# "Stumbling Around in My Head" - The Feeling of Dissociation as a Player



## innerdude (Sep 20, 2012)

So over in the D&D Next section of the forums there's been (yet again) several lengthy discussions about "dissociative mechanics" (yes, I know, didn't we cover this a year ago?). It was mostly going around in circles (again), but I was genuinely curious to discover that some opponents of the concept were having difficulty understanding why some rules "feel" dissociative to certain players, while others that should seemingly feel the same don't even register on the dissociation needle. 

As a result, I wanted to share some thoughts, hopefully to shed more light on what's actually going on inside a player's head when a mechanic feels "dissociative." 

To be sure, this is purely from an Innerdude-ian perspective. I don't claim to speak for any one player or group specifically. However, I think my overall experience and approach to the subject is consistent with the general "gist" of what the Alexandrian's essay was trying to get at--even though in retrospect, the essay is incredibly "messy" and somewhat heavy-handed in the way it assumes certain things about gameplay style and mechanical resolution. The overall concept is real, I think, but there's an enormous level of subjectivity to it that the Alexandrian ignores. 

Also, I'm sure some posters are simply going to respond to this by saying, "Dissociation doesn't exist," or "I don't care." Both are totally valid responses.  
If you're burned out on the subject entirely, hey, I don't blame you; I'm just trying to provide some perspective on what was going on in the other threads. 

So, when an RPG mechanic is labeled as "dissociative," what does that really mean to a player who feels affected by it? Does it mean it breaks "verisimilitude," however that's defined? Does it move too far away from "simulationism," such that the player and character can no longer make viable decisions about the fiction of the game world? Does it pull the player out of "actor" stance? Does it reinforce "gamist" tropes that push against the boundary of what can be considered an RPG?

The short answer is, "Yes." It can be one, some, or all of these at once in varying degrees. When some of us talk about a mechanic being "dissociative," it is in some ways literally that--it causes a "break" in the current player mindset. It draws the player out of one "mode" of gameplay, and into another.
It can be a change in style, stance, fiction, pace, or resolution. There's probably other shades and nuances to it, depending on circumstances, but at it's core, that's what's going on. Some mechanics "feel dissociative" to certain players because they exert a distinct influence on player expectations in the moment. 

Now I understand that as players, we're constantly shifting between various modes of play at the table. We can shift from gamist, to "immersive roleplaying" mindsets in a matter of seconds. "Dissociation," however, happens in cases where _the mechanics_ dictate the shift, when an in-the-moment resolution suddenly pushes the player to interact with the game system in a manner or modality that A) cannot be easily resolved by the player internally, and B) runs counter to their expected method of resolution. 

This can involve interactions with the game, players, fiction / world, and GM.

For me, this typically sounds in my head like, "Huh? What was that again?" 
"Dissociation" happens for me because something about a mechanic as presented forces me to "resolve" something about it in my head that isn't readily apparent. In some cases, it's a conflict with my internal "world physics" meter. Sometimes it's working out "narrative" aspects--why did that mechanic force NPC Y to do that? Is that realistic based on the current scene framework? Sometimes it's about conflict with genre and character tropes--how does a fighter played as a gruff, mostly silent type use Come and Get It, exactly?

(And yes, I know there's a million reasons why a gruff, silent fighter might make Come and Get It work in the fiction. The fact that I have to stop and think about it all is part of the problem.)

Sometimes it's about a forced switch from actor stance into author / pawn, or director stance. "Wait, my character would react to that--no, but there's no reason to react at all unless the room now has object X over there, or NPC Y wasn't doing Z." Sometimes it's because a rule is hightly gamist in its presentation--"I can add two more damage dice in circumstance X, but only if one of the other players does Y first, and the monster is bloodied." It's not that there's no "verisimilitudinous" way of explaining it in the fiction, it's that the moment of resolution requires transparently metagame thinking. 

Bottom line: like many things in life, there's no hard and fast rule why some mechanics "feel" dissociative, and some don't. It's a question of the manner, degree, frequency, kind, and substance of the mechanic in question.

So why does something like hit points not trigger the dissociation flag? For the most part, it's that it doesn't require any "in the moment" thought during resolution. Many mechanics that opponents claim should be "dissociative" but are not often recognized as such are typically things that are "hard wired" into the basic world of the fiction, either explicitly in the rules, or implicitly in the group's "this is the way the world works."

Hit points and AC are the two biggies here. Are they really a great way of representing what they're trying to abstract? Eh, not so much, but we've either worked out in our minds before hand a reasonable explanation, or we've just grown numb to the particulars of its effects. Is that inconsistent? Yeah, maybe, but for me, that's just the way it works.

Now occasionally, in corner cases, the artificiality / dissociativeness of hit points becomes readily apparent. And frankly, I don't like those instances any better than anything else. Interestingly these are typically "in the moment" happenings that require a re-reading of what hit points mean in the fiction at that particular moment--like, falling from a cliff. 

This "in the moment" aspect of "dissociation" is why it's most apparent to those who prefer "immersion," "verisimilitude," actor stance, and clear process resolution. It's hard enough getting into solid, immersive gameplay with all of the "background noise" in the rules. We don't want in-the-moment resolution mechanics adding to it. 

Anyway, I don't know how much of this is making sense. But for me, this is a fairly accurate description of how I experience "dissociation" when it happens.


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## Li Shenron (Sep 20, 2012)

innerdude said:


> So why does something like hit points not trigger the dissociation flag? For the most part, it's that it doesn't require any "in the moment" thought during resolution. Many mechanics that opponents claim should be "dissociative" but are not often recognized as such are typically things that are "hard wired" into the basic world of the fiction, either explicitly in the rules, or implicitly in the group's "this is the way the world works."




This is a good point. In retrospect, despite their oddness HP never triggered my dissociation flag... at some point in my life I started playing RPG and I immediately encountered HP, but I felt no dissociation at all.


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## S'mon (Sep 20, 2012)

I don't fully understand why I sometimes get that 'dissociation' feel in 4e but not in prior editions. It seems to be something to do with prior design approach of 'this is happening in-world, here are some mechanics to model it', where 4e design often seems to take a design approach of 'here are some mechanics, make up some explanation of what's happening in-world'. I've also noticed that it was a big problem in my early 4e games, but much less recently, and I think that is mostly due to the attitude of the players - if the players are willing to buy into the collective fiction, and don't metagame too much, then everyone stays immersed in the world-fiction rather than treating it as a mechanical game of number-crunching. It also helps that my players don't dispute my world-based judgements - I couldn't stand playing with anyone who used the rpgnet phrase "Mother May I?" or used "GM Fiat" as a bad thing. And I've edited monster stats so they're not so immersion-breaking: minions have a Damage Threshold before they die, so you no longer get the dissociated feel from 'you don't have to roll damage, it's just a minion'. And likewise I halved other monster hit points, so they now feel about as tough as 'feels right'; eg they can die from falling damage same as a PC, men can die from being shot by an arrow same as IRL,  and (more abstractly) Elite monsters are directly comparable to PCs; PCs are now just more-detailed Elites.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 20, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> This is a good point. In retrospect, despite their oddness HP never triggered my dissociation flag... at some point in my life I started playing RPG and I immediately encountered HP, but I felt no dissociation at all.




HP certainly can cause dissociation for me. There's a scene in the Pathfinder Adventure Path I'm running right now that's presented as a scene to be told to the players, where one character puts a crossbow bolt into the head of another, and then we're apparently surprised that she lives and kills the first character. It's an excellent fantasy scene, but it doesn't work for me in D&D. I mean, she has a few levels under her belt, and a crossbow bolt does 1d10, x2 crit. Did you really expect her to drop from one bolt? Fed straight to me as a player, I'd be frustrated; I'm getting all these cues that a story should be interpreted one way, but it interferes with I know of the world my PC interacts with.

The classic example is the fighter throwing himself off a cliff. I do get why that's dissociative to some people, but I tend to break the other way. Heroes in fiction can do a lot of stuff that real life people can't. My character walks into things, like dragon's breath and balls of acid, that would be certain death to real life people; the HP tells me, the player, that that's within my character's tolerance level. Why isn't jumping off the cliff the same way? If I can't jump off the cliff when I need to and the rules say it's okay, then the edges of HP get dragged out, and I have to wonder where I can no longer think in terms of HP.


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## S'mon (Sep 20, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> HP certainly can cause dissociation for me. There's a scene in the Pathfinder Adventure Path I'm running right now that's presented as a scene to be told to the players, where one character puts a crossbow bolt into the head of another, and then we're apparently surprised that she lives and kills the first character. It's an excellent fantasy scene, but it doesn't work for me in D&D. I mean, she has a few levels under her belt, and a crossbow bolt does 1d10, x2 crit. Did you really expect her to drop from one bolt?




Sounds like a clear _coup de gras_, which was pretty nasty in 3e and I'd expect in Pathfinder, so I'd certainly be at least open to the idea of it as a serious threat. Although it _was_ kinda silly how crossbows were less effective at CDG than bows due to the lower crit multiplier...


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## S'mon (Sep 20, 2012)

S'mon said:


> Sounds like a clear _coup de gras_, which was pretty nasty in 3e and I'd expect in Pathfinder, so I'd certainly be at least open to the idea of it as a serious threat. Although it _was_ kinda silly how crossbows were less effective at CDG than bows due to the lower crit multiplier...




Yup, just checked PF CDG, pg 197 core rulebook: if target "at your mercy" from melee weapon bow or x-bow, crit dmg, Fort save 10+dmg or die... so the woman had to make an average DC 21 Fort save (assuming no sneak attack or other bonus to dmg) or die instantly, which seems pretty hardcore to me.

