Quote from: JoeNuttall;884524I meant that applying the term "simulation" to "genre simulation" would mean that for every aspect X you want to achieve in a game you could say it was an "X simulation" and thus water down the term to be meaningless.

That's exactly why I prefer the GDS, which doesn't allow such use of the term from what I remember (and from how we've been using it:)).

Quote from: AsenRG;884520I disagree, but more on the how when I'm not on the phone.

And I promised to address that. So here I am:D!
BTW, the following is going to be long, and words in it are used with the specific meaning I'm used to attributing to them. You've been warned;).

So...the assertion I disagreed with is that "if you use simulation, you can't give a meaningful death to everyone".
But alas, I must specify what I mean by "meaningful".
For any event to be meaningful in an RPG session, I believe it should fit at least one of the following criteria.

• At least one (surviving) PC, a (surviving) NPC or a group of NPCs should have their lives impacted by it. Hint, the survivors don't need to have been at the scene;).
• Someone must be willing to die to make it happen, or prevent it from happening.
• Someone must be willing to die to avenge it happening, or to give you the highest praise and rewards to those that made it happen.
• It might be flashy, or the result of a hard struggle in which the party that made it happen suffered greatly as well.
• It might achieve some other result that benefits the other PCs, some NPCs, and/or hurts your enemies.

Using these criteria, I say: if you don't want meaningless deaths, have PCs that are connected to the setting!
That's it, really.

No, really, think about it for a moment. OK, let's use Batman as an example.

Batman's death would easily check all of the 5 points.

Gotham would be affected, and all criminals would benefit.
The Joker would be affected, especially if it wasn't him that killed Batman. Robin would be sorry he didn't die instead. Him and Batgirl would be ready to die to avenge it. Check on the first three counts.
The other two are situational, but really, do you see the perpetrator walking away easily? I'd suggest crawling away.
And if Batman died, but saved another family? He'd probably be glad for the exchange.

And here comes the thing: if your PCs have a web of connections - which they should have in most settings - the murder is going to have impact. So, in a modern setting, you were shot by Nameless Gangbanger #3? So what he's nameless? Police will investigate. Journals will write about it. Residents will be scared to go out. Another PC might swear vengeance on the whole gang (and that's why I said it's important that other people in the group have some feel for the dramatic, or at least play characters that do have that quality).
It's not a modern setting, you say? Bitch, please...
The locals will investigate (because if not, the community owes a penalty to the local lord for unresolved murder).
The gossipers will talk about it, in backyards, on sun-lit benches, in the tavern.
Residents will not let kids out, and will try to move in groups even harder than they were trying before. Tell them they notice the difference, because it should be obvious to people from that setting!

Caveat: the same should be true if you regularly leave bodies. But that was on the Referee since we said "simulation". Simulation can't exist as an only physics-simulator, you need something (preferably a human, aided or not by a system) to simulate the society, too.

Then we come to the fight. I don't remember what game was giving the advice to not just say "you missed" when your fighter attacks and misses, but I suspect it was Sengoku. Say "your enemy avoids the first strike, and then parries the reverse, and jumps desperately back and to the side to avoid the follow-up cut" (I made the sequence up, but it's a basic kesa-giri, do, tsuki). Or, maybe resolve the whole round before narrating it? An attack If we're doing a simulation, a trained fighter will do at least as much!
And if we are resolving the whole round, maybe he missed and the enemy did as well? Describe the enemy interrupting him with a well-timed attack of his own. That requires more skill and aggression. Remember: unnamed=/=unskilled.
And it hurts less if you lose from a skilled enemy. Call it foreshadowing, if you wish.


Meaningless PC deaths? What do you mean;)?

Quote from: Manzanaro;885502A good book makes you feel like it is governed by rules of simulation.

I don't actually think that's true about most books.

Quote from: Manzanaro;885502When a protagonist wins a fight we are supposed to find the narrated fight to give the same results as a simulation of the fight would give.

I don't think it's even true about fights in books. I prefer it if the fight's believable but I'm rarely fooled into thinking the author is a disinterested party in the plot.

