The Map is Not the Territory: Approaching Simulation in RPGs

Summary

In this episode of Arbiter of Worlds, the host explores the concept of simulation in tabletop RPGs, emphasizing the importance of the map-territory relationship. He discusses the limits of simulation, the value of verisimilitude, and critiques of overly complex simulationist games. Using pizza as an analogy, he argues that simulation acts as a foundational 'crust' in RPGs, integrating other elements like drama and gameplay into a cohesive experience. The host also announces a Kickstarter for the Adventurer Conqueror King System 2.

Highlights

• Simulation serves as a core element in tabletop RPGs, similar to a pizza crust, supporting other game elements 🎮.
• The map-territory dilemma poses a challenge in creating realistic models without them becoming overly complex 🗺️.
• Verisimilitude enhances players' immersion, offering a greater appreciation of the game world 🎭.
• Perfect simulation is unattainable, but useful, engaging models can still be crafted 📏.
• Combining dramatism, gamism, and simulationism can create a richer RPG experience, akin to a well-topped pizza 🍕.

Key Takeaways

• Simulation in RPGs is like the foundational crust of a pizza, essential for a full-fledged gaming experience 🍕.
• The map-territory relationship highlights the challenge of balancing reality and representation in game designs 🗺️.
• Verisimilitude adds depth to RPGs, providing a sense of realism and immersion in the game world 🌍.
• Designing games involves finding the sweet spot between complexity and playability for optimal enjoyment 🎮.
• Critics of simulationist games often argue that no simulation is perfect, but useful models are what truly matter in gameplay 🎲.

Overview

In this intriguing episode of Arbiter of Worlds, the host delves into the nuance of simulation in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs). Through an engaging discussion, he draws parallels between game simulation and the map-territory relationship, exploring how this concept underscores the challenge of creating realistic yet playable game models. With a nod to Lewis Carroll, he humorously highlights the impracticality of absolute simulation, akin to a map as big as the territory itself.

A central theme discussed is the balance of verisimilitude—the likeness to reality—which adds an invaluable layer of immersion to games. The host debates common criticisms of simulation-heavy games, noting the essential nature of useful, albeit imperfect, models. This approach enriches gameplay by allowing players to appreciate the noetic pleasure of a faithfully constructed game world. The challenge, as he sees it, is mastering the balance of detail without falling into complexity overkill, ensuring the game remains enjoyable.

