Episode 466: Foolish Enough to Get Near Us
October 8th, 2021 | Robin
Our Gaming Hut series on the axes of RPG design takes a turn as Robin looks at the trade-offs he thinks about while working on games, starting with Simulation vs Emulation.
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I would submit that Champions (the original version from 1981) was pretty explicitly emulationist. It was all about providing a gaming system that would give mechanical support to players doing all the silly things in comic books.
The entire disadvantage system had nothing to do with replicating anything in the world; you don’t get stronger by being afraid of the dark after all. Skills were also very much about designing for effect: it’s no more difficult to get a skill in quantum mechanics than it is to get a skill in flower arranging. But learning martial arts was quite difficult (read expensive in points).
The game was quite mechanically complex, as you noted, but I assert that was orthogonal to the simulation/emulation axis. (In some ways, Fate lives in that same emulationist area, but without the mechanical complexity.)
OTOH, GURPS is much more simulationist. People often die when they get hit by even one bullet in real life, so that’s what the game does. Some skills are explicitly much harder to learn than others, not because they are more effective the average game but because they’re difficult in real life.
I can’t, offhand, come up with a low-complexity, simulationist RPG, but I’m pretty sure they exist. Maybe GDW’s old “En Garde” would work, since most of the complexity is in the fencing system, which isn’t really all that difficult to manage, and which is definitely intended to replicate aspects of actual fencing.
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Episode 466: Foolish Enough to Get Near Us « Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff