A Manifesto In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
And, although Simulationism has always been widely respected in tabletop wargames and videogames, many tabletop RPG gamers today are ignorant or contemptuous of the merits of the approach.
See in context at A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
Indeed, Gary Gygax was among the earliest and fiercest critics of Simulationism.
See in context at A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
Was Gygax a closet Simulationist? His friend Flint Dille certainly thinks so. Flint, a Facebook acquaintance of mine, has said that Gary was first and foremost an actuary, and that AD&D can only be understood as an actuarial model of a fantasy world, e.g. a simulation.
See in context at A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
Gygax’s reason for including fantastical elements such as elves, dragons, and wizards in Chainmail, and later in AD&D, is that it was more fun than not having them — which meant that to defend his game from critiques by wargamers, he had to deprioritize simulation. That, at least, is my belief.
See in context at A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
The first theory was called the threefold model and it was created by Mary Kuhner in 1997 and thereafter popularized by John H. Kim. According to the threefold model, there are three styles of playing RPGs: dramatist, gamist, and simulationist.
See in context at A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
The difference between John Kim’s original threefold definition of gamism and Brian Gleichman’s definition of gamism is, more-or-less, the difference between what Retired Adventurer called the “Classic” and “OSR” cultures in his influential 2021 essay Six Cultures of Play
See in context at A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
However, the similarity was merely superficial. The original threefold model was merely descriptive. Edwards’ theory was prescriptive:
See in context at A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
Now, this is an altogether remarkable claim. Edwards is asserting that the desire for a good story, a good game, and a good simulation are utterly incompatible — so incompatible that any game that tries is (in his words) “incoherent”
See in context at A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
But Edwards was (to quote himself) “a hard-core Narrativist” and as he elaborated GNS theory further, he became an avowed enemy of simulationist play.
See in context at A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
By 2004, Edwards had gone further and condemned everyone who enjoyed simulationist RPGs as “brain damaged.”
See in context at A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
Created: 2025-11-07
So Story Game culture, as RA positions it, includes explicitly Narrativist games. But two of RA’s other game cultures, Traditional and Neotraditional, are also effectively Narrativist. Traditional Gaming is simply Narrativist style with all authorial power vested in the DM