Quote from: Manzanaro;885502In an RPG we really can have many things governed by rules of simulation. But not everything. Any RPG is going to have elements that are authored rather than being the results of a process of simulation,

To the degree that GMs invent the world, and determine the likely behaviour of NPCs, yes they are an author. But that has little to do with the simulation aspect of the game - in the main it is an orthogonal concern. Where they do intersect it is good to employ techniques to stop your role as GM controlling the plot. For example random encounters, or rolling to see which choice an NPC makes, or randomising how wide that chasm actually is.

Quote from: Manzanaro;885502and even the way we relate the results of the simulation can benefit from good narrative techniques, as opposed to say, "I hit for 4." "He misses." "I hit for 9."

These are good, but I wouldn't in this context call them narrative techniques as they don't have any relationship to the other uses of the term narrative.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;885601I don't actually think that's true about most books.

He said "good books", not "most books". These are obviously different categories.

QuoteI don't think it's even true about fights in books. I prefer it if the fight's believable but I'm rarely fooled into thinking the author is a disinterested party in the plot.

Again, most books don't get the qualifier "good", so of course it would be a rare event;)

Quote from: Manzanaro;885502Actually what I said was "often some or all of these things are not actually possible in play." Do you see how this is different than, "Claiming none were possible?" You attributing things to me that I have not said is a pretty cheap way to score points.

That some solutions may not possible is (a) obvious and (b) irrelevant, because so long as some ways (other than standing there and fighting to the death) are possible, players should use one of the ways that are possible instead of standing there and fighting to the death. Therefore the only situation that invalidates my suggestion that players should find some way other than fighting to the death to deal with encounters is when there is no other way. Which, as I said, should be rare.

If your point was that sometimes despite their best efforts nothing succeeds and some PCs die.* That's a necessary consequence of running the game as a simulation that is remotely realistic.

QuoteAnyway, as far as many of your proposed solutions go, many of them seem to come down to GM fiat.

The possible solutions I listed have real-world and RPG precedents. As such they should be a part of a simulation and far less a case of GM fiat than any narrative techniques one might choose since narrative techniques are entirely GM fiat. Personally, I tend to use what seems a reasonable rule of thumb and/or a randomization process. So a nice juicy steak will be likely to distract a fierce dog while a handful of coins will be likely to distract a couple of casually pursuing peasants. But I'll probably set a probability based on the situation and then roll for the reaction since the dog might just have eaten or the peasants might have a cruel overlord who would confiscate any hard currency before they could spend it.

QuoteI wonder how often the GMs considerations are based upon a painstakingly accurate simulation of the proposed action, as opposed to being based on whether the GM wants to let the PCs die and end the campaign?

That would depend on the GM. As I said, the possible solutions have real-world precedents so they can and often should be part of a simulation. Why should the possibility of the simulation being less than painstakingly accurate be a concern when your alternative solution seems to be the complete GM fiat of employing a narrative technique?

QuoteStupid ass group. It's always their fault! It could never be the fault of a random encounter system generating a legitimately lethal situation or anything like that.

Always? No. But if they choose to fight to the death when there are other alternatives then it is their choice. If that is their default, preferred, or only choice then it most likely is the fault of the stupid ass players, GM, or all of the above.

QuoteOr is the 'artificial' part that I started following events for that PC well before the actual attack occurred?

Narrative techniques are artificial. They are intentionally chosen by humans for their intended effect. I have no interest in continuing a semantic discussion about the word "artificial." If the term artificial bothers you, pretend I used some other term you like better.

QuoteIn simulation you can't skip time and still meaningfully call it a simulation.

You don't skip time, you effectively speed up time by skipping activities that are not materially relevant to simplify the simulation. Board games, for example, do this all the time via the abstraction of grouping into units (with the size of the unit based on the scale and scope of the game) and using turns of some fixed length rather than dealing with everything on a man-to-man, bullet-by-bullet, liter of gasoline consumed per X meters traveled, and nano-second by nano-second level of activity.

QuoteThe only equivalent a GM has to this is rolling the dice faster, as you and I have both agreed.

I agree that the GM rolling dice faster is not a viable way of moving time forward in the game. I don't agree that it is impossible to simplify the simulation via abstraction or that changing the degree of abstraction makes a simulation impossible.

