Quote from: Maarzan;895097I assume the difference between the abstract railroad tycoon and doing it as a character should be obvious.

Well, one difference is that circuses aren't generally run by democratic council. So a realistic simulation of business is going to tend to be one guy making business decisions while the others sit around and watch. Whee.

QuoteStripped? Narrative (for a certain kind of "narrative") is just not a question. Live will give enough interesting situations without wringing it.

So if, for example, your life were a roleplaying game being played out by some hypothetical player in the sky, you think this player would be fascinated with your every moment? If so cool, but I suspect that for most people's lives you are only going to get a narrative that other people find compelling by being willing to skip over a lot of boring shit.

QuoteAnd it is not problem when you don´t find it interesting. Just label your game accordingly and we are fine. But in this discussion here the basic assumption is a simulation game and how to change it - and from the sim view seemingly for the worse.

Not exactly it isn't, no. In fact, if you have been paying attention you will find that I have strenuously questioned the very idea of a TTRPG which is 100% simulation. It is about getting a good narrative while keeping integrity to the rules of simulation when they are called upon. So for instance, by combat or any other place in which there are clearly defined areas covered by rules of simulation.

QuoteBig untapped market? Probably not but having limited head count doesn´t invalidate a taste. Nobody is forcing anyone else to join. But if you join resepct the given focus.

I'll do that. Wait... Are you saying that you are actually running a business simulation game that I can join? Or that you have run one in the past?

QuoteOk, now you want to show that you are able to show up with a real strawman and the line example? Take a cookie and be a nice boy. :tap: :tap:

You know that a strawman argument is when you create a false position for the other guy and then attack that position, right? I didn't claim you held a particular position and thus it wasn't a strawman argument. What I did was create an example of skipping boring shit even when it could be incorporated into gameplay easily and realistically.

But consider your insulting and patronizing remarks noted and incorporated into my opinion of you.

QuoteYes, all those small details you can get, is what is giving the interested player the circus atmosphere he is looking for. And that includes tent problems, supplies, advertising and too hungry monster attractions - and where applicable and in sensible doses all the other mentioned stuff, including possibly a (not overdramatized) rival.

Yeah, it's what the player is looking for. Except when it's not. Like, I can say "Fantasy world circus microeconomics  are not what the players were looking for when they said they wanted to start a circus." Since we are talking about hypothetical players, it is a bit up in the air as to which of us is right. But my money, as usual, is on me.

Quote from: Manzanaro;895082"Interesting" means "interesting". How do you expect me to define the word? How do you define it? If someone finds something interesting that thing is interesting to them, simple as that.

Clearly some people (who aren't you) find the business or economic side of game worlds interesting. If you don't, then focus on something you do find interesting. Since you didn't set any parameters on what interesting means, you shouldn't be surprised when you end up with suggestions based on everyone else's definitions of what is interesting, most of which don't appear to agree with yours.

QuoteA simulation can be interesting, but unless you are relying upon pure happenstance, it tends to benefit from a guiding hand to determine what parts of the simulation get focused on and how the results of that simulation are presented in a narrative fashion.

Thus speaks the non-simulationist or the would be author. If you are running a sandbox and the players choose to do things they find boring, that isn't the fault of the simulation. It's the fault of the players for choosing to play in a sandbox and failing to try anything interesting and the fault of the GM for running a sandbox for players who don't want to play in one.

QuoteNotice that, "We want to form a circus," does not necessarily correspond to, "We want to engage in a circus business simulation based on your particular notions of how to simulate such a thing. We want to wallow in economic data and trivial business decisions."

I never said that it necessarily did correspond. That was one thing among many things I listed (off the top of my head with zero pre-planning) as related to simulating forming and running a circus. That you focused on the one thing you found boring instead of something you found interesting says more about you then it does about whether the business of show business is interesting.

QuoteI expect that they were probably hoping it would not be boring. What do you think?

I think we don't know what the players thought since this is some half-assed example you dreamed up and you didn't bother to tell us what the players' plan was for forming a circus.