Edit: I find the 4e nerfed CDG rules a lot more problematic in terms of immersion-breaking, actually. With 4e you quite often just have to say "Rules are for PCs", since the system is quite aggressively hostile to even limited Rules-as-Physics.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 20, 2012)

You're absolutely right.  Disassociative has a use for describing something mostly subjective.  And that's why people using it as an edition war club (as it almost invariably is - that after all was the Alexandrian's point) bug me so much.

To me the single most diassociative game I've ever played is _AD&D_.  And it's disassociative for a simple reason.  One minute combat rounds.  A minute is a massive time period in what is a complex and unfolding situation, and this means that my character is only able to think literally once per minute.  Which means that entering combat in AD&D feels as if the game has slapped  control of my character out of my hand at an absolutely critical moment and turned it into a pure property of the rules - and I have no choice other than to check out until the combat is over because my PC is on the autopilot the rules have forced on him or her.  6 seconds is short enough that I can visualise it as an OODA loop - and remain in my character's head because of this.

And I find even badly written powers _less_ disassociative than I do normal 3e combat (ignoring the Bo9S).  When I fight against more than one foe, I'm looking for opportunities.  I'm seeing relative positions and where people are and seeing how to exploit gaps.  My best choice changes second to second.  In 3e with all attacks being essentially At Will if I'm a fighter I might as well put myself into autopilot with whatever trick is my favourite and do the same thing every round.  And although this voluntary autopilot isn't as bad as the enforced autopilot of AD&D it's still disassociative to me.  If I have a limited and changing list of powers (and I don't care how it's done - any of AEDU or the three versions in the Bo9S work) then the battle is unfolding.  I am at last able to see the sort of opportunities and there's a measure of opportunity cost and opportunities.

Ultimately I don't care how badly written the individual powers are - that I have a changing list of options allows me to think much more closely into the head of my PC than I could otherwise.  I'm happy to accept that powers, especially badly written ones, metagame ones, or out-of-genre ones (the monk's wuxia teleport comes to mind) disassociate you if you are to accept that lack of powers disassocates me.  If you are talking about disassocated mechanics as if they are an objective one-size-fits-all thing (as The Alexandrian does) then I'm going to object - for me even with its bugs the 4e power structure is the most associated there has ever been in D&D, with only the Book of Weaboo Fitan Majik running it close.


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## FireLance (Sep 20, 2012)

innerdude said:


> Sometimes it's about conflict with genre and character tropes--how does a fighter played as a gruff, mostly silent type use Come and Get It, exactly?



Arguably, such a fighter shouldn't pick _come and get it_ as a power, in much the same way that he shouldn't suddenly break out into eloquence when he has to talk to the Duke. Funny how one is disassociative and the other is bad roleplaying ... or _good_ roleplaying, depending on who you ask. 

Fundamentally, that's how I deal with disassociative mechanics: I work out a explanation for them that satisfies me, I decide not to use them, or I just ignore them and enjoy the game as a game. Of course, YMMV.


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## Quickleaf (Sep 20, 2012)

[MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] So the 1-minute AD&D round feels more dissociative to you than the 6 second 3e/4e round, even though it takes much less time to resolve? Because you're in a climactic moment where there are assumed off-screen parries and ripostes?
 [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] As a DM in 4e, I loathe it when a player uses a power, reads the effect it has, and when I say "so what's happening, what's the story?" they look puzzled, go "uh...", shrug, or just repeat the power's effect. Aaargh!! That drives me nuts!


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## GreyICE (Sep 20, 2012)

The entire premise of the OP is wrong.  Lets discuss why, using the example of FATE.

Combat - combat is an opposed skill check between two skills.  It can be divided into three areas, Social, Mental, and Physical, all of which share the same resolution mechanics.  If players lose an opposed roll against an attack they take a certain amount of stress, and after they max out their stress track they have to take a minor/major/severe consequence or be "taken out."  

The interesting bits of combat are finding what elements within the scene or opponents they can use to invoke aspects.  Invoking an aspect gives them a +2 bonus (+2, mechanically, is around the benefit of a +5-+8 bonus in D&D) to their roll, but costs them Fate points.  

Described that way, it seems horrifically disassociated, right?  I mean it doesn't matter if you're firing an assault rifle on full auto or an ancient crossbow, whether you're having a battle of wits in a chess match or in the middle of a tense negotiation, it's all resolved the same way.  

But because of the virtue of being dissociated, it becomes infinitely flexible.  Players are free to adapt and narrate what's happening.  The search for "+2 bonuses" leads them to poking and prodding at the scene and characters, alert for possible bonuses.  The storyteller is free to narrate what he likes when a character is taken out (usually he works with the player).  

See, there's something that hasn't been taken into account in this debate.  It's not whether "Dissociated mechanics are bad or merely irrelevant."  It's whether they're a virtue or not.

