Let's talk about what we enjoy in crunchy, simulationist RPGs

[Mordar]

I've found that the "BRP" games that derived their rules from '78 [I]RuneQuest, such as Call of Cthullu, King Arthur Pendragon (which is my favorite), Ringworld, and Stormbringer, just hew closer to both the fiction, and what I'd expect "If this were real" than the other games I've played, except for maybe Champions, but that was comic book superheroes, so no "If this were real" (I also just don't like that genre as much).

In terms of "Sword & Sorcery" magic Stormbringer was spot on, and for doing settings like Howard's Conan stories I think Call of Cthullu magic system is closer to genre conventions than any version of D&D, even though it's default setting is the 1920's with monsters rather than the "Hyborian Age", and I've never found a game that did Sir Gawain and the Green Knight "morality tests" as well as Pendragon (or at all really).

Word. Truth. Correct. (How many characters are necessary for a reply? )

Given that RoleMaster and CoC (and the related spawn) were always my favorite games, I guess that means I like skill-based games and think they better emulate and differentiate characters than level-based games. And to me I guess that also means they are more "sim" and less "gamist".

- M

[Rhedyn]

Point of order. Narrative storyteller systems like Fate or PbtA are vastly different than traditional RPGs like D&D, GURPS, or Savage Worlds.

Much of what OP describes is true of all traditional RPGs.

Anywho, I love crunch because it lets me know as a player what I can do and as a GM it lets my players make plans without having to spoil it for me. I GM only to be surprised.

[Max_Killjoy]

Word. Truth. Correct. (How many characters are necessary for a reply? )

Given that RoleMaster and CoC (and the related spawn) were always my favorite games, I guess that means I like skill-based games and think they better emulate and differentiate characters than level-based games. And to me I guess that also means they are more "sim" and less "gamist".

Not just emulate, but differentiate.

A character who is highly skilled and experienced, should somehow differentiate from a character who is lightning quick, and both from a character who is immensely strong, and etc.

Point of order. Narrative storyteller systems like Fate or PbtA are vastly different than traditional RPGs like D&D, GURPS, or Savage Worlds.

Much of what OP describes is true of all traditional RPGs.

Anywho, I love crunch because it lets me know as a player what I can do and as a GM it lets my players make plans without having to spoil it for me. I GM only to be surprised.

Counter-point... it's not true of all "traditional" RPGs. D&D isn't that "simmy", even though it's damn crunchy particularly in certain editions. It does a horrible job differentiating between different types of characters in several spots, such as when it comes to Armor Class.

In contrast, GURPS tries to be a lot more "simmy" than D&D.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

but 3e is definitely farther in the sim direction than what it came from.

I'd disagree. AD&D is full of (and notorious for) rules on monster ecology, combat morale, very fine-grained non-weapon proficiencies (all priced by "how complex is this to learn" rather than "how useful is this mechanically"), the logistics of encumbrance and transporting large treasure hoards, endless historically-accurate polearms with fiddly weapon vs. armor tables, chances of catching diseases and parasites after adventuring through swamps....


I also disagree that D&D is heavily gamist and barely simulationist. It's important to divorce simulationism (focus on internal consistency, interaction with the setting as an independent self-consistent entity, player-as-actor rather than player-as-author, and so forth) from verisimilitude (modeling the real world and prioritizing that model over genre/mythical/etc. conceits, modeling things in sufficient detail to give how-things-work-in-real-life outputs, and so forth). It's possible to have high levels of one or the other, both, or neither, and while D&D doesn't really focus on verisimilitude (though it certainly is verisimilar in some areas, level ranges, and "zoom levels") it does lean strongly simulationist in many areas.

It's entirely possible for a game to be both heavily gamist and heavily simulationist at the same time, and in fact I'd say many of the wonky corner cases in the rules and many of the parts people call out as being nonsensical are places where D&D's gamism runs face-first into its simulationism and the conflicting goals and design principles cause those problems.

EDIT: It's also important to distinguish "this game isn't (or isn't trying to be) G/S/N" from "this game is trying to be G/S/N but is failing/making concessions/etc. in this particular area." AC is a good example: AD&D had a much more simulationist take on armor class and armor/weapon interactions and 3e compromised that for ease of use, but 3e still tries to distinguish between different kinds of armor, differentiate making contact with the armor vs. harming someone in armor, and so on. A purely gamist approach might condense the armor types to just light/medium/heavy and balance them so they're relatively equal choices with different tradeoffs, incorporate level into the AC calculation so attacks and AC rise at more similar rates, or similar.