QuoteAnd I haven't suggested throwing in random ninja attacks have I?

Is that really a false characterization of what you want to do? You've been notably vague about what you find interesting. You specifically suggested a need to depart from your existing simulation to make things more interesting. If you were satisfied with the play from simulation there would be no point to your thread.

So if not ninjas attack, what un-simulationist circus action would you suggest?

QuoteOr I guess the GM could make the smuggling business just as boring as he made the circus business, and hope that sooner or later the players will give up and go back to dungeon crawling.

Just because you find business boring doesn't mean everyone does. As Maarzan mentioned he likes that side of gaming. He's hardly alone in that.

But instead of guessing about what the players want to do or what they find interesting the GM could ask the players. You know that would be the first thing I suggested the GM do when the players decided to do something other than what the GM pitched to them in the first place. Ask the players what the plan is for forming a circus (or for starting a smuggling operation or for whatever unexpected thing the players want to do). Asking the players is the thing you ignored and continue to ignore.

QuoteWhat makes you say that, Bren?

You've said you aren't interested in the business side of things, which leaves out expenses, revenues, and profits. It probably also leaves out taxation. And fortification building. You've also said you aren't interested in the logistics of travel or the care and feeding of the beasts of burden or other critters (which leaves out a big chunk of the realistic aspects of ship operations, hiking, riding, caravans, and travel in general). Previously you've said you find shopping, purchasing, and interacting with shopkeepers boring. Now, so far as I've noticed, you haven't specifically said that you find domain or demesne management boring, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if you did. It's hard to imagine someone who doesn't give a shit about business expense and revenue getting real excited about crop yields. Maybe you find minting and currency exchange interesting, but I doubt that too as that all seems like too much business details.

I don't know that you've mentioned anything other than emo drama and possibly combat that you do find interesting.

QuoteSimulation isn't my concern? But Bren, according to your definition of simulation, isn't every single roleplaying game a simulation??

Nope. As I've said. Lots of GMs and players aren't particularly interested in either realism or simulation.

QuoteManzanaro authors stuff into the game = making up stuff on the fly without taking the time or making the effort to have the details make sense or to use an abstract method of simulation

Yes that does sound a lot like this.

Quote from: Manzanaro;895019So what I will VERY OFTEN DO, rather than constantly stop the game so I can do research on a given topic, is simply wing it: glossing over details that I find uninteresting

Quote from: Maarzan;895092It is not a strawman and I see your answer as an example of you seriously not understanding the problem. Your idea of interesting looks limited to dramatic stories and thus completely miss that some people find this "dry business simulation" interesting. Which leads to you suggesting elements that can seriously disrupt their kind of fun and is exactly the risk when someone steps into a simulation game with the intent to "fix it"/ "get a good narrative from it".

Exactly. That's why I suggested that it was not possible to help Manzanaro figure out how to make simulation more interesting since he refused to explain what he found interesting and from the little he did say, it appeared that what he liked, others disliked or disliked the side affects of how he wants to get what he likes.

Quote from: Manzanaro;895102Well, one difference is that circuses aren't generally run by democratic council. So a realistic simulation of business is going to tend to be one guy making business decisions while the others sit around and watch. Whee.

Oh so now you are an expert on circus operations?

A partnership or joint stock company in which all or most of the PCs are investors/owners is one easy solution to the who runs the show. That you appear not to even have considered either option is part of why you don’t seem interested in simulating anything except combat.

QuoteI'll do that. Wait... Are you saying that you are actually running a business simulation game that I can join? Or that you have run one in the past?

I believe he said he ran a mercenary company and was the castellan or steward of a castle. I assume he meant as a player.

Quote from: Manzanaro;895102You know that a strawman argument is when you create a false position for the other guy and then attack that position, right?

So something like this then?

QuoteSo if, for example, your life were a roleplaying game being played out by some hypothetical player in the sky, you think this player would be fascinated with your every moment? If so cool, but I suspect that for most people's lives you are only going to get a narrative that other people find compelling by being willing to skip over a lot of boring shit.

The man he is made of straw.