I would say that in many cases they are an excellent virtue.  Hit Points are dissociated.  This lets you narrate the flow of combat how you choose, and have outcomes that make sense within the flow of the game world.  Whereas when you have a called shot to the kidney with a spear, and it hits, it's very hard to have the narrative continue after this point.  Spear to the kidney, you're recuperating for three weeks (unless you introduce magical healing, another very dissociated mechanic).  


Dissociated mechanics can really enhance narrative roleplaying, and I think there's a tad of a crusade mentality among a certain subset of players that fails to acknowledge this reality.  "Even if you don't care about dissociated mechanics, you should just let us have our way, because it really doesn't effect you!"  Well no.  It DOES effect people who care more about the narrative than about the simulation, more about telling a good story than having events happen in a formulaic and predetermined manner.  


Oh and by the way?  *Dissociated mechanics exist along the N <-> S axis of Narrativist/Simulationist/Gamist. * Gamism is mute on the subject.  Gamism wants GOOD mechanics, which can either be dissociated or associated.  Many people make the mistake of associating dissociated mechanics with gamist interests because 3E mechanics were both simulationist AND largely TERRIBLE from a gamist perspective.  4E mechanics were narrativist and much better from a gamist perspective, but that doesn't mean that gamist mechanics are dissociated.

For example, take a game about giant fighting robots (mechwarrior, anime, whatever you want).  There might be simulationist rules about how each part of the robot takes damage, and a chart on how systems get knocked offline and how it effects the mechwarrior.  As long as the mechanics are good, flow well at the table, and make an interesting game, the gamist is satisfied. 

The narrativist, on the other hand, is pissed as hell, because there's no STORY to the laser hitting the mech.  It will do damage based on table A-3, with a chance to damage either the heat dissipation mechanisms or power regulation to a limb.  There's no narrative tension.  The laser does the same thing every time, and hits in the same way every time, depending on dice rolls.  They can't tell any sort of story with it.  "I got hit with a laser.  Oh gee.  Uh... I reroute power through my secondary power conduits, lemme roll my 'Mech mechanics' skill modifiied by +3 for the secondary power grid I installed..."


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## S'mon (Sep 20, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Dissociated mechanics can really enhance narrative roleplaying, and I think there's a tad of a crusade mentality among a certain subset of players that fails to acknowledge this reality...




Yes - people who aren't interested in Dramatist, story-creative, & Author-Stance play are much more likely to object. I think a lot of people, me included to a degree, tend(ed) not to see D&D as a suitable vehicle for Dramatist play. If we're playing mostly for immersion-Sim + some Gamist challenge, then dissoc mechanics can get in the way. And I think all pre-4e versions of D&D had very little mechanical support for Dramatist play, so it was a jarring change.

I think now I've come to value 4e for what it does, potentially a nice combination of Gamist and Dramatist play. I even got some actual Narrativism into my Southlands 4e campaign, and the system was certainly less hostile than 3e would have been. 
But, 4e nowhere comes out and says clearly that this is what it is. People will cut FATE a lot of slack because it's clear what the game is trying to achieve - it seems clear that the default stance in FATE is author-stance. That is not the case in 4e. People try to use 4e for Gamist/Sim mashup, the way IME D&D has usually been played, and end up frustrated, as I did.


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## Umbran (Sep 20, 2012)

I've thought about this some, and I wonder if perhaps the real issue is somewhat more simple than how people tend to talk of it (whether a mechanic is truly dissociated, and whether this is an issue for narrative, simulationist, or gamist play, and so on).  I think that avenue tends to limit the way we think, and has us misidentifying the problem.  

The combination of the OP's "Stumbling around in my head" and GreyICE's mention of FATE has helped clarify this for me.

We may be able to generalize.  No matter what people say, humans are actually pretty bad at multitasking.  Switching contexts in how they are thinking is disruptive to their thought processes - so we may note that there's a problem when the mechanic causes the player to context-switch in order to make decisions.  

For example, the FATE mechanic sounds dissociative, and narrative until you see it in play, where it may be neither.  If I'm in an encounter, and I want to goad the other guy into a rash action, and I know he's Sensitive About Family, then I know if I start making "Your Momma..." jokes I'm gonna cheese him off!  However Narrative and Dissociated is may seem from a design perspective, in play it can seem quite natural from an immersion-sim view as well.  From either perspective, I don't have to change how I'm thinking to make a good decision!

Now, you still might see D&D gamists have an issue with the mechanic, but not because it is narrativist, or because it is dissociated, but because the gamist player is used specifically to _tactical wargaming_ gamism.  The conflict isn't with gamism, but with the wargaming habits. This mechanic is asking the player to think about things other than the order of play and the physical positioning on the battlefield, and such.  For the tactical wargamer, this mechanic is thinking outside the box - context switching! Therefore it'll tend to be annoying and rejected as a bad idea.

Thoughts?


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## innerdude (Sep 20, 2012)

No, there's some definite truth to what you're saying, Umbran. The "switching out" of mindsets is definitely part of what's going on in my head when I get that "Huh? What?" feeling. 