The episode wraps with a clever analogy: simulation as the crust of a pizza in RPGs. Just as a crust supports the sauce, cheese, and toppings, a good simulation underpins drama and gameplay, creating a well-rounded experience. This perspective offers a refreshing take on game design, highlighting the interplay of different gaming elements and their collective contribution to crafting unforgettable RPG adventures.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Announcement The "Introduction and Announcement" chapter of the Arbiter of Worlds podcast welcomes both new and returning subscribers. The chapter sets the stage for discussing the art and science of creating and running tabletop role-playing games. It also includes an important announcement that the Kickstarter campaign for the 'Adventurer Conqueror King System 2' will commence on October 24th.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Simulationist Game Definition The author defines a simulationist game as one where the rules closely resemble the reality being simulated to create a believable experience. The discussion aims to further explore the concept of isomorphic mapping in the context of these games. The author also encourages support for Acts 2, launching on October 24th.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Isomorphic Mapping in Game Design The chapter begins by clarifying the difference between isometric mapping, often used by cartographers, and isomorphic mapping, which relates to the map-territory relationship in game design. It emphasizes that isomorphic mapping is not about creating maps akin to those in the Dungeoneer Survival Guide, but rather about understanding the representation of objects within game environments. The chapter references Wikipedia to introduce the concept, highlighting its fundamental role in bridging objects and their in-game representations.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Map-Territory Relationship This chapter explores the concept of the map-territory relationship, using the analogy between a geographical territory and its corresponding map to explain the connection between an object and its representation. It references Lewis Carroll's 'Sylvie and Bruno Concluded' to provide an amusing illustration of this relationship.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Pocket Map Illustration The chapter discusses the evolution and advancements in map-making. The conversation is between the narrator and someone referred to as 'mine hair.' They talk about the practical limits of a map, starting with the conventional size of 6 inches to a mile. As the discussion progresses, they explore larger scales like 6 yards and 100 yards to a mile, culminating in a humorous exaggeration of creating a map with a scale of a mile to a mile, effectively making a one-to-one scale map of the country.
• 04:00 - 05:00: The Map-Territory Dilemma in Simulation Games The chapter delves into the concept of the map-territory relationship within simulation games, presenting a philosophical dilemma. It introduces a dialogue where a character, referred to as 'mine hair,' discusses the impracticality of spreading out a detailed map, as it would cover the entire country and block sunlight. Instead, they use the real world like a one-to-one map, which is almost as effective. The chapter explores the impossibility of creating a map as detailed as the terrain itself, as such a map would ultimately be indistinguishable from the territory it represents, resulting in an absurd '1 mile to 1 mile' map, synonymous with the real thing.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Criticism of Simulation Games The chapter titled 'Criticism of Simulation Games' explores the concept of the map-territory dilemma in the context of simulation games. It discusses the inherent limitations of simulation models and games, as they cannot fully replicate reality. The chapter also touches on how this philosophical notion is often implicit in the criticism directed at simulation games, even if it is not always explicitly mentioned.
• 06:00 - 07:30: Noetic Appreciation of Verisimilitude The chapter explores critiques often leveled at video game mechanics, particularly focusing on the game 'Ascendant'. It criticizes the simplification of damage modeling in the game, which relies on the square root of kinetic energy. Critics argue that the model leaves out significant factors such as hydrostatic shock, projectile tumbling, shot placement, and details of wound entry and exit, which are crucial in determining the true harm of an attack. The argument dissected in this chapter can be structured as follows: Premise 1 states that 'Ascendant' is modeled on a particular aspect incorporating some elements (Y) but not others (Z).
• 07:30 - 09:00: Diminishing Returns in Simulation The chapter discusses the concept of diminishing returns in simulation, beginning with the premise that a model of X that does not incorporate Z is a flawed conclusion. While affirming the truth of the first premise, the second is deemed almost certainly incorrect. This aligns with the remarks of British statistician E.P. Box, who famously said, 'all models are wrong, but some are useful.' Thus, despite acknowledging that no simulation is fully simulative, it is possible to create valuable simulations.
• 09:00 - 10:30: Simulation in RPG Design This chapter delves into the concept of simulation in RPG (Role-Playing Game) design. It discusses the unique pleasure derived from simulationist games, particularly the 'noetic appreciation' of the game's verisimilitude. This appreciation is contrasted with the 'willing suspension of disbelief' which involves setting aside known truths to enhance enjoyment.
• 10:30 - 11:30: Pleasures in Tabletop RPGs This chapter delves into the concept of noetic appreciation in tabletop RPGs, asserting that using real truths enhances the enjoyment of fictional elements. It rebuffs critics who deny the necessity of simulation by explaining the benefits of partial mapping of a fictional territory, arguing against the need for complete accuracy as it can detract from the experience.
• 11:30 - 13:00: Analogy with Cuisine and RPG Design In this chapter, the discussion centers around the parallels between designing a role-playing game (RPG) and interpreting cuisine, specifically in the context of creating an environment for 'noetic appreciation'. The goal is not to focus on ordinary enjoyment but to foster a deep intellectual and quasi-spiritual engagement. There's an analogy made with the act of viewing films, like Oliver Stone's 'Alexander', where one might focus solely on accuracy and the depiction of reality (or verisimilitude). In terms of RPG design, this translates to ensuring that the game's rules and the map precisely mimic the real-world structures they intend to simulate.
• 13:00 - 15:00: Conclusion and Pizza Analogy The chapter emphasizes that the appreciation for realism, or 'ver similitude,' has limits due to diminishing returns on enjoyment. This is related to the concept of 'honest adaptation,' which suggests that human appreciation adapts over time, leading to decreased enjoyment. Additionally, the chapter notes the limitations of the human mind, implying that there are constraints on how much simulation or realism can be effectively appreciated.

