBear View Post
    I was going based on the wikipedia page for Story Beats, but what you listed doesn't directly contradict the pacing definition. It's just a more vague description. A Beat is "an important piece of story that advances the plot" but what that piece is may vary. Hence their long list of things Story Beats might be. (I'll also note that was google brings up for me is probably different from what it brings up for you.)

    But yes, it will have a different application for different venues of storytelling.

    See, when someone starts talking about story-based rules, or story-based pacing, in an RPG, what immediately comes to mind for me is the all-too-common problem in fiction of making everything else subservient to THE STORY, and that's one of my giant pet peeves when it comes to writing, whether it's fiction or a game setting or whatever -- treating settings and/or characters as mutable contrivances that can be whatever the writer wants them to be, in order to tell THE STORY that the writer wants to tell.

    A character can be shrewd in one story, and foolish in the next... cynical in one, and gullible in another... combat-competent in one moment, and helpless in another.

    Something shown in one scene would imply that something else would be possible in another scene, and instead the opposite is true.


    Hell, the FFG Star Wars RPG has a ridiculous "talent" for major antagonists that lets them use minions as ablative armor, because it's "appropriate to the fiction".


    (As a side note, I'm set up so that Google really doesn't have any way to "customize" my search results, I pretty much get whatever the default is.)
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

    Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.

    The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

    The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    That's not what story-based rules means. What you're describing is just sloppy writing.

    Ensuring you have the right story beats is more along the lines of making sure that, say, in a mystery based game you have ways of making sure that the players can obtain clues, think through the implications, follow leads, discover new clues, and so on, finding out new wrinkles until you eventually reach the dramatic conclusion and reveal before settling in for the aftermath and denouement. Such a game might abstract or even outright ignore things like hygiene needs (showering, deodorant, teeth brushing, etc.) because even though that's something that real people have to do, it doesn't serve the reasons someone might play a mystery-based game. That, is, the rules exist to set up a cycle of Discovery->Evaluation->Exploration->Discovery..., not to simulate how daily life works for the players' characters or how the society the game is set in is run.
    Quote Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant View Post
    We should try to make that a thing; I think it might help civility. Hey, GitP, let's try to make this a thing: when you're arguing optimization strategies, RAW-logic, and similar such things that you'd never actually use in a game, tag your post [THEORETICAL] and/or use green text

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    They should have said that the meteor was partially made of Thinanum and has since been dismantled and distributed across the world. (That could even give the characters another option, if they tracked down all the pieces the baddie could resurrect their loved one.)
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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by georgie_leech View Post
    That's not what story-based rules means. What you're describing is just sloppy writing.
    That's the thing -- when people describe what story-based rules are, it sounds to me like the sort of thing that leads to sloppy writing.


    Quote Originally Posted by georgie_leech View Post
    Ensuring you have the right story beats is more along the lines of making sure that, say, in a mystery based game you have ways of making sure that the players can obtain clues, think through the implications, follow leads, discover new clues, and so on, finding out new wrinkles until you eventually reach the dramatic conclusion and reveal before settling in for the aftermath and denouement. Such a game might abstract or even outright ignore things like hygiene needs (showering, deodorant, teeth brushing, etc.) because even though that's something that real people have to do, it doesn't serve the reasons someone might play a mystery-based game. That, is, the rules exist to set up a cycle of Discovery->Evaluation->Exploration->Discovery..., not to simulate how daily life works for the players' characters or how the society the game is set in is run.
    Is anyone asking for rules to simulate hygiene?
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

    Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.

    The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

    The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    Is anyone asking for rules to simulate hygiene?
    No, I'm using it to illustrate a general point. Games have rules that suit the play experience they're trying to provide. D&D is trying to provide a game where you explore exotic locales filled with dangerous creatures that have glittery treasure. Thus, they have rules that suit exploration (logistics and planning being crucial parts of journeys far from civilized lands), combating dangerous foes, and then getting lots of loot. What it doesn't have is a set of rules meant to lead to the current setting. It has cities designed with adventure hooks in mind, not proper city planning. It has population charts to represent roughly how many adventurer classes the PC's might be able to have access to, not to determine how much arable land such cities would reasonably have. It has castles to have ruined castles the PC's can explore, not because castles are a sensible defensive precaution against the powers a high level wizard or mighty demon or whatever can bring to bear.
    Quote Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant View Post
    We should try to make that a thing; I think it might help civility. Hey, GitP, let's try to make this a thing: when you're arguing optimization strategies, RAW-logic, and similar such things that you'd never actually use in a game, tag your post [THEORETICAL] and/or use green text

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Meanwhile Warhammer RPG, which is trying to simulate a medieval Europe being overrun by corruption, does have rules telling the GM how far apart to place cities, towns and thorps, to place them along rivers, etc. They built world building into the root game because the world is an important part of the experience. Similarly they use professions and an advancement system based around the idea that you start off an normal (but exceptional) folks that fall into adventuring. Runequest does something similar.