Some of that is definitely tied to expectations as you've addressed, too. When I'm expecting to maintain a fairly heavy actor-stance, process-resolution mindset for a scene or encounter, getting thrown a bunch of narrativist, build-the-in-the-moment-fiction curveballs just _feels_ jarring. It destroys the "build up" of trying to get into that moment. Then when it happens again....and again....and again....well, yeah, suddenly as a player you're saying, "This is NOT what I expected." Some people are okay with switching gears and rolling with what's being presented. Some people are okay with simply dealing with switching mindsets. And some people really struggle with the change in expectations and the resulting need to switch between them. 

If there is a true black and white, hard and fast dividing line, I still think it sits around JamesonCourage's explanation from last year: To avoid potential "dissociation" for process resolution / actor stance mechanics, the results of a mechanic must be able to be reasoned, learned, or explored from within the fiction by the characters. 

Interestingly, I don't know that I agree that FATE is inherently "dissociated"--considering that the whole point of the FATE system is "build narrative association" within the fiction as it develops. Also, in many ways FATE is really just swapping direct 1:1 rules correlation with GM fiat; it's the GM determines "fidelity" to the game world, even when it comes to using FATE points. That's actually an interesting question; does FATE even have the potential for dissociation?


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## Tequila Sunrise (Sep 20, 2012)

innerdude said:


> So why does something like hit points not trigger the dissociation flag? For the most part, it's that it doesn't require any "in the moment" thought during resolution. Many mechanics that opponents claim should be "dissociative" but are not often recognized as such are typically things that are "hard wired" into the basic world of the fiction, either explicitly in the rules, or implicitly in the group's "this is the way the world works."



I suspect there's a certain mass of dissociated rules -- like hit points -- that should and _would_ give immersion-sensitive players pause more often, except that we learn these rules very early in the learning curve. Because these rules are one of the first D&Disms we learn, they slip in under the dissociation-radar, so to speak.



innerdude said:


> Hit points and AC are the two biggies here. Are they really a great way of representing what they're trying to abstract? Eh, not so much, but we've either worked out in our minds before hand a reasonable explanation, or *we've just grown numb to the particulars of its effects*. Is that inconsistent? Yeah, maybe, but for me, that's just the way it works.



The bolded part applies especially to me. Or rather, I've grown numb to pretty much all of D&D's immersion-breaking rules. It's funny, because I'm probably one of the most immersion-sensitive gamers around. So sensitive, in fact, that I gave up rationalizing hit points and whatnot years ago and decided "Frak it, D&D physics and biology just don't work like the real world."

Now, anything that's hard to explain from a RL perspective gets the "It's magic!" treatment. It works for everything from hit points to Come and Get It, it's simple, and it passes JamesonCourage's test for in-character discovery.


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## S'mon (Sep 20, 2012)

Umbran said:


> Now, you still might see D&D gamists have an issue with the mechanic, but not because it is narrativist, or because it is dissociated, but because the gamist player is used specifically to _tactical wargaming_ gamism.  The conflict isn't with gamism, but with the wargaming habits. This mechanic is asking the player to think about things other than the order of play and the physical positioning on the battlefield, and such.  For the tactical wargamer, this mechanic is thinking outside the box - context switching! Therefore it'll tend to be annoying and rejected as a bad idea.
> 
> Thoughts?




Yes - I think this supports what I said about there being a clash of expectations, and this being the source of annoyance with 4e.

(OT) Your wargamer example is interesting, it brought home to me that traditional wargames seem very much steeped in a Clausewitzian paradigm of what a battle is and how it should work. The Mohammed/Mao three-stage system for insurgency war, or Sun Tsu perhaps, would have no trouble with the idea of defeating the enemy on the moral level before any physical force is used. Our wargames are ultimately derived from Prussian kriegspiel and they embody a force-on-force model where maneuver and supply are important but much is excluded as irrelevant that other theorists would see as critical.


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## Lord Mhoram (Sep 20, 2012)

Interesting ideas.

I know that I am very much Sim and total actor stance.

I love Dresden Files (a Fate game) but I GM it. I could never play it. When I play I never want to worry about framing, narrative, what works with the story. My only concern as a player is trying to become the character - live his life, think his thoughts, feel what he feels. So I like mechanics that mirror what the character is doing - I need to find something that I found out is in a safe. I open the safe - the roll only defined that I opened the safe. It doesn't tell me I found the information. As close to straight 1 to 1 parity between action and dice.

So I think I do tend to agree that the N-S line is where a mechanic my be considered dissociative.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 20, 2012)

Quickleaf said:


> @Neonchameleon  So the 1-minute AD&D round feels more dissociative to you than the 6 second 3e/4e round, even though it takes much less time to resolve? Because you're in a climactic moment where there are assumed off-screen parries and ripostes?




