I've been gaming for thirty years. Maybe it's time to hang it up. OR On Simulations and Storytellers.

aramis erak said:

The desire for a "living world" sensation is incompatible with hard core simulationism.

You only get that from a more narrative approach, because if you try to simulate it, you need a boardgame mode as well. Pushing into the boardgame elements often snaps people out of RP, and in other cases, renders their PCs moot for a major element of the game.

If, indeed, you're looking for the crowd that can handle both modes, and stay in sim mode, you're going to most likely need to play online, because there are not enough players doing that style these days to be liable to find them in any singular city.

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Other than online being ideal for sim play, I cant make heads or tails of this...

payn said:

Other than online being ideal for sim play, I can make heads or tails of this...

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I think the idea is that a living world requires a lot of moving pieces which don't make sense in the abstract. You want to see the migrations and troop movements and growing dragon desolation.

I think.

I think people often mean very different things when talking about "simulation" and it is very common for discussions to get confused and even heated because of that.

All isms are bad....F.Bueller

Counterpoint: Heroism.

I'm sorry to hear that you are burned out, though glad you have enough self awareness to realize it. I wish you the best in what is to come, be it in this hobby or another.

I have been in two long term (8+ year) games with multiple parties in the same world, one in AD&D 2nd and the other in Champions (now Hero System). I don't think they ever competed against each other, but the world definitely was changed by them which had ripple effects from the other party. Unfortunately for your West Marches vision, they were both a single DM who would run 5-6 games a week, with some overlap in players.

You mention your DMing style is not currently in vogue, and that you have problems maintaining dedicated players. The two things that come to mind for that are:

1. Is there some other RPG, be is part of OSR or just a different RPG altogether that is a better fit? And by "better fit" I don't mean "allows this type of running", but "mechanically encourages this type of running" such that the players who pick that system will be more likely to be in tune with what you are putting down.

2. There's a heck of a lot of gamers out there, and if you know your playstyle will have less than universal appeal, opening up to a wider audience seems like the way to find more like-minded souls. Have you considered going online? If you look at the game forums on the various VTTs, the DMs don't lack for players and get to really describe up-front what style they are using and only accept players who seem in-tune with that.

(And if online doesn't sound interesting, you may want to ask yourself if the social aspect of the game was highly important, and start up something like a board game night where you can get that and it doesn't matter if who shows up varies from Sunday to Sunday.)

You gotta know when to hold'em
Know when to fold'em
And know when to walk away

GuardianLurker said:

Counterpoint: Heroism.

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Heroism is dying (or heavily risking death) for one's country. Not particularly good.

aramis erak said:

Heroism is dying (or heavily risking death) for one's country. Not particularly good.

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That is a weird definition.

aramis erak said:

Heroism is dying (or heavily risking death) for one's country. Not particularly good.

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You have a very idiosyncratic definition of heroism there.

From Merriam-Webster:
heroism
which defines itself using
heroic
which in turn refers to the root term
hero

Now leaving aside the definitions that depend on mythological and legendary figures/warriors, we are left with:
HERO: a person admired for achievements and noble qualities; one who shows great courage
HEROIC: exhibiting or marked by courage and daring; supremely noble or self-sacrificing
HEROISM: heroic conduct especially as exhibited in fulfilling a high purpose or attaining a noble end

And to forestall the next definitional argument, the "noble" referred to in these definitions is not the hereditary, social, or legal term, but rather the moral or spiritual one.

Your definition is a VERY small part of the larger concept.

Tyler Do'Urden said:

I recently cancelled my campaign.

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So, by all means, take a break. As long as you like. Maybe forever. But, also consider the following....

Tyler Do'Urden said:

I was sick of the cat-herding, trying to get my bare minimum of players (3) to show up for a once a week game, that, due to everyone's schedule conflicts, seemed to have dwindled to once a month at best.

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It is a truth of our society that scheduling with adults is HARD. As you seem to recognize here, it can be exhausting and demoralizing to have to work so much just to get people to be together. It would not surprise me at all if you said that it felt like you were the only one in the group who gave a crap, and you felt like you were working so much for no recognition.

That is a recipe for burnout.

It also likely has NOTHING to do with game style preferences. It can, and does, happen to people who live in areas with tons of gamers, and play the popular styles, too. All the time.

And, from the experience of many around here, we know that this frustration makes any other issue a bigger deal. Schedule frustration the metaphorical headache of GMing - it makes everything else worse.

Tyler Do'Urden said:

But for me, that's the point.

I'm a "simulationist". A hardcore simulationist. A style that, despite now having ever-more amazing computerized tools at our disposal for simulating our worlds (I'm a Claude addict), is quite out of style.

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Tyler Do'Urden said:

Prof DM comes from a different school. He likes simplicity; he only cares about what goes on at the table. It's a storytelling exercise to him, not a simulation.

But whenever I simplify like this... I get bored and lose interest. It's no longer real to me, or interesting. The world becomes flat and arbitrary. I don't want to be a "frustrated novelist" trying to see my players through a storyline, or dropping sequences of interactive scenes in front of them. I want to be the demiurge of an interactive world that grows, evolves and behaves separately from the PCs, but which they can influence and build on as well. (Similarly, I've never liked PLAYING RPGs - that is, being a player, not a DM. I can barely get through an entire session without growing bored, unless I know the DM is from the same "school" as me, and is trying just as hard to simulate his world. To this day, I've only played with one other DM like this, and that was over two decades ago now.)

I'd read about old school campaigns and West Marches games with numerous, proactive players, and thought that was the kind of game I wanted to have. Maybe one that would grow so big that I would have sub-DMs. I'd love to have parties competing with each other and scheming against each other; building kingdoms and fighting wars. I've dreamed of this since I was a boy, sitting on my grandmother's couch reading the Rules Cyclopedia 30 years ago, and building castles and rolling kingdom events in my notebooks.

I've always wanted to take the game "to the next level".

But now I'm 42, and after more than a quarter century of DMing (admittedly with a hiatus from 2005 to 2019), I just don't think that's ever going to be possible. It doesn't seem to be what the hobby has become or wants to be.

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So, again, I don't think this has much to do with simulation - this would be a big game, with lots of people spending lots of time on it. Doesn't matter if it is simulation, story-focused, or just hexcrawl/wargaming fun, same barrier applies. Finding the large number of adults who all have that much spare time to commit to playing games, and to engage with thinking about them between sessions of play, is really hard.