[Max_Killjoy]

Verisimilitude is not about modeling "the real world".

It's about making a fictional world feel as if it could be real.

Where it breaks from "genre" and "mythic" is not in any attempt to model the real world, but rather in that settings which heavily emphasizes "genre" or "mythic" elements very much tend to do so at the expense of internal consistency, internal coherence, and internal plausibility.

[noob]

I've found that the "BRP" games that derived their rules from '78 [I]RuneQuest, such as Call of Cthullu, King Arthur Pendragon (which is my favorite), Ringworld, and Stormbringer, just hew closer to both the fiction, and what I'd expect "If this were real" than the other games I've played, except for maybe Champions, but that was comic book superheroes, so no "If this were real" (I also just don't like that genre as much).

In terms of "Sword & Sorcery" magic Stormbringer was spot on, and for doing settings like Howard's Conan stories I think Call of Cthullu magic system is closer to genre conventions than any version of D&D, even though it's default setting is the 1920's with monsters rather than the "Hyborian Age", and I've never found a game that did Sir Gawain and the Green Knight "morality tests" as well as Pendragon (or at all really).

As far as modelling combat the RuneQuest derived rules seem more "realistic" to me than maybe all but Arm's Law/MERP/Rolemaster.

I like D&D (except for 3.x, as requiring me to choose a "Feat" to play a Fighter is a bridge too far!).but for more "gamist" reasons, and mostly as a player, as a GM and for "simulation" it's BRP.

You can play a barbarian: it is like a fighter but with less choice.
That or a rogue: rogues works well without feats.(Just pick up acid flasks(that can deal sound damage depending on the source of the acid) and alchemist fire at mid to high level)
By the time you picked up all the "mandatory" rogue skills you no longer have skill points unless you have quite high int.

[Man_Over_Game]

Verisimilitude is not about modeling "the real world".

It's about making a fictional world feel as if it could be real.

Where it breaks from "genre" and "mythic" is not in any attempt to model the real world, but rather in that settings which heavily emphasizes "genre" or "mythic" elements very much tend to do so at the expense of internal consistency, internal coherence, and internal plausibility.

The issue I find there is that it's hard to balance the whole "magic is science" concept, for consistency, and the fact that you're playing a game.

For example, does magical fire always burn things like normal fire? Can you enchant a sword with it? A lamp? A torch? A statue? Can I put a sheath over it? Can I put out the fires it makes (if any?). Are fire-creatures on fire, immune to fire, and how do they generate fire?

It's a lot of ambiguity. Either the rules are strict, and you can't do something you want to do, or the rules are lenient, and balance is out the window.

I could see a rules-light TTRPG using consistent magic, which maintains balance and consistency with the narrative, but that's exactly the opposite of the topic at hand. I would like to see a system that used consistent, coherent magic, while also being fairly rules heavy in a way that's fun.

[Mordar]

Word. Truth. Correct. (How many characters are necessary for a reply? )

Given that RoleMaster and CoC (and the related spawn) were always my favorite games, I guess that means I like skill-based games and think they better emulate and differentiate characters than level-based games. And to me I guess that also means they are more "sim" and less "gamist".

- M

Not just emulate, but differentiate.

A character who is highly skilled and experienced, should somehow differentiate from a character who is lightning quick, and both from a character who is immensely strong, and etc.

Is that your way of adding emphasis or did you miss that I did say "emulate and differentiate"?

To address a bit further...what I was thinking as I typed the original line was something more like the following:

...and think they better emulate famous fantasy fiction characters/trope (like allow us players to create our Conan, or Lancelot, or Aragorn, or Inigo Montoya, or Gray Mouser, or Garet Jax, or Bruce Lee) as well as allowing us to differentiate our own uniquely developed characters such that you could have a handful of 5th level half-elf warriors that are hugely different in style, theme and ability while still being functional in a traditional FRPG as warrior characters instead of just being one of two or three variants where the rest of the "differences" are just a skin.

But that seemed a little long winded.

To add something slightly new: I like crunch when it allows players to be mechanically rewarded for differences in character design and development. I don't mean "rewarded = be more successful" or some sort of charop kind of reward...I mean see valid mechanical differences, not necessarily better or worse, as a result of the decisions they made. This is as a supplement, not a replacement, to the impact of role-playing decisions.

- M

[noob]

The issue I find there is that it's hard to balance the whole "magic is science" concept, for consistency, and the fact that you're playing a game.