The Map is Not the Territory: Approaching Simulation in RPGs Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 welcome to the 29th episode of arbiter of Worlds if you're are returning subscriber thanks for supporting the channel if you're new to the channel hello here at Arbiter of world we study the Art and Science of running and creating tabletop role playing games before I dive into today's material however I need to make an announcement my Adventurer conqueror King system 2 Kickstarter will begin on October 24th
• 00:30 - 01:00 if you've been a fan of arbiter of Worlds and appreciate my approach to creating and running RPGs I hope you will support Acts 2 on launch day October 24th all right now last episode I defined a simulationist game as follows a simulationist game is one in which the structure of the rules isomorphically maps to the structure of the reality being simulated to an extent sufficient to create meaningful Vera similitude today we're going to explore the concept of isomorphic mapping in
• 01:00 - 01:30 game design now at the outset let's be clear that this has nothing to do with isometric mapping which is an esoteric art pursued by cartographers who want to emulate the greatness of the maps in the first edition dunge engineer Survival Guide so that's isometric mapping isomorphic mapping is just another term for the map territory relationship now Wikipedia tells us that the map territory relationship is quote the relationship between an object and a
• 01:30 - 02:00 representation of that object as in the relation between a geographical territory and a map of it so isomorphic mapping is the relationship between an object and a representation of that object analogized to that between territory and map now leis Carroll in his book sylv and Bruno concluded provides us with a really amusing illustration of the map territory relationship I'm going to quote from it because it's pretty funny what a useful
• 02:00 - 02:30 thing a pocket map is I remarked that's another thing we have learned from your nation said mha map making but we've carried it much further than you what do you consider the largest map that would be really useful oh about 6 in to the mile only 6 in exclaimed mine hair V very soon got to six yards to the mile then we tried 100 yards to the mile and then came the grandest idea of all we actually made a map of the country on the scale of a mile to the mile
• 02:30 - 03:00 well have you used it much I inquired it has never been spread out said mine hair the farmers objected they said it would cover the whole country and shut out the sunlight so now we use the country itself as its own onetoone map and I assure you it does nearly as well well from the point of simulation ISM the map territory relationship seems to pose a dilemma no map can be as detailed as the territory without being the territory you end up with a 1 mile to one mile map which then is just the
• 03:00 - 03:30 territory and no model can be correct without being what it's modeling no game can fully simulate reality without being reality now the map territory dilemma isn't usually referenced directly in our Hobbies great flame Wars though I saw a few of you mention it in the comments last week it is implicit in some of the criticism that gets directed at simulation
• 03:30 - 04:00 games those criticisms often go something like this your game ascendant is totally flawed because it models the damage of an attack based on the square root of kinetic energy without modeling hydrostatic shock projectile tumbling shot placement wound entry and exit and all the other factors that actually determine the harm suffered from a hit so breaking it down logically the argument goes something like this premise one ascendant is a model of X that incorp Ates y but not Z premise 2 a
• 04:00 - 04:30 model of X that does not incorporate Z is totally flawed conclusion therefore ascendant is totally flawed now premise one is certainly true but premise 2 is almost certainly not true as British statistician EP box once remarked all models are wrong but some are useful so that is accepting at the outset that no simulation is actually fully simulative we can still create simulations that are
• 04:30 - 05:00 useful for our purposes and what are those purposes as I said last week the particular pleasure of a simulationist game arises non exclusively from the noetic appreciation of the game's ver similitude and noetic appreciation of ver similitude is the inverse of willing suspension of disbelief when we engage in the Willing suspension of disbelief we put aside what we know to be true and in order to better appreciate something