QuoteEDIT: This relates to the entire premise of this thread. A good book makes you feel like it is governed by rules of simulation.

We also don't agree on what is necessary or sufficient for a good book.

QuoteThis almost completely mirrors my own example which you call out as being so different than your own style.

Almost completely mirror, except for the complete absence of my selecting what activities to play out based on narrative techniques.

QuoteI guess your point of difference is simply that you would choose to play things out from the actual moment that the assassins attacked? Jumping in to see what the PCs were doing prior to the attack is what you find objectionable?

No. And no.

Quote from: AsenRG;885568So...the assertion I disagreed with is that "if you use simulation, you can't give a meaningful death to everyone".
But alas, I must specify what I mean by "meaningful".
For any event to be meaningful in an RPG session, I believe it should fit at least one of the following criteria.

• At least one PC, an NPC or a group of NPCs should have their lives impacted by it.

Since death necessarily impacts the deceased, you have trivially defined a meaningful death to include all deaths.

I do prefer (both as a player and a GM) games in which PCs are connected to the world they inhabit. So I agree that's a good thing.

Quote from: AsenRG;885616He said "good books", not "most books". These are obviously different categories.

I don't think it is true of most good books.




* If you don't want PCs to die there are a number of recognized solutions.
(1) The PCs just can't die, no matter what. In situations where death would reasonably occur, for some reason the PCs (like the heroes in some TV shows, movies, books, comics, etc.) simply get knocked out, wake up as the sole survivors on the battlefield, are taken prisoner, flee, escape, the dead person was a double, it was all a dream, etc.
(2) As per (1) but the PCs can die if the player chooses to have them die. For some reason.
(3) The players have some meta game currency like Hero Points that allow them to overrule, reroll, or otherwise mitigate bad die rolls to avoid death.
(4) The PCs have some in-game explanation for avoiding death – divine intervention, resurrection spells, reincarnation, multiple clones, the world is really a computer program so death can be reset.
(5) The GM fudges/cheats to prevent PC death.

Quote from: Bren;885677Since death necessarily impacts the deceased, you have trivially defined a meaningful death to include all deaths.

No, since I mean "the surviving PCs or NPCs". Apologies if that wasn't clear. I'll edit it to avoid further misunderstandings.

QuoteI do prefer (both as a player and a GM) games in which PCs are connected to the world they inhabit. So I agree that's a good thing.

Glad we agree on that.

QuoteI don't think it is true of most good books.

Our opinions obviously differ. Maybe our definitions on what "a good book" is vary as well:).
Of course, most books I'd call good actually contain very little or zero combat, too.

Quote* If you don't want PCs to die there are a number of recognized solutions.
(1) The PCs just can't die, no matter what. In situations where death would reasonably occur, for some reason the PCs (like the heroes in some TV shows, movies, books, comics, etc.) simply get knocked out, wake up as the sole survivors on the battlefield, are taken prisoner, flee, escape, the dead person was a double, it was all a dream, etc.
(2) As per (1) but the PCs can die if the player chooses to have them die. For some reason.
(3) The players have some meta game currency like Hero Points that allow them to overrule, reroll, or otherwise mitigate bad die rolls to avoid death.
(4) The PCs have some in-game explanation for avoiding death – divine intervention, resurrection spells, reincarnation, multiple clones, the world is really a computer program so death can be reset.
(5) The GM fudges/cheats to prevent PC death.

Sometimes, any of the first four are called for. And sometimes, the PC just bites it, and you can try to show the impact that death should have.
Of course, the fifth solution is never called for, as far as I'm concerned;).


Unrelated to the above, another thread made me think about this.
In some games, you have to simulate different people being completely in different leagues (did anyone say "Exalted"). It might be due to the system scaling fast with advancement, might be a setting conceit.
My argument is, you should use this, by making it a part of the universe. Don't allow any advancement that moves you into a new "power tier" - that might be the advancement to Levels 7, Level 9 and Level 13 for old-school D&D, or whatever fits the setting and system (I would nominate levels 7 and 17 for D&D3+/PF).

The passing from one tier to the next should be marked, and explained, by a specific event, kinda like an initiation ritual (which should require a teacher most of the time). Mind, I'm not talking about 3 years of normal training. I'm talking about life-changing events here!