QuoteBut consider your insulting and patronizing remarks noted and incorporated into my opinion of you.

But earlier you said you wanted to be insulted. Now you seem offended. I do wish you’d make up your mind.

QuoteYeah, it's what the player is looking for. Except when it's not. Like, I can say "Fantasy world circus microeconomics  are not what the players were looking for when they said they wanted to start a circus." Since we are talking about hypothetical players, it is a bit up in the air as to which of us is right. But my money, as usual, is on me.

Or we could ask the player. But why waste time even trying to figure out what the players wants are when Manzanaro the GM can do this instead.

Quote from: Manzanaro;895093move on to what I find to be more interesting

After all what does it matter what the players find interesting. Manzanaro knows what interesting is. He just can’t define it. :rolleyes:

Bren, check back through that post and see if you can find all the places where you weave in little insults. Can't find any? If not I suspect you don't have a lot of friends and can't understand why.

Here is how to handle insults with integrity: Bren, you are a fucking idiot. See? Just be upfront about it.

Are you seriously back to demanding that I give you an exhaustive list of what I find interesting? Are you really that stupid? Jesus.

As usual, your entire post is riddled with inaccuracies and unsupported assertions, and subdivided into such a fractured mess that any attempt at categorical response would be ridiculous. You ignore entirely things that you can't come up with some pithy bullshit response for, such as my asking you what YOU mean by simulation.

Seriously, I am back to full bore insulting you until you fuck off again. I'm sure that will last.

Just to respond to one particular piece of fatuous bullshit, though. I say that a simulation requires a guiding hand and you respond by calling me a 'would be author'? Seriously, you fuckhead? So you don't accept my statement? You simulate everything? Skip over nothing? You track calorie intake and expenditure? You make players list every little bit of crap they are carrying with them and how they carry it? You track what they have for dinner? When they bring back treasure from the dungeon you track the impact on the economy and the price of gold?

Because, assuming you don't track everything in your gameworld? Than you actually do agree with me that simulation requires focus and a guiding hand. You are just too dense or stubborn to admit you agree, just like you are too dense or stubborn to admit that you are not even using your own shit definition of the word 'simulation'.

EDIT: And I didn't even get to the second post, which is just sheer twattery through and through, like you claiming I am making a straw man response when I respond to maarzan's claim that "Life will give enough interesting situations without wringing it," by asking whether that is true of his own life.

Quote from: Manzanaro;895111Are you seriously back to demanding that I give you an exhaustive list of what I find interesting?

No. I suggested that your inability to define or describe what you mean by “interesting” causes you to get a lot of suggestions in this thread for doing things you appear not to find interesting. That you then choose to focus on the things you don't find interesting instead of on the things you do find interesting is both stupid and perverse. But stupidity and perverse behavior is your modus operandi.

QuoteYou ignore entirely things that you can't come up with some pithy bullshit response for, such as my asking you what YOU mean by simulation.

I covered this hundreds of posts ago when you first started using your narrow, mechanistic definition of simulation. I see no need to again try teaching you to sing this particular hymn.

QuoteI say that a simulation requires a guiding hand and you respond by calling me a 'would be author'?

When you said that you author something outside of your simulation I assumed you mean that you authored something. If you didn’t mean that why the fuck did you use the word “author”?

And now Manzanro is back to his temper tantrum tactics: insults and metaphorically tossing his toys out of his pram. Oops there goes his binky.

Quote from: Bren;895113No. I suggested that your inability to define or describe what you mean by “interesting” causes you to get a lot of suggestions in this thread for doing things you appear not to find interesting. That you then choose to focus on the things you don't find interesting instead of on the things you do find interesting is both stupid and perverse. But stupidity and perverse behavior is your modus operandi.

I covered this hundreds of posts ago when you first started using your narrow, mechanistic definition of simulation. I see no need to again try teaching you to sing this particular hymn.

When you said that you author something outside of your simulation I assumed you mean that you authored something. If you didn’t mean that why the fuck did you use the word “author”?