• 05:00 - 05:30 fictional when we engage in noetic appreciation of a similitude we use what we know to be true in order to better appreciate something fictional and critics of simulation who assert that there is no territory are wrong for the reasons I explained last video critics who assert since you can't map the territory with 100% accuracy don't bother are also wrong because you don't need to map the territory to 100% accuracy doing so is counterproductive
• 05:30 - 06:00 it reduces the value of the model which simply needs to be accurate enough to create noetic appreciation of ver similitude let's imagine we are designing an RPG intended for noetic appreciation exclusive of all other types of enjoyment we are like Professor k watching Alexander by Oliver Stone we are ignoring everything else and considering only that factor we would seek to have the structure of the rules the map isomorphically correlate to the structure of their reality being simulated the territory to the extent
• 06:00 - 06:30 that noetic appreciation of ver similitude is maximized does that mean that we should simulate everything no not at all because like every other form of human utility there are diminishing marginal returns to noetic enjoyment partly this is simply due to the nature of honic adaptation partly this is because the human mind is constrained most people's
• 06:30 - 07:00 working memories can only handle five to seven bits of information at once which in turn limits what they can care about in any given process or system most people's knowledge of reality is highly incomplete and with that comes an incomplete ability to appreciate models of reality thus the return on investment in simulation looks like this obviously some historical
• 07:00 - 07:30 simulation RPGs have moved too far along this curve and that has given the genre a bad name but there is a sweet spot that you can hit of course this graph doesn't actually model the situation with great accuracy because even hardcore fans of simulation ISM will have to get variance in S curves between them some might find that the fulcrum between useful complexity and pointless complex lexity comes sooner others might find it
• 07:30 - 08:00 comes later some might have a steep slope others might have a shallow slope and that's okay not every game needs to appeal to every gamer in acknowledging the diminishing return of simulation ISM I don't mean to single it out as especially flawed what I've said about the diminishing return on uh noetic appreciation is also true of every other type of appreciation think about it
• 08:00 - 08:30 novelists strive to show rather than tell how things occur but they still don't show every detail and every moment for every character to do so would overwhelm the reader's memory and mind there's a diminishing return on investment in showing horror movie directors strive to scare Their audience watching their film but they don't attempt to scare the audience at every moment of every scene because of honic adaptation even the most terrifying conditions become
• 08:30 - 09:00 humdrum after a while only the absence of fear for a few minutes that respit makes it possible for the terror to be renewed there is a diminishing return on investment in horror gamblers of a certain mindset enjoy gambling for high stakes a game of poker with $50 at stake is less pleasurable than a game of poker with $5,000 at stake but what about your life being at stake what about the fate of the entire planet being at stake even Las Vegas Wales experienced diminishing returns from gambling Hedonism because
• 09:00 - 09:30 if they didn't Russian Roulette would be really popular all types of pleasure have diminishing marginal returns including noetic pleasure remember earlier how we imagined we were designing an RPG intended for noetic appreciation exclusive of all other types of enjoyment well to do that that would be to be a take a a foolish a forge based foolish view that a game must only ever be either gamist narrativist or
• 09:30 - 10:00 simulationist now you already know I don't subscribe to the forg gns Theory at all but no place is it is wrong as it is wrong here noetic appreciation is not exclusive of other types of enjoyment I can enjoy Oliver Stones Alexander for the drama and the spectacle and for the ver similitude I can enjoy playing ascendant and axe for the challenging game playay or the shared making of history and also for its accuracy and simulating comic book physics or classic
• 10:00 - 10:30 Warfare so let's take for granted that there are at least three Pleasures to be had from tabletop RPGs the gamist the drist and the simulationist now there's probably others but three-fold models are popular so we're going to stick with three we already explained that there are diminishing returns from all types of enjoyment and this raises an interesting question is the return of each type of enjoyment diminished by the other types of enjoyment or are they independent utility curves the question
• 10:30 - 11:00 is less complex than it sounds imagine you're at one of those fancy Michelin starred restaurants where they serve you multiple courses and like each course is this tiny portion of f gr or boiled monkey brains or pork fried legumes if you get served one course you'll enjoy the meal if you get served three courses you'll enjoy it even more but by the time you get to 60 courses you're going to be too full to appreciate the later courses doesn't really matter what the courses are they're add additive in filling you up
• 11:00 - 11:30 and so the enjoyment diminishes as the sum of the courses now imagine you're eating a wholesome American Pizza a typical American Pizza combines wheat crust mozzarella cheese Margarita sauce and one or more toppings to create a Savory tasty dish that is basically the greatest food in the universe and the satisfaction of eating a pizza comes from the mix of the ingredients there's a right amount of each and they work in synergy
• 11:30 - 12:00 if dramatism gism and simulation ISM are like courses in a meal then the enjoyment you can get from them is a zero sum if you have too many courses of gism you won't get to enjoy any courses of dramatism and so on and if this were the case the forge would be right to focus on maximizing just one aspect of the game but if dramatism gism and simulation ISM are like ingredients in a pizza then the enjoyment you can get from them is a positive sum game the best pizza experience comes from blending all the flavors to Perfection
• 12:00 - 12:30 no amount of mozzarella cheese can substitute for pepperoni because they're different ingredients you can have too much pepperoni but you can't have too much crust because of an excess of pepperoni and I propose I believe that tabletop RPGs are like pizzas the mix of dramatist gamist and simulationist ingredients and people can disagree on what constitutes the right amount of each some might prefer Chicago style RPGs with thicker crust more sauce tons
• 12:30 - 13:00 of toppings others might prefer New York style with thin crust and fewer toppings some people might prefer tabletop RPGs that emphasize different components of dramatism gism and simulation ISM the ingredients are not inherently in Conflict though far from it they are instead the very source of what makes pizza what it is and likewise what makes tabletop RPGs what they are now of course there are exceptionally exent consumers the sort who'd go to a pizza
• 13:00 - 13:30 shop and say I want a cheese pizza but hold the bread and sauce so you want cheese yeah such people do exist but if you're thinking about starting a pizza shop you shouldn't plan your business around them and likewise if you're designing a tabletop RPG you shouldn't plan to ignore any aspect of the three-fold enjoyments unless you want commercial failure so in other words my advice here is the opposite of the advice from the Forge to be clear I
• 13:30 - 14:00 don't want to give the impression that I put simulation as merely one of the many ingredients that make up a good tabletop RPG as I've said repeatedly I am an avowed simulationist I believe simulation is at the core of the tabletop RPG experience let's go back to Pizza you can make a pizza without cheese and it will still recognizably be a pizza you can make a pizza without sauce and again it will still recognizably be a pizza but you can't make a pizza without a crust the crust
• 14:00 - 14:30 is the essence of what makes pizza pizza and not just cheesy dipping sauce a good crust can serve as the foundation for any number of sauces cheeses and toppings but no combination of sauces cheeses and toppings can be satisfying as a pizza qua Pizza without a crust and in terms of our pizza analogy simulation is the crust in RPGs a well-designed simulation serves as the foundation for
• 14:30 - 15:00 exciting and enjoyable dramatist and gamist experiences the simulation is what integrates all of the other elements into a cohesive hole I've now made myself very hungry so I am going to go order a pizza please deliver a click on the like And subscribe buttons to my address and then munch on some comments where someone will no doubt explain exactly what variety of pizza every major RPG analogizes to I will we'll see you next
• 15:00 - 15:30 [Music] week [Music]
• 15:30 - 16:00 [Applause] [Music] all [Music]
• 16:00 - 16:30 d