For example, does magical fire always burn things like normal fire? Can you enchant a sword with it? A lamp? A torch? A statue? Can I put a sheath over it? Can I put out the fires it makes (if any?). Are fire-creatures on fire, immune to fire, and how do they generate fire?

It's a lot of ambiguity. Either the rules are strict, and you can't do something you want to do, or the rules are lenient, and balance is out the window.

I could see a rules-light TTRPG using consistent magic, which maintains balance and consistency with the narrative, but that's exactly the opposite of the topic at hand. I would like to see a system that used consistent, coherent magic, while also being fairly rules heavy in a way that's fun.

There is some magic as science stuff that end up being electricity but with a different name and weird looking engineers.

[Max_Killjoy]

Is that your way of adding emphasis or did you miss that I did say "emulate and differentiate"?

To address a bit further...what I was thinking as I typed the original line was something more like the following:

...and think they better emulate famous fantasy fiction characters/trope (like allow us players to create our Conan, or Lancelot, or Aragorn, or Inigo Montoya, or Gray Mouser, or Garet Jax, or Bruce Lee) as well as allowing us to differentiate our own uniquely developed characters such that you could have a handful of 5th level half-elf warriors that are hugely different in style, theme and ability while still being functional in a traditional FRPG as warrior characters instead of just being one of two or three variants where the rest of the "differences" are just a skin.

But that seemed a little long winded.

To add something slightly new: I like crunch when it allows players to be mechanically rewarded for differences in character design and development. I don't mean "rewarded = be more successful" or some sort of charop kind of reward...I mean see valid mechanical differences, not necessarily better or worse, as a result of the decisions they made. This is as a supplement, not a replacement, to the impact of role-playing decisions.

My way of saying "not only this thing you said that I agree with, but also this other thing as well".

If I create a character, and they're quick, I want them to have extra actions or whatever in the system reflects that quickness, because they're quick -- not because I choose "Fighter" and "Fighter" gets extra actions.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Verisimilitude is not about modeling "the real world".

It's about making a fictional world feel as if it could be real.

Where it breaks from "genre" and "mythic" is not in any attempt to model the real world, but rather in that settings which heavily emphasizes "genre" or "mythic" elements very much tend to do so at the expense of internal consistency, internal coherence, and internal plausibility.

Yeah, when I said "modeling the real world" I meant defaulting to real-world physics unless otherwise specified, as opposed to running on Rule of Cool, story logic, or the like, not literally trying to replicate reality; I should have phrased that differently.

The point stands, though, that simulationism != verisimilitude. To use your extra-actions-due-to-quickness example, getting extra actions due to class instead of Dex or whatever can be simulationist ("this is the Speedster class, only it gets speedy stuff") or gamist ("this is the Fighter, it gets more actions because it needs them to keep up with other martial classes"), and it can be verisimilar ("increasing combat skill lets you attack faster, and some characters advance faster than others") or not ("fighters--and only fighters--get more attacks, because reasons"), and in fact the same mechanic can be simulationist and gamist and verisimilar and implausible all at the same time by varying degrees, all depending on the context of the surrounding setting and system.

So D&D isn't "not simulationist" just because it's trying to balance that with gamism and there are more simulationist games out there, it just means that, well, D&D is more of a G/S mix where e.g. RoleMaster may be more S or S/g.

[Morty]

The biggest illusion 3E D&D sold to people isn't that they can be heroes and adventurers in a magic world, but that it can consistently simulate a world. Or anything.

On a less glib note, I have observed that I've gravitated towards lighter systems over the years, but I do still enjoy crunch and detail. I do play Exalted 3E, and it's as crunchy as it gets. I suppose I'm just more picky about where this crunch gets applied. Creating complex and rules-heavy systems carries a risk of creating complexity for complexity's sake. Shadowrun, for example, is absolutely rife with thick rules that serve little purpose.

My preference for crunchy rules is what people have talked about here already. It allows for a greater variety in character creation and many hooks to hang cool abilities off of. Or it can, at least. It's also possible to create a system full of exceptions and rules that prevent you from freely creating your character. It's also possible to create a lot of material that just won't see a lot of use - the FFG WH40K RPGs are pretty notorious about it. How likely is a talent that helps you resist seduction to come up in an Only War game? Not very.

Simulation isn't something I want anymore. In fact, I'm not even sure what it's supposed to mean. Rules will never be physics.

[Mechalich]

Simulation isn't something I want anymore. In fact, I'm not even sure what it's supposed to mean. Rules will never be physics.