If it's going to be training, let them be trained by the witch-warrior Scatha, and fight her sworn enemy.
If it's going to be an event as part of the campaign, let them bathe in the blood of a dying dragon, or eat his heart. Or let them become chosens of a god or goddess, getting part of his or her power.
If you want it item-based, let them find the sword of a legendary hero.

Next step: use this as a feature of the setting. How many people could get the blessing of a dying dragon, steal a magic sword from an invisible demon guardian, become the best student of a warrior-witch, be the sons of cheating gods, or anything of the sort?

The answer is probably going to be obvious in the setting, and so will the consequences of having that many, or that few, people with high power stomping around.

For clarification, I meant that most books (and indeed most good books) of any genre do not give an impression that they are governed by rules of simulation. Events in books are often there to facilitate a plot, or to provide an allegory, or there's a hidden agenda of the author, or there's a fatalism/inevitability/destiny, or it's for stylistic reasons, or as foreshadowing, or there's genre conventions, or it's for comic effect, or any other number of reasons.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;885745For clarification, I meant that most books (and indeed most good books) of any genre do not give an impression that they are governed by rules of simulation. Events in books are often there to facilitate a plot, or to provide an allegory, or there's a hidden agenda of the author, or there's a fatalism/inevitability/destiny, or it's for stylistic reasons, or as foreshadowing, or there's genre conventions, or it's for comic effect, or any other number of reasons.

Sees to me that when events and outcomes of book plots seem contrived for the purpose of a transparent agenda, that it tends to feel forced and weak, in similar ways to how a transparent railroad RPG can feel that way.

I'd say the better stories tend to achieve an effect where the narrative may have chosen to tell certain things for a thematic purpose, and to have left out or glossed over other events, but not that the author is forcing an outcome because of their agenda. That undermines the point. Even in the most horribly pedantic moralizing tales, it's a fail if it comes across as the narrator just chose to make the story go that way because they wanted to make a point - it's far more effective if the narrator succeeds in at least seeming to be choosing to tell a story that actually happened or was caused by God or Fate or because of some truth about the nature of the universe, or they chose an exception that contrasted with the general rule.

The main distinction is that a narrator is picking an interesting or illustrative tale from what happened (for invented stories, at least in the conceit of the story), from all the stories the universe offered. In a game, we get to explore and generate events in the present, and while we can choose to play with predestiny or force certain outcomes to be inevitable or more likely for whatever reason, that conflicts with game's offer to really relate to the situation the game is about (unless we specifically want to play a game with fate or Hollywood script logic, but then we're simulating fate or Hollywood script logic).

If we want good stories from our games, we can think back on past play, and pick and choose and embellish in the stories we choose to tell about what happened.

One GM I know ran a very over-the-top heroic campaign for a year or more, and then when the PCs were older, decided to retcon that the gameplay actually represented the bardic exaggerated version, not what had happened in reality. That seemed pretty interesting, and filled in a lot of glaring logic/balance holes, enabling a new phase of the campaign to be run in the same world, which otherwise would've been pretty ridiculous given all the silly excessive stuff that had happened.

(P.S. I think it's funny how this thread got exiled to this sub-forum. Hehe.)

Quote from: Lunamancer;884478...
"Meaningless death" is an easy example. Spoiler warning, the death of

Spoiler

Derek Reese :jaw-dropping:

in the Sarah Connor Chronicles is the exact opposite of what's often thought of as a dramatically meaningful death. It was quick, sudden, out of nowhere, very matter of fact, no special framing. Yet I felt it had great impact precisely because of that.

Similarly, there are authors, including well-known famous ones, who when they write, they are specifically and consciously seeking to free the characters from the tyranny of the narrative. So certain narrative styles are simulations of sorts. Those happen to be the narrative styles I prefer, so as far as the topic here goes, there's little to nothing to it.