    A DM who wants to simulate a world in D&D has access to resources to do it. Like the Worldbuilder's Handbook (2e) for rules to simulate a world, or the Wilderness Survival Guide (1e) for rules to simlate wilderness experiences, or the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide (also 1e) for rules to simulate underdark experiences.

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    See, when someone starts talking about story-based rules, or story-based pacing, in an RPG, what immediately comes to mind for me is the all-too-common problem in fiction of making everything else subservient to THE STORY, and that's one of my giant pet peeves when it comes to writing, whether it's fiction or a game setting or whatever -- treating settings and/or characters as mutable contrivances that can be whatever the writer wants them to be, in order to tell THE STORY that the writer wants to tell.
    This is something you have brought up before and... how can anything really be subservient to the story, sorry THE STORY? Because a story is the whole thing, it has a lot of components including plot, characters, setting, theme, media and many more. Actually the story might be something around the story that we can interpret from it, but this is getting into very fuzzy territory.

    Do you mean plot (the sequence of events)? Or are you commenting on bad & inconsistent characterization and world building? A combination of the two or something else?

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Okay, belatedly catching up:

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    To me - and I am no expert on "GNS Theory" - "narrativism" is about "the story," yes, but not telling a pre-set one. All narrativism means is that you're primarily interested in the story. You want to play the characters and build the narrative around what they're doing and how the world reacts around them.

    In a sense, to me, a GOOD simulationist game will also cater to a narrativist view, because the simulation will include rules that guide how the world reacts to character actions and choices. The story evolves from the simulation as the players push the buttons and pull the levers that represent what their characters' choices would be.

    And that, too, factors in with a good gamist game - the gameplay IS the development of the narrative through the simulation.

    Which is what I look for in an RPG.
    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    From my point of view, this isn't about a "simulation uber alles" agenda. It's about setting/world, system, and the sort of game (and story) the participants want, all syncing up and meshing together well. I greatly dislike dissonance and disconnect...

    ...Oddly, despite what many of the proponents of Narrativist play seem to assert, that sort of "The Story" metagaming is apparently not the heart of Narrativist play -- a definition I keep seeing is instead something like this: "Narrativism relies on outlining (or developing) character motives, placing characters into situations where those motives conflict and making their decisions the driving force." -- and if that's accurate, then "narrativism" is actually quite character-centric, despite the name.

    Rather, it seems that perhaps the key component of "The Story" metagaming would be, in GNS theory, "Drama resolution": "Participants decide the results, with plot requirements the determining factor." For some reason, Drama Resolution and Narrativist Focus appear to have been heavily conflated in certain games designed after the advent of GNS theory became an influential school of thought.
    Drama/Karma/Fortune is one of those baffling choices of terminology that GNS settled on during the aughts, rather than using perfectly intuitive terms like Negotiation/Stats/Randomness, which is what they are. 'Drama' resolution has no intrinsic connection to narrativist play, it's just a popular component of conflict resolution, in turn used as a defence against railroading.

    As for 'produces a gripping narrative' vs. 'focuses on character motives in conflict'- these actually amount to the same thing. If recorded events are primarily focused on, and emerge from, how character motives develop and conflict, then you have a gripping narrative. That's all that 'Protagonism' is*. Things like drama and escalation/climax/denouement, 'story beats', three-act structure, etc. are either helpful accessories, emergent side-effects or, IMO, arbitrary cultural expectations.

    ('Story Now' is the hip term for narrativist play these days, to distinguish it from cases of play where there is a heavy story component, but it comes as a prefabricated whole where the PCs have predictable deterministic roles, rather than being a direct product of play. The former can occur in either G or S play**.)

    Anyway, what I'm driving at is that:
    Story = Choices X Consequences

    Choices (in the non-trivial sense) consist of taking two things a character might be presumed to care about and seeing which matters more to them. AKA 'character development', AKA 'drama' under normal definitions. Then you repeat the process (escalation) and see what the consequences are.