Rules can approximate physics, and an ideal rules system could do so to the point that you would never actually face a physics error. This doesn't actually happen, even in video games that strictly limit inputs in order to make the possible outputs they need to model collapse into a viable set of possibilities they occasionally crash when encountering something that doesn't work. That said, you can functionally play No Man's Sky forever and never break it's engine, it's just you'll end up doing things that are functionally the same an endless number of times.

In terms of simulation based goals, you want a system that can functionally model as high a percentage of your potential outputs as possible, while accepting that sometimes the rules will throw out an incompatible or nonsensical result in an edge case and the GM will have to effectively instant-patch the game engine by making a ruling. And there's a distinctive trade off between how comprehensive you make your rule set to reduce edge cases versus how unwieldy the rules become. There's also the problem that, if a rules set grows to large and the rules modifications are not properly thought out in order to integrate effectively then additionally rules may actually produce more nonsense than reduce it. That particular problem afflicts D&D in spades and one of the reasons 5e is (for now) more stable in some ways than previous editions is simply that it has fewer rules.

The more inputs and outputs you try to simulate the harder it becomes to make a simulation possible. The simpler the game world is, the easier it is to try and construct a viable representative model of it. That's why fantasy games are generally easier to try and simulate than science fiction ones - space travel's a b**** - and low-magic, low-power games are easier than high-powered ones. D&D is a fantasy kitchen sink, it has a stupidly huge amount of inputs, so it is indeed a poor choice to try and simulate in any reasonable way. I firmly believe that the best D&D setting in Planescape, largely because it's the one that doesn't try to offer a simulation of a quasi-medieval world and embraces the crazy, while Spelljammer, which actually tried to simulate how its bizarre 'ships in space' scenario would work down to orbital paths and air consumption times, might actually be the worst (nobody actually played it that way, I believe, everyone played it as planescape with ships instead of portals).

[Quertus]

Spelljammer, which actually tried to simulate how its bizarre 'ships in space' scenario would work down to orbital paths and air consumption times, might actually be the worst (nobody actually played it that way, I believe, everyone played it as planescape with ships instead of portals).

… ?

So, I'm pretty sure I played Spelljammer that way. It was a unique minigame with unique crunch, which made it interesting.

Please explain why you consider it "worst D&D".

[Max_Killjoy]

Yeah, when I said "modeling the real world" I meant defaulting to real-world physics unless otherwise specified, as opposed to running on Rule of Cool, story logic, or the like, not literally trying to replicate reality; I should have phrased that differently.

The point stands, though, that simulationism != verisimilitude. To use your extra-actions-due-to-quickness example, getting extra actions due to class instead of Dex or whatever can be simulationist ("this is the Speedster class, only it gets speedy stuff") or gamist ("this is the Fighter, it gets more actions because it needs them to keep up with other martial classes"), and it can be verisimilar ("increasing combat skill lets you attack faster, and some characters advance faster than others") or not ("fighters--and only fighters--get more attacks, because reasons"), and in fact the same mechanic can be simulationist and gamist and verisimilar and implausible all at the same time by varying degrees, all depending on the context of the surrounding setting and system.

Whereas to me "simulationist" and "verisimilitude" go hand in hand, because either one is hard without the other.

But, "simulationist" and "crunchy" are orthogonal -- in theory a GM could go completely diceless and freeform, run entirely on "rulings" to use the 5e term, and if their guiding principle for each ruling was fiction-layer in-setting continuity, consistency, and coherence, if their decisions were based on cause-and-effect and the probability of outcomes at each decision point, they'd be more "simulationist" than a GM strictly abiding by a very complex set of rules that were designed for the sake of being a game and working like a game, or a very complex set of rules designed for the sake of "creating story" (and "exploring theme", meh).

So D&D isn't "not simulationist" just because it's trying to balance that with gamism and there are more simulationist games out there, it just means that, well, D&D is more of a G/S mix where e.g. RoleMaster may be more S or S/g.

No actual RPG is completely not!sim, or completely not!gam, or completely not!nar (although there are actual RPGs that are completely not!nar if one uses the very narrow and peculiar pseudo-definition of "narrative" that RE ended up with). To label a game like D&D simulationist in any meaningful way, it would have to be more sim than anything else, and that never has been the case throughout any of the editions.

[Earthwalker]

Weirdly I find myself disagreeing with what people are getting out of crunchy systems. That is to say I don't get the same things from them, not that people are wrong for finding that bit.

More crunch = More character options.