Because I might as well sit back, turn on the TV, and press play to find out what happened.  There is very little I can do that's other than either routine or cosmetic until the hurly burly's done, and the battle's been lost and won.  And that's several minutes away.  In 3e and 4e I can actually react to a changing situation rather than simply watch it unfold.



> @innerdude  As a DM in 4e, I loathe it when a player uses a power, reads the effect it has, and when I say "so what's happening, what's the story?" they look puzzled, go "uh...", shrug, or just repeat the power's effect. Aaargh!! That drives me nuts!




Me too.



Umbran said:


> Now, you still might see D&D gamists have an issue with the mechanic, but not because it is narrativist, or because it is dissociated, but because the gamist player is used specifically to _tactical wargaming_ gamism.  The conflict isn't with gamism, but with the wargaming habits. This mechanic is asking the player to think about things other than the order of play and the physical positioning on the battlefield, and such.  For the tactical wargamer, this mechanic is thinking outside the box - context switching! Therefore it'll tend to be annoying and rejected as a bad idea.
> 
> Thoughts?




This.  D&D (and I don't care which edition) is not very far drifted fromthe tactical wargames it is descended from.  OK, so 4e has drifted hard in the direction of a tactical board wargame as opposed to one that measures distances in inches.  But the assumptions are wargame-centric and you think in almost the same way.  4e also adds in a lot of stealth narrativism.

But when it comes to immersion and disassociation I'm narcissitic enough to quote myself.
To pick another illustration, there are two ways of modelling alcoholic  characters.  I'm going to call them GURPS and FATE just for the sake of  argument.  In GURPS an alcoholic character in the presence of alcohol  needs to make a roll not to drink.  A perfectly associated mechanic.  In  FATE, the DM offers a fate point to have someone's alcoholism become a  problem.  Completely disassociated.

What are the results of this?

In GURPS, getting an alcoholic character into a bar is normally  incredibly difficult.  They almost all behave like recovering alcholics  who won't let liquor in the house.  It's a simple risk-reward matrix;  drinking is all risk and no reward for a GURPS alcoholic character.  The  rules even explicitely say that it's an addiction and the character  drinks in the evening but this normally has no effect on the game unless  they are in the presence of alcohol.

In FATE, an alcoholic character really is an alcoholic.  You'll normally  find them in their down time round a bar - and always tempted to take  those extra drinks at just the wrong moment.  After all, the FATE points  feel good, and they can handle it (or so they _think)_.  And going cold turkey is actually hard.

One is process mapped to alcohol addiction.  The other encourages you to  behave as someone with a drinking problem.  I'll leave it to the reader  to guess which I consider leads to the more immersive character.​


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## FireLance (Sep 21, 2012)

Tequila Sunrise said:


> I suspect there's a certain mass of dissociated rules -- like hit points -- that should and _would_ give immersion-sensitive players pause more often, except that we learn these rules very early in the learning curve. Because these rules are one of the first D&Disms we learn, they slip in under the dissociation-radar, so to speak.



Hmmm... for some time now, I've been considering the possibility of setting up a Martial Daily foundation (not to be confused with the Marshal Daly foundation, if it exists ) to teach young children the concept of non-magical abilities that can only be used once between extended rests so that when they grow up and become potential gamers, they will no longer be bothered by the concept of martial daily abilities. This could take the form of reading primers ("See Soveliss run. See Soveliss use _split the tree_ on a pair of goblins."), fairy tales ("After an extended rest to regain the use of _knockout_ and _brisk stride_, Jack climed up the beanstalk to the giant's castle again."), and other fiction ("Bomorir rose, Agaron's inspiring words still ringing in his ears. Once again buoyed by the warlord's encouraging speech, he found, deep within himself, the strength to fight on despite his wounds. _This cave troll is tough_, he thought, _it's time to use brute strike._")

I'm planning to start with my own kids. Anybody care to make a donation?


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 21, 2012)

FireLance said:


> I'm planning to start with my own kids. Anybody care to make a donation?




I don't have any to donate, but try some of the links below?

UK adoption agency | Adoption services | Voluntary, independent adoption agencies
British Association for Adoption and Fostering
American Adoptions - A full service adoption agency


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## GreyICE (Sep 21, 2012)

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]: I actually think the DMG was very clear that you were playing in a narrativist space.  It didn't say "narrativist" of course - the DMG was actually very careful to avoid gamer jargon and other traps and always defined terms before it used them - but it was clearly a narrativist space nevertheless.  One of the first things it does is lay out player personalities - Actors, Explorers, Instigators, Power Gamers, Slayers, Storytellers, and Thinkers.  And it discusses how to engage each of them, and elements of a story that will disengage each of them.

This is the MOST fundamental concept of narrativism I can imagine.  *A shared storyspace where each person is engaged and active within the game.  *

That's when D&D 4E tells you it's heavily narrativist.  Page 8 it starts.  Look at even the power gamers.  The story that you're telling the power gamers is that they're winning D&D!  It's a meta plot outside the game plot!  (you tell them this through "bonus XP" rewards, offering them nifty magic items they want as adventure hooks, and designing certain encounters that show off their nifty tricks.)  THEY TURNED POWER GAMING INTO A METANARRATIVE.

