In game design, a careful balance must be struck between having mechanics that act as systems and those which act as simulations. From board games to RPGs, video games and more, where and how a given game rests on continuum between the two helps determine who the potential playerbase is and what kind of stories are emphasized.
For this discussion a system is an abstract of how things work in the real world; the concept of hitpoints, for example. Does each hit point represent an amount of damage that translates to our real-world experience? If so, what does it mean for a character to gain more? The use of hitpoints is a game mechanic designed to ease play, rather than diving into the nitty gritty of just where and how much a character has been injured.
On the other side of the scale, a simulation is where the game designers have opted for more realism, rather than abstraction. Does an attacker roll to hit and that’s the end of it, or does the defender have a chance to dodge and then a chance to soak damage? The latter is a more “realistic” simulation of two people fighting, but takes more time and effort to resolve.
Helping to run a Vampire: the Masquerade LARP for as long as I did, we as storytellers felt the need to clarify, alter, or even throw out the rules as originally designed, to either streamline gameplay (ie make a system) or more accurately fit an in-world paradigm (ie make a simulation), and to be both conscious of and communicative with our reasoning and intent behind the rules and mechanics at play.
While “system vs simulation” arguments often boil down to “story vs realism,” and different individuals wanting different experiences out of and engagement with their games, I find much more nuance than that. To me, systems are about hastening mundane or less important story elements in favor of more exciting or memorable ones, and simulations are about getting into the specifics of how a story happened.
While combat scenarios are the most common examples of system vs simulation—as referenced above—let’s look at the idea of tracking food and supplies while on a journey.
Many fantasy games (D&D, Pathfinder, others) track food and water using “rations.” Each character uses one ration per day, and it’s generally assumed that they’re nibbling throughout the day or maybe taking meals while resting. There’s no real calculus to when or how much someone is eating; one “ration” is enough food for any generic adventurer for one day. Food scarcity isn’t a key aspect of these games and so it’s abstracted to a system.
For other games that are more focused on surviving through harrowing wastelands (DayZ, others) however, the logistics of managing your inventory is a key component of the experience, as is also often a limited inventory space. Decisions about when and what to carry, let along when and what to eat, are impactful ones, and the story very much focuses on these kind of realistic struggles.
Almost all games have a balance of both systems and simulation written into their rulesets. Shadowrun is a near-future RPG where combat is a very complicated affair, with die pool modifiers accounting for everything from relative position between attacker and defender to the light levels, electronic “noise” that might jam targeting-assist devices, and more. There are full pages which are just lists of potential modifiers for a single pistol shot. Combat is impactful and every attack—and then defense, and then soak—is important because it’s so often a game about stealth; when things get loud, they get very loud and every roll risks life and death.
On the other hand however, food is rarely a concern for the protagonists, and they are automatically assumed to get regular food at a quality determined by how expensive their lodging is. If they spend their time in penthouses, they get amazing meals at every opportunity, but even those who live directly on the streets scrounge enough to get by. The mechanics of hunger are functionally absent because that’s not the thrust of the story the world is trying to tell, as encouraged by the mechanics. It’s very cyclical and self-reinforcing.
When designing a game—or determining what game mechanics to use for telling a particular type of story—it’s important to consider where the meat of the mechanics lie. If someone designs a game where 90% of the rules are about cooking, the creator shouldn’t be surprised if few of their players take an interest in botany. The mechanics inform the kind of games that are most closely aligned.
That isn’t to say that more Freeform game mechanics (eg Kids on Bikes, FATE) can’t be serious or adapted to more realistic play, but rather that care should be taken when doing so to prevent tonal whiplash. If the aforementioned cooking game was used to run a supernatural noir detective thriller, there would likely have to be a lot of mechanic addition/adaptation in order to make it work, as well as the setting of expectations up front; players who were used to the game mechanics may be caught off-guard when the Game Master sprung the noir stuff on them, and those contrasting expectations can cause discord and disharmony within a group.
I firmly believe that this is one of the reason robust playtesting is important, whether designing video games, table-top RPGs, or other types of interactable media. Players will engage and experiment with different mechanics, and a canny designer can pick up which systems or simulations are working and encouraging the kind of play they intend.
When looking for a game to run your next adventure in—or when designing a game from the ground up—don’t just fall back on mechanics you’re familiar with. RIFTS isn’t the right rules for every type of story, and neither are D&D, GURPS, L5R, or any other single game. They will all take a measure of adaptation to suit the desires and aims of the person running the game and the people playing it, and consideration should be given to just how much bending, breaking, or refocusing is appropriate before looking to see whether a different modality is a better fit.
For players, this is also why it’s so important to ask about “homebrew” rules—mechanics that aren’t the game rules-as-written—to see whether they add to or detract from the kind of stories and opportunities you want to encounter in your gaming experience.
As a postscript, I want to talk about Dungeons and Dragons a bit more. I use the game as an example of combat weighing more heavily toward system than simulation, and sometimes people take umbrage at that, because—they say—combat is the most rule-heavy part of the game, with other considerations secondary at best. How can I say that combat isn’t the focus?
It all boils down to relativity. D&D’s combat mechanics—with players accounting for positioning and spacing of combatants, ranges for spells, and the like—may be a far more simulation-based set of rules than the much-abstracted eating or housing systems, but compared to many other games on the market, even within the fantasy genre, each combat turn is itself highly abstracted.
I would also argue that the focus of D&D isn’t the impact of each individual sword swing or spell cast; the most momentous moments and story beats that make the game sing are the triumph over opposition, not every step it took to get there. While getting a critical hit or fumbling a last-ditch attack may meaningfully sway the battle, the encounter itself is the key element, not each individual’s actions within it; the battle is the sum of its parts.
Header image by Yassay from Pixabay, a great source of royalty-free stock images