I find as the number of rules go down, then the more different kinds of character I can make. I find when presented with a list of options you end up being limited to those options.

I do enjoy crunchy games tho. I switch between systems and groups. What I like about the more crunch heavy games from a GM or Player perspective is...

I end up playing the game a lot more. I spend more time as a player hunting options. Playing the game when not at the table thinking about what I am going to do next. As a GM its the same spending more time finding interesting rules to use / shape the next session with. Making NPCs.

When playing (well GMing) Fate.. I am pretty much only playing the game for the 3 hour session we have each week.
When GMing Pathfinder I was constantly making NPC within the system. Looking up rules.

This is both an advantage and a disadvantage depending on how much free time you have.

[Satinavian]

I could see a rules-light TTRPG using consistent magic, which maintains balance and consistency with the narrative, but that's exactly the opposite of the topic at hand. I would like to see a system that used consistent, coherent magic, while also being fairly rules heavy in a way that's fun.

Have you tried Ars Magica ? It certainly aims to be that.

[Mordar]

Weirdly I find myself disagreeing with what people are getting out of crunchy systems. That is to say I don't get the same things from them, not that people are wrong for finding that bit.

More crunch = More character options.

I find as the number of rules go down, then the more different kinds of character I can make. I find when presented with a list of options you end up being limited to those options.

If this is referring to my points (as I think it is), consider this potential rewrite: "More character crunch = more ability to mechanistically model character differences".

Imagine you have a game where the available combat skills are "Hit Things", "Hit Things with Things", "Hit Things with Stuff from a Distance". You are allowed to "skin" the skills so that "Hit Things" could be punch, kick, brawl, pro-wrestle, karate, slam dance or any other option you can come up with. However, all of them work the exact same way with the same relative potency. Your archer, mage-blaster, gunslinger, shuriken flinger and old-school-bomb-thrower are likewise all the same, mechanically. You have unlimited options that all result in the exact same mechanistic effect. The same discussion could be had for knowledge, social or other active skills as well.

Now imagine a game where there are discrete rules for 10 items within each of the "Hit..." categories. Brawling is handled differently than Dance Fighting is handled differently than expertise in Shin Kicking. One is not inherently intended to be better than another, but they are designed to have their own strengths and weaknesses while still using a system that is generalized enough to not be unwieldy. Now you could rightly say that you are limited to 30 options (10 each for the three categories), but I could respond that there are now actually 30 options instead of just 3.

That's what I meant, at least, when I was advocating that more crunch can provide more playable options.

- M

[LibraryOgre]

My big one? Modularity.

It is great to have systems to cover everything and integrate well, but I think it is just as important to have system that dis-integrate well... where removing a few things you don't care to deal with doesn't upset the entire system.

For example, if I don't care too much about encumbrance or fatigue, I don't want to have to fight the system to not care about them... I want a robust system that can survive me deeming some parts of it non-essential.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Whereas to me "simulationist" and "verisimilitude" go hand in hand, because either one is hard without the other.

But, "simulationist" and "crunchy" are orthogonal -- in theory a GM could go completely diceless and freeform, run entirely on "rulings" to use the 5e term, and if their guiding principle for each ruling was fiction-layer in-setting continuity, consistency, and coherence, if their decisions were based on cause-and-effect and the probability of outcomes at each decision point, they'd be more "simulationist" than a GM strictly abiding by a very complex set of rules that were designed for the sake of being a game and working like a game, or a very complex set of rules designed for the sake of "creating story" (and "exploring theme", meh).

The latter wouldn't make the game simulationist, though, since some other GM could go diceless-and-freeform and get the opposite result.

Fate is a good example of simulationism != verisimilitude != crunch. It's highly verisimilar since it runs entirely on "what's plausible and makes sense in the fiction" for invoking and such, but you can run it as low-crunch simulationism or high-crunch narrativism or anywhere in between depending on what you do with it, depending on how you interpret Aspects vs. skills, how heavily the group leans on making declarations, and so forth.

Now, if your stance is that simulationism and verisimilitude are highly correlated such that running things in a more simulationist manner is going to lead to better verisimilitude and lacking simulationism hurts verisimilitude, then I completely agree, but talking about how individual groups/campaigns/etc. run is different from talking about how games as a whole lean or are intended to play.

To label a game like D&D simulationist in any meaningful way, (A) it would have to be more sim than anything else, and (B) that never has been the case throughout any of the editions.

(Bolded points added.)