Did they perhaps have marketing problem?  Well, maybe.  I certainly think a few playtests could have smoothed some of this over.  And there's no question they made very little effort, with certain powers, to focus on what was happening from a simulationist stance (that they later went back and fixed a lot of these issues was rather after-the-fact).  

 [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]: I think you're fairly close, but I think you're giving too little credit to the Gamist in this.  The Gamist can grasp the mechanic.  He identifies which elements of the story are important, figures out how many FATE points he wants to spend to have the best chance of accomplishing his results, and he does it.

The problem, for the gamist, is... that's it.  There's no meat to the bones, from his perspective!  Okay, sure there's a story.  Maybe he even enjoys the story.  But there's no game occuring!  Facing down an angry troll is very similar to a complex social maneuvering.  Yes, to the narrativist they're VASTLY different, but to the Gamist, they could not be more similar.  

That's why the gamist gets a little disgusted with FUDGE/FATE after a while.  To them it's remarkably shallow.  To the narrativist it's blessedly simple (the mechanics do as little as humanly possible to get in the way of the story) but that's just not how a gamist sees it.


Is there something wrong with this?  No.  No there isn't.  If the gamist isn't having fun, the gamist isn't having fun.  Maybe the gamist even also enjoys narrativism, but Fate just leaves him feeling half-satisfied and he'd prefer a system that fed both halves.


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## ExploderWizard (Sep 21, 2012)

FireLance said:


> Arguably, such a fighter shouldn't pick _come and get it_ as a power, in much the same way that he shouldn't suddenly break out into eloquence when he has to talk to the Duke. Funny how one is disassociative and the other is bad roleplaying ... or _good_ roleplaying, depending on who you ask.




Except that in matters of roleplaying, mechanics have little to do with anything.


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## FireLance (Sep 21, 2012)

ExploderWizard said:


> Except that in matters of roleplaying, mechanics have little to do with anything.



Unless they are quantum mechanics, in which case they only _seem_ to have little to do with anything. 

(What? The set-up was just begging for a quantum mechanics joke. )

I take the somewhat more nuanced view that mechanics can inform role-playing, and a character's abilities, as defined by the mechanics, can be an expression of role-playing.

As a player, you can try to portray a character with below-average Charisma and no training in Bluff or Diplomacy as a charming smooth-talker, but depending on the table, that might seem rather dissonant to the other players. Tables who have no problem with substituing player ability for character ability when it comes to NPC interactions probably would not bat an eyelid when a Charisma 8 character is played as very persuasive. However, at other tables, the same character might come across as someone who only _thinks_ he is a charming smooth-talker, or who is trying to be one (and succeeding only through luck).


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## GreyICE (Sep 21, 2012)

ExploderWizard said:


> Except that in matters of roleplaying, mechanics have little to do with anything.




Actually, mechanics can do a lot to encourage or discourage roleplaying, and CERTAINLY can do a lot to inhibit certain storylines.


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## Libramarian (Sep 21, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> @S'mon : I actually think the DMG was very clear that you were playing in a narrativist space.  It didn't say "narrativist" of course - the DMG was actually very careful to avoid gamer jargon and other traps and always defined terms before it used them - but it was clearly a narrativist space nevertheless.  One of the first things it does is lay out player personalities - Actors, Explorers, Instigators, Power Gamers, Slayers, Storytellers, and Thinkers.  And it discusses how to engage each of them, and elements of a story that will disengage each of them.



This, like the rest of the 4e DMG says High Concept Simulationism/Participationism to me, rather than Narrativism.

It's all about how to please the players, about how to craft plot hooks that allow them the Right to Dream. By accepting your plot hooks they grant you the reins over the story.

There's no advice in there about how to "introduce events into the game which make a thematically-significant or at least evocative choice necessary for a player" (Ron Edwards' definition of a Bang). That's what would say narrativist to me.

Your definition of narrativism is really bad. "A story space where everyone is engaged." Or rather, yeah I guess that is a fundamental concept of narrativist play...because it's a fundamental concept of any sort of RPG play. Ron Edwards' definition of narrativism is "Commitment to Addressing (producing, heightening, and resolving) Premise through play itself."

Frankly, it's obvious that you are using these terms without knowing what they mean. You should read these essays, and the Forge glossary:

The Forge :: Narrativism: Story Now
The Forge :: Gamism: Step On Up
The Forge :: Simulationism: The Right to Dream
The Forge :: The Provisional Glossary


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## JustinAlexander (Sep 21, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Disassociative has a use for describing something mostly subjective.




I'd have to agree. It does. But that's not the sense in which the word "dissociated" was being used when I coined the term "dissociated mechanics". The dissociation of a dissociated mechanic is not describing some "feeling" or psychological condition that a person has while using the mechanic. It is the dissociation between the mechanic and the game world.