Best-selling Sci-Fi author (and game designer) David Weber is another example. I mainly read his books for the detailed simulationist descriptions of tactical combat, and the way the violence seems rather random and how major characters often get killed and maimed in random unexpected ways, where the themes around that are things like death is fairly random - use tactics that make sense to minimize your chances of disaster, and then themes about how you cope with what happened to happen. I get the impression he often is rolling up the results using simulation game rules, though maybe he might occasionally throw out a result or two and re-simulate till the results are something he likes. Part of the reason I like this is because it soothes my disappointment at the many painful cases by other authors and directors, where they do seem to be forcing outcomes and my reaction tends to be to just estimate the order of magnitude of how ridiculously improbable and forced it was that their main characters even survived. Bleh.

Quote...
The pattern that needs breaking is the false belief that simply because the RPG does produce stories that wouldn't work as books or movies that those stories are somehow broken and that the RPG fails to produce compelling narrative.

Yes. As I've written several times now, you can make a great narrative story from a game by looking for what parts make a good story, and then re-telling just that part of the story in a narrative-crafted way... the way storytellers do when they tell stories about real life. That way, you don't have narrative wishes screwing up the cause & effect of your game world.

Quote from: Skarg;885765Sees to me that when events and outcomes of book plots seem contrived for the purpose of a transparent agenda, that it tends to feel forced and weak, in similar ways to how a transparent railroad RPG can feel that way.

Out of the various methods I described, that's also the one I dislike. I don't like most of Jimmy McGovern's stuff because of his hidden agendas, and I strongly dislike allegory. Several books I was forced to read at school suffered from these problems big time.

In general it's not so overt as to be a railroad. For an example of a method I do like, I like the end of the LOTR with Gollum, which is all about fate.

A lot of books wrap things up with a clever ending, which is interesting and impressive but not much sense of simulation.

As a completely different example Sherlock Holmes obviously dies at the Reichenbach Falls because the author didn't want to write any more Holmes stories.

Yeah, Skarg put it exceptionally well. I am referring to fiction in which the flow of events is critical to enjoyment. Not so much James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon. Although now that I think about it... Make that not so much Charles Dickens or Shakespeare.

Perhaps I should have said better GENRE fiction, as much genre fiction is highly and obviously convention bound.

I've actually posited that a given set of RPG rules can be looked at as a very precise set of genre conventions.

Quote from: Skarg;885771Best-selling Sci-Fi author (and game designer) David Weber is another example. I mainly read his books for the detailed simulationist descriptions of tactical combat, and the way the violence seems rather random and how major characters often get killed and maimed in random unexpected ways, where the themes around that are things like death is fairly random - use tactics that make sense to minimize your chances of disaster, and then themes about how you cope with what happened to happen. I get the impression he often is rolling up the results using simulation game rules, though maybe he might occasionally throw out a result or two and re-simulate till the results are something he likes. Part of the reason I like this is because it soothes my disappointment at the many painful cases by other authors and directors, where they do seem to be forcing outcomes and my reaction tends to be to just estimate the order of magnitude of how ridiculously improbable and forced it was that their main characters even survived. Bleh.

I fully support that part of this post:).

QuoteYes. As I've written several times now, you can make a great narrative story from a game by looking for what parts make a good story, and then re-telling just that part of the story in a narrative-crafted way... the way storytellers do when they tell stories about real life. That way, you don't have narrative wishes screwing up the cause & effect of your game world.

That's possible, too, and I've done that! I just happen to think it's not the only way;).

Yeah, I honestly don't get people making the distinction that an RPG only creates a narrative if you tell someone about it later or write it down.

Apparently they feel like "I run across the room and attack the orc," is not narrative, but "I RAN across the room and attacked the orc" is??

Quote from: Manzanaro;885857Yeah, I honestly don't get people making the distinction that an RPG only creates a narrative if you tell someone about it later or write it down.

Apparently they feel like "I run across the room and attack the orc," is not narrative, but "I RAN across the room and attacked the orc" is??

Because a narrative is about stringing those individual events into a coherent whole, a story.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;885861Because a narrative is about stringing those individual events into a coherent whole, a story.

Except it isn't. It's a very broad term which encompasses a lot more than what most people consider a story.

I mean, what is the critical mass? If, "I run across the room and attack the guy" isn't a narrative, how many more sentences do you figure it needs before it becomes one?

Quote from: Manzanaro;885857Yeah, I honestly don't get people making the distinction that an RPG only creates a narrative if you tell someone about it later or write it down.

I don't either, I just gave up on trying to understand it;).