Hardly. Regarding point A, games can be "mostly narrativist" or "simulationist with a dash of gamism" or "too gamist for me" or whatever and you can talk about what you enjoy about those games, just like someone who likes murder mysteries might e.g. like a sci-fi mystery novel or a historical fiction mystery short story but not like a horror mystery.

And regarding point B, D&D is plenty simulationist despite all the protestations to the contrary. You said yourself that GURPS tries to be a lot more simulationist than D&D, but at the base level they really have a lot in common (at least with the core and fantasy portions of GURPS)--ability scores, hit points, narrow skills, grid-based combat (heck, the "turning radius by aerial maneuverability on a hex grid" diagram in the GURPS book is ripped right out of the 1e DMG), environment-specific rules, and so on and so forth.

Where they differ is in their level of detail and customizability, since GURPS is intended to handle tons of different settings and campaign styles while D&D is only intended to handle D&D settings (that is, the implicit D&D meta-setting upon which the published settings are variations) and archetypal-fantasy-story campaigns, and a lot of D&D's comparative lack of detail or simulation come down to that (for instance, D&D has never put much effort into simulating long-term injuries for PCs because it assumes that healing magic is common and easily accessible). It's much more accurate to say that GURPS and D&D are both simulationist and gamist but that GURPS is farther along the simulationist axis than D&D than it is to try to come up with some arbitrary dividing line where a given game is "more S than G or N" and try to divide games up appropriately.

If this is referring to my points (as I think it is), consider this potential rewrite: "More character crunch = more ability to mechanistically model character differences".

Imagine you have a game where the available combat skills are "Hit Things", "Hit Things with Things", "Hit Things with Stuff from a Distance". You are allowed to "skin" the skills so that "Hit Things" could be punch, kick, brawl, pro-wrestle, karate, slam dance or any other option you can come up with. However, all of them work the exact same way with the same relative potency. Your archer, mage-blaster, gunslinger, shuriken flinger and old-school-bomb-thrower are likewise all the same, mechanically. You have unlimited options that all result in the exact same mechanistic effect. The same discussion could be had for knowledge, social or other active skills as well.

Now imagine a game where there are discrete rules for 10 items within each of the "Hit..." categories. Brawling is handled differently than Dance Fighting is handled differently than expertise in Shin Kicking. One is not inherently intended to be better than another, but they are designed to have their own strengths and weaknesses while still using a system that is generalized enough to not be unwieldy. Now you could rightly say that you are limited to 30 options (10 each for the three categories), but I could respond that there are now actually 30 options instead of just 3.

That's what I meant, at least, when I was advocating that more crunch can provide more playable options.

- M

Agreed. Fate is often touted as this wonderful game where you can play anything you can imagine without the rules "getting in the way," but whether you're playing Superman or a ninja turtle, every game of Fate runs similarly mechanically no matter how you flavor things. The various Fate hacks tweak things a bit with the rules they add and change, but combat still basically comes down to build up Fate points -> create advantages -> attack and maneuver, for instance.

I know that works for a lot of people, but personally I can't run Fate for more than a few sessions before I need a break from the monotony and anything lighter than Fate is out of the question. If I'm going to play the same game multiple times, I want different mechanics to keep things interesting, the same way that when I play a board game like, say, Pandemic I want to use different variants and expansions every time to mix things up and I find games like Ticket to Ride repetitive and boring even with expansions that change the underlying map.

My big one? Modularity.

It is great to have systems to cover everything and integrate well, but I think it is just as important to have system that dis-integrate well... where removing a few things you don't care to deal with doesn't upset the entire system.

For example, if I don't care too much about encumbrance or fatigue, I don't want to have to fight the system to not care about them... I want a robust system that can survive me deeming some parts of it non-essential.

Agreed. Lots of people aren't a huge fan of the 3e skill system, for instance, but because it's its own thing you can easily houserule changes to it without overly affecting the rest of the game, or even wholesale replace it with something else as long as you decide what spell/feat/etc. effects like "+5 to Knowledge (Arcana) checks" and "take 10 on Hide checks" mean in the context of the new system. Same with how you can run with any set of allowed classes from "Clerics only, no alternate class features, Final Destination" to "anything goes, Dragon Magazine included" and the game won't break in half.

[ErdrickOfAliaha]

Piloting.

Whether you are at the controls of a mech, at the helm of a spacecraft, or behind the wheel of a car. Chase scenes and vehicle combat especially Need crunch. Even more so in 3d spaces. You need the game mechanics to support you so that you can know relative position, the effects of your manuevers, even taking evasive action. Without sufficient crunch, almost everything in a vehicle interaction falls apart.

To me, this was the greatest failing of FFG's Star Wars. Without hard distance numbers, it just didn't "feel" right.

[Max_Killjoy]

To avoid a long back-and-forth, I'll put my position this way. Maybe at some point D&D was trying to be "simulationist", maybe not... but if so, every edition of the game thus far has failed miserably in that regard.

It's the game that's had hyperscaling hit points, deeply abstracted combat*, mushing together evasion and resilience, and them smearing them across multiple mechanics (AC, saving throws, etc), linear resolution probability, etc.

* I forget which edition now, but in one it was directly stated that each round of combat represented a significant amount of proving, evading, feinting, parrying, etc, and that the attack rolls were simply to see if you got a hit out of all that stuff going on.

You'll never convince me that any system built the way D&D is built is successfully "simmy".

---

If this is referring to my points (as I think it is), consider this potential rewrite: "More character crunch = more ability to mechanistically model character differences".

Imagine you have a game where the available combat skills are "Hit Things", "Hit Things with Things", "Hit Things with Stuff from a Distance". You are allowed to "skin" the skills so that "Hit Things" could be punch, kick, brawl, pro-wrestle, karate, slam dance or any other option you can come up with. However, all of them work the exact same way with the same relative potency. Your archer, mage-blaster, gunslinger, shuriken flinger and old-school-bomb-thrower are likewise all the same, mechanically. You have unlimited options that all result in the exact same mechanistic effect. The same discussion could be had for knowledge, social or other active skills as well.

Now imagine a game where there are discrete rules for 10 items within each of the "Hit..." categories. Brawling is handled differently than Dance Fighting is handled differently than expertise in Shin Kicking. One is not inherently intended to be better than another, but they are designed to have their own strengths and weaknesses while still using a system that is generalized enough to not be unwieldy. Now you could rightly say that you are limited to 30 options (10 each for the three categories), but I could respond that there are now actually 30 options instead of just 3.

That's what I meant, at least, when I was advocating that more crunch can provide more playable options.

I find myself agreeing in general with this -- yet one of my favorite systems is HERO, where the distinctions in your attack(s) and other abilities are largely in how you build them within the context of the setting and the GM's campaign limits.

[Kurald Galain]

To avoid a long back-and-forth, I'll put my position this way. Maybe at some point D&D was trying to be "simulationist", maybe not... but if so, every edition of the game thus far has failed miserably in that regard.

Nah.

To any player who actually cares about simulationism, a system that tries but fails (1E,2E,3E) is preferable to a system that doesn't even pretend to try (4E,5E). Generally speaking, "failing miserably" just means that there are a few obscure corner cases where the sim breaks down; that may be important in forum discussion but it's not in actual gameplay.

[Max_Killjoy]

Nah.

To any player who actually cares about simulationism, a system that tries but fails (1E,2E,3E) is preferable to a system that doesn't even pretend to try (4E,5E). Generally speaking, "failing miserably" just means that there are a few obscure corner cases where the sim breaks down; that may be important in forum discussion but it's not in actual gameplay.

This isn't about edge cases, it's right down to the core of the system, how the mechanics work, and the results produced. To be clear, what I'm saying is that 1e, 2e, 3.x, etc, all fail miserably if taken as attempts at simulationism, for the reasons already spelled out in my previous post.

The system does not produce anything like "simmy" results unless the setting (fiction layer) is nothing like anything we'd be familiar with, let alone the quasi-medieval melange typical of D&D settings. D&D "simulates" what we'd consider a bizarro world, and no, that has nothing to do with the magic or the dragons or the orcs.


I think perhaps there's some conflation of "has crunch for everything" or "has minutely detailed crunch" with "simulationist" going on. Whether a system having rules for how to do "everything" is largely orthogonal to what a system is trying to accomplish with its rules.


I don't even care much for the whole GNS thing, GDS is less loaded and a bit more useful but still not great -- but going by what "simulationist" is supposed to mean, there's no way to call a heavily "gamist" oddly-abstracted system like any edition of D&D "simulationist" in any regard.

[jjordan]

I like the attempt at providing a balanced representation of the game setting, even when it fails, because it's easier for me to balance my modifications. I like the granularity because it allows for subtle customization of characters, settings, and environments. I like the level of non-narrative detail provided by a system because I can turn that into the narrative detail I like. And part of me simply enjoys reading a well designed system. Or criticizing a poorly designed system.

[Man_Over_Game]

I like the attempt at providing a balanced representation of the game setting, even when it fails, because it's easier for me to balance my modifications. I like the granularity because it allows for subtle customization of characters, settings, and environments. I like the level of non-narrative detail provided by a system because I can turn that into the narrative detail I like. And part of me simply enjoys reading a well designed system. Or criticizing a poorly designed system.

Well said.

Player: "I throw the guy across the edge of the portal, like a blade. How much damage do I do?"
DM: "Uh...a lot, I guess?"

This kind of stuff happens a lot, and there's often not a lot of guidance as to how to rule it.

Although, if I remember correctly, 13th Age does exactly this, although I've heard it's a nightmare to DM.

[Psyren]

I think perhaps there's some conflation of "has crunch for everything" or "has minutely detailed crunch" with "simulationist" going on. Whether a system having rules for how to do "everything" is largely orthogonal to what a system is trying to accomplish with its rules.


I don't even care much for the whole GNS thing, GDS is less loaded and a bit more useful but still not great -- but going by what "simulationist" is supposed to mean, there's no way to call a heavily "gamist" oddly-abstracted system like any edition of D&D "simulationist" in any regard.

This seems like a crazy-high bar. If the fidelity of the simulation to every or even most aspects of the real world is the only thing that matters, rather than the attempt to at least model various concepts like gravity and bleeding, then almost no tabletop game (certainly no d20 ones that I'm aware of) can be truly called "simulationist."

Nah.

To any player who actually cares about simulationism, a system that tries but fails (1E,2E,3E) is preferable to a system that doesn't even pretend to try (4E,5E). Generally speaking, "failing miserably" just means that there are a few obscure corner cases where the sim breaks down; that may be important in forum discussion but it's not in actual gameplay.

Yeah, speaking personally I value the effort much more. Especially when more recent trends have been to further abandon and and all attempts at simulating anything.

[Max_Killjoy]

This seems like a crazy-high bar. If the fidelity of the simulation to every or even most aspects of the real world is the only thing that matters, rather than the attempt to at least model various concepts like gravity and bleeding, then almost no tabletop game (certainly no d20 ones that I'm aware of) can be truly called "simulationist."

First, it's fidelity to or synchronicity with the fiction-layer, real-world-like or not -- "the real world" just makes for a useful baseline or ballpark when sans other information about the setting. That is, the results of whatever rule or system need to feel like the thing they're supposed to be representing, and produce a generally similar range and distribution of outcomes as one would expect given the facts at the time within the fiction layer. If the system routinely produces "wonky" results, creating a "wait, what?" reaction in players, then it has failed in whatever attempt it was making to be "simmy".

Second, there are degrees of success, it's not as if the entire system needs to be a physics simulator, or be intensely crunchy and detailed.

Third, correct, no d20 system -- at least of those I've ever picked up and read, or heard described, or actually played -- is going to pass muster as "simulationist" by that standard, unless one creates the setting from scratch to match the what the system does. None of the quasi-medieval melange settings that are typical to D&D count as the sort of world for which D&D would be even marginally "simmy".

It doesn't just try and fail, it fails so spectacularly at being a simmy system for those quasi-medieval melange settings that either it wasn't ever trying in the first place, or something went horribly wrong.

[Satinavian]

I've found that the "BRP" games that derived their rules from '78 [I]RuneQuest, such as Call of Cthullu, King Arthur Pendragon (which is my favorite), Ringworld, and Stormbringer, just hew closer to both the fiction, and what I'd expect "If this were real" than the other games I've played, except for maybe Champions, but that was comic book superheroes, so no "If this were real" (I also just don't like that genre as much).

That might be true for you, but it is certainly not true for me.

I don't find BRP games particularly good at simulation or versimilitude. Sure, better than every D&D, but that is a rather low bar. I have not played all of them, but for every one i played i got better results with certain more modern games. (admittantly not all of them in English). I don't think i would use BRP for anything really.

Now some kind of exception is "King Arthur Pendragon" because i have never played another game that really tries to do the same thing. But even there are many other games that do moral struggles and do them better. But they would require some tinkering to do knightly tales and knightly morals.

[Kurald Galain]

Third, correct, no d20 system -- at least of those I've ever picked up and read, or heard described, or actually played -- is going to pass muster as "simulationist" by that standard

Since no system printed meets your standard, that means that your definitions are simply not useful for discussion. Given how wildly popular 3E was, and PF still is, it should be obvious that most players have a standard wildly different from yours (and that by most players' standards, 3E/PF is one of the most simulationist games on the market).