Such mechanics might create a particular "feeling" for certain people using them, but the feeling should be not be treated as definitional.

Often I find in these discussions that people want to define a "dissociated mechanic" as meaning something other than what I defined it to mean. Then they'll argue against their definition. Which would be fine, I guess. But then they'll claim that they've actually said something meaningful about the concept of "dissociated mechanics" as I originally defined it. But all they've really done is construct a strawman.



> GreyICE said:
> 
> 
> > Oh and by the way?  *Dissociated mechanics exist along the N <-> S axis of Narrativist/Simulationist/Gamist. * Gamism is mute on the subject.
> ...


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## S'mon (Sep 21, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]: I actually think the DMG was very clear that you were playing in a narrativist space...




I don't think it's at all clear from the DMG what kind of game 4e is supposed to be, or how it differs from prior editions of D&D. I'm not at all sure the designers themselves had a clear idea. Traditionally D&D's 'incoherence' worked to its advantage, it could be drifted successfully into a wide variety of play forms, but that is less true of 4e, and I think that's the source of much of the problem.

I could tell from reading the DMG that it wasn't very friendly to the sort of world-simulation I traditionally did in my games - where were the notes on setting demographics? Encounter tables? Social ranks? Military structures? Hireling costs? But it wasn't at all clear to me what it *was* going for. 

The DMG2 has a stronger stance, I think, probably due to Robin Laws. It seems to be encouraging '90s White Wolf style gaming, which I think is what the Forgeites call "High Concept Simulationism", but often seems to boil down to pre-written 'Dragonlance' type stories that players passively experience at the behest of a servant-GM concerned to tickle all their pleasure-buttons.  Any time I see advice about "getting them back on track" I reach for my (virtual) revolver... 
However 4e doesn't have to be used for these linear railroads, and I know from reading the disastrous GMing accounts of the GMs on Critical Hits and elsewhere (Chatty GM, Vanir, The ID DM etc) a lot of the pitfalls to avoid.  
More clued-up GMs like   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] on ENW, and to some extent Chris Perkins of WoTC, use 4e successfully as a group story-creation exercise, Dramatist* play in the useful GDS model.

*Forgeites may call this High Concept Sim too, but it's definitely not helpful to conflate pre-written-story with create-story-in-play. Nor is it helpful to posit Narrativist premise-based play as the only valid sort of story-creation play. A pastiche movie like _Expendables II_ has no Narrativist premise, but if you created the story of that movie in play it would probably still be a satisfying Dramatist experience.


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## S'mon (Sep 21, 2012)

JustinAlexander said:


> The topic of hit points in these discussions is usually more misleading than enlightening: Prior to 4E, there was an interpretation of hit points (supported by most editions of D&D) which was associated but heavily abstracted. (And that abstraction was possessed of variable flaws depending on which edition we're talking about.)
> 
> Many people, however, didn't play with that interpretation of hit points. Instead, they played with an understanding that could be roughly described as "only the last few hit points count". This interpretation _is_ dissociated. It also served as the foundation for 4E's approach to hit points, which rendered it even more dissociated.




Yeah - my brain sticks with the associated 'meat' version of hp, despite designer efforts. Then I get that sinking feeling in my gut when a 'dying' 4e PC, who's maybe one death save from croaking, is then up and fighting again after an encouraging Martial word from his warlord buddy.


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## GreyICE (Sep 21, 2012)

[MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION]: Yeah, I've read your reasonably long-winded essays.   But to summarize an awful lot of text, you could simply say essential difference between simulationism and narrativism is that simulationism says "Here is a world.  Live in it" and narrativism says "Here is your story.  Tell it."  (Gamism is, of course "Here is a game.  Play it.") 

Focusing on the sorts of stories that the players want to play is the core concept of narrativism.  Is simulationism completely incapable of this?  For 1 player?  No.  For 5 players?  Unless they all share very common interests, generally, yes.


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## pemerton (Sep 21, 2012)

Tequila Sunrise said:


> I suspect there's a certain mass of dissociated rules -- like hit points -- that should and _would_ give immersion-sensitive players pause more often, except that we learn these rules very early in the learning curve.



I don't know if I'm "immersion-sensitive" or not, but I know that I find hit points annoying in every version of D&D except 4e, because only 4e takes them to their logical conclusion as luck, divine favour and plot protection.



innerdude said:


> Hit points and AC are the two biggies here. Are they really a great way of representing what they're trying to abstract? Eh, not so much, but we've either worked out in our minds before hand a reasonable explanation, or we've just grown numb to the particulars of its effects.



Or we switched to different systems, like Runequest, Rolemaster, HERO etc that don't have the same problem!



Neonchameleon said:


> Because I might as well sit back, turn on the TV, and press play to find out what happened.  There is very little I can do that's other than either routine or cosmetic until the hurly burly's done, and