    Consequences (in the non-trivial sense) means giving the impression that actions have a spread of expectable results that impacts things outside the character. If this is absent, choices lack weight, because there's no reason for characters to consider one decision to be better or worse than any other.

    The broad problem here is that you can't optimise for both these factors. For example, if you want to reliably push the PCs' emotional hot-buttons, it's very useful to invent new NPCs or locations or communities during play, as and when they bump into them. This is something that gets more difficult if, e.g, the setting has already been established in advance in great detail, because you can't invent new elements without contradicting old ones. But if you want to model the surrounding world with great rigour, it's very helpful to know your starting conditions.

    You can get a story out of a highly detailed setting with appropriately embedded PCs and rigorous cause-and-effect, but it takes on a different shape, because Choice is not regularly guaranteed, only Consequence. And not everyone jumps at that.


    * I consider 'antagonism' to be a far more subjective term, only really defineable relative to other individual characters. 'Agonists' might be a better word.

    ** This is wandering way outside the scope of discussion, but my take is that the G/N conflict comes down to moments of drama being 'no-win' situations, and Gamism is about winning.

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    That's the thing -- when people describe what story-based rules are, it sounds to me like the sort of thing that leads to sloppy writing.
    If you've never played them, you can't be sure. It is often the case that how a rule reads and how it plays are two very different things. (Very often, actually.)

    As for leading to sloppy writing, systems focused on characters and narrative usually demand that pretty much nothing is planned in advance, so I'm not sure how that would come into play.

    As for the rest, dice rolls can cause exactly what you're talking about simply because Dice. It's also worth asking if you really think all people at all times are 100% consistent in everything they do, and that once a character is labelled as "competent" at fighting they can never struggle or lose again, even based on situational differences. Yes, Kryptonite is contrived BS but we're not going to be surprised when it makes Superman weaker again, nor will we be dismayed that someone much less powerful than him suddenly gains the upper hand.

    We would also not be surprised if Superman punched Batman into the sun (provided decent narrative reasoning for such) even though Batman is perhaps the most skilled normal human in the DC universe. Because he and Superman are on different levels.

    I'm not sure if you're literally demanding 100% consistency at all times in all stories and in all characters, with no deviation or change in behavior between page 1 and page The Last One, or if your wording is not conveying your actual complaint.

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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Yeah, the only truly consistent character like that is Saitama. for a character like him, I wouldn't trust any of the results to the rolls, I'd just write down "Special Ability: Succeeds at all actions involving punching someone no matter how powerful." and all the stuff I'd actually roll for would be things like his social and mental challenges. you don't give any chance for a character to fail X for a character whose character concept is "Always Succeeds at X".

    that and RPGs aren't really about writing. Writing and roleplaying are two different things and completely different challenges. I've tried both, and you can't act like a story made by a writer is the same as one made by a bunch of roleplayers. In writing you have full control over the whole story and can make it all completely consistent within your certain brand of logic, while with roleplaying you have to constantly check and make sure everyone's logic agrees with each other so that you can move forward.

    writers, stories, they have to sell everyone reading the story on their own brand of logic, while rolepalyers have to compromise with each other to come up with a mutual logic that they can all play with and build off of. System only matters for achieving that as far as player preference and nothing else. More rules heavy systems have their own learning curve and problems that aren't good for everyone, and some don't want to plan things out, and are better at coming up with logical things on the fly than planning ahead. Some people are just better at the improvisational aspect of things and not every system allows for that, which is why Fate is good for those people. Some people want rules heavy systems to plan it all out and have it all grounded from the start, while others are more ok with building that logic as they go along and coming up with the frame work as they play until it all makes sense from what they've built. Both are ok, whether or not you reliably have those people playing the same game and having equal amounts of fun is a whole other issue though.

    Max might just be one of those people who likes everything planned and logic'd out beforehand so he can build on that rather than someone like me who can improvise really well but finds rules-heay stuff stifling.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


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    Default Re: D&D is not a world simulator

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    that and RPGs aren't really about writing.
    well yeah. One is about telling a story. The other is about making in-character decisions in reaction to perceived events as if you were a different person (ie role playing), and playing a game. RPGs not only aren't about writing, they're almost completely the opposite of writing.
    Last edited by Tanarii; 2016-10-22 at 02:49 PM.

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