And now Manzanro is back to his temper tantrum tactics: insults and metaphorically tossing his toys out of his pram. Oops there goes his binky.

News flash Bren. I don't want advice from you. I seriously think you are a fucking idiot with his head so far up his own ass that he is incapable of even processing opinions different from his own.

If your word had any fucking integrity whatsoever, you would fuck off like you claimed to be doing pages and pages ago. But it doesn't, does it?

The organization of the circus is up to those that started it I would assume. I see no urgend, circus inherent need for one sole person to call all shots.

There is nothing in a simulation that disallows fast forward winding. For a simulation it is only relevant that step to step is done correctly and then everyone at the desk can call for a stop and let the table focus on something he/she is interested in.

Hinting that others play that moronic second by second way is a strawman.

Forget "good" narrative. This is a relevant element only for some players, not all and especially not in a simulation focussed game. Everyone else is taking it as it comes and has other priorities.

I had games with a foundation in kinds of business simulation: castle and realm building in several forms, running mercenary units and running a kind of inn, growing into a small settlement too at one point.
Not every player was primarily interested in doing the numbers (usually a minority, like in the real world)- but you also need some henchmen to run this business, sometimes even called baron or president or colonel... .

If you make exaggerated, out of the air asumptions about how other people play to attack this way this is a clear strawman.

While microeconomics is one part of circus management you also seemed to show massive disinterest in several other elements like tent building or animal care. So there is few left for a simulational look at a circus when we drop everything you seem to consider "not interesting". And this simulational look of these hypothetical players gets assumed by this discussions theme, where they started as being an example for.

And the sceptism against your "guiding hand" to make things "interesting" comes from what you show as the underlying motivation for this dabbling and your complete disregard to or inability to comprehend the here assumed guiding theme of the game - being simulationistic.

Quote from: Maarzan;895133I had games with a foundation in kinds of business simulation: castle and realm building in several forms, running mercenary units and running a kind of inn, growing into a small settlement too at one point.

Out of idle curiosity, what system(s) were used for the campaigns where those activities took place?

Quote from: Bren;895134Out of idle curiosity, what system(s) were used for the campaigns where those activities took place?

The first one was D&D, the realm building was done several times in (modified) AD&D using the D&D green box rules as realm management inspiration and also in a kind of Homebrew.
The mercenary units where AD&D, Rolemaster and Battletech.
The inn was also modified AD&D.

Quote from: Maarzan;895133There is nothing in a simulation that disallows fast forward winding. For a simulation it is only relevant that step to step is done correctly and then everyone at the desk can call for a stop and let the table focus on something he/she is interested in.

Well, do you understand the difference between "fast forwarding" and "skipping"? I am guessing you don't. Skipped time is not simulated. Fast forwarded time is.

QuoteHinting that others play that moronic second by second way is a strawman.

I didn't hint anything of the sort.

QuoteForget "good" narrative. This is a relevant element only for some players, not all and especially not in a simulation focussed game. Everyone else is taking it as it comes and has other priorities.

Forget good narrative? Did you read the title of this thread?

Oh, I get it. You, like Bren, are here to thread crap. Now that I understand that I can safely ignore anything further you have to say, including the rest of this post.

EDIT: My bad. I almost missed this gem:

Quote...you also seemed to show massive disinterest in ... tent building

Priceless.

This is exactly why skipping is not OK in similationist games.

In the title there was the condition "from rules of simulation". When you deviate from the "rules of simulation" part, you are the one leaving the base of this thread.


Or to sum up 100+ pages:

If you don´t tell us positive what is a "good narrative" for you, we can only use our definition of "good" and the widest definition of comaptibe narrative and then the answer is "nothing needed to do, things are fine, thanks", which is probably not helping you, when you have seen the need to open the thread in the first place.

But we know what is needed from the simulation side and we can and will call "stop" when you are deviating from the simulation part of the headline.

I am going to assume you are arguing in good faith and actually walk you through this.

Quote from: Maarzan;895140This is exactly why skipping is not OK in similationist games.

In the title there was the condition "from rules of simulation". When you deviate from the "rules of simulation" part, you are the one leaving the base of this thread.

So you agree with me that skipping time is "not OK" in simulationist games. Which is to say that if we skip time we are not simulating it.

So when you make some encounter checks and say, "Okay, three days pass as you travel with nothing happening," did you fast forward time or skip it?

You skipped it. How can we test this? Just ask yourself any number of very simple questions. For instance, "What conversations took place between the PCs over these 3 days that just passed?" And, of course, you don't know, because that time was skipped. If it was fast forwarded we could review events all along the compressed timeline.

RPGs tend to be chock full of such time skips, with some exceptions like combat or dungeon crawls during which there may be no skipped time.

So, it is not so much that I 'deviate from rules of simulation' as that not all content in my games springs from rules of simulation. Not everything that happens is a product of rules of simulation. The same holds true for your games, I promise you.

But when I do refer to the rules of simulation? I abide by their results. I don't fudge the dice. I don't reinterpret the rules on the fly to get results that I want.

Go back and look at post #998 in this thread, which I expect you somehow missed and should clarify a lot of your confusion over what I am talking about in this thread.

Of course, this assumes that you are legitimately trying to understand me and not just thread crap.

EDIT: Let me add a further point. You accuse me of "deviating from the rules of simulation"? Well let me ask you... Do you have a mechanic for tracking when characters need to piss and shit? No? Why not? Don't they piss and shit? So you are "showing a massive disinterest" in when characters piss and shit, and that's fine, but if I show a "massive disinterest" in tent building, I am deviating from rules of simulation?

Nonsense.

The practical difference is how the in world situation is assumed to flow in between and that in a simulation you expect that you can always zoom in at any point of time and find a fitting situation for any element part of the simulation focus.

If necessary i.e. someone is interested the content gets generated on demand and by the usual framework (which probably shows a difference to narrative framing in that it is problematic to jump backwards afterwards, because the system is free and thus would probably overwrite what has already seems to habe been established.)
If someone is interested in these conversations in simulation, he mentions it and then we fall back in detailtime, if necessary doing a short, abstract step back.

So also here: the difference is not in what it roughly looks on the outside, but on how you procede and what principles you are following and what details you are generating.

In a simulation you would expect that somebody says "Nothings special interesting here" and then based on the current condition the situation gets more abstractivly forwarded according simulation standards until some situation comes by which someone gets interested again - which necessiates at least some information about what happens and probably urges some questions now and then fitting to the interests of the attending players/characters.
In a narrative - if I understand correctly - the scene would be closed and then the next scene would be set by whatever the responsible participiants think is "cool", with only casual attention to logic and probabilities if it sounds "cool" enough.

And it might be that in your games "not everything" springs from simulation intents ( or inevitable real world concerns), but then your games are not simulationist at their core and thus not fitting the thread themselves.

#998 sounds like at least a signal of good will, but I am not sure how it will fare in the light of "better story", when the details that make a simulation living are so uninteresting for you and the temptation for big drama is urging (like the in my eyes at this point overshot rival circus)

Thus while you have certain liberties for "seeds" in your simulation (especially at the start) the setting of these seeds (especially if introduced inside a certain sensitive interaction circle around the focus bearing characters) also has to follow some simulatoric guidelines or the setting is disbalanced from the start on.

Well, I can't sort much of that out, to be honest. Seems like a lot of hedging and qualifiers based upon your own personal definitions rather than anything substantial.

I mean, you still skipped it even if you can go back later and fill stuff in... In other words, if you skip an hour and assume two characters are friends, but then decide to go back and play out that hour and find that they had a bitter argument during that hour and hate each other now? Pretty clearly skipping that hour gives you different results than compressing it. Right?

So yeah. Basically, if my games aren't simulationist at their core? Neither are yours pal. What now?

If you continue and then go back sometime later surely. This is why in a sim game you would (need to) directly focus on the critical dialogue and the need to give everyone the opportunity to set focus.

And if those are personal definitions, my failure to represent general definitions or your lack of understanding will probably have to be decided by some more other readers.

Currently I am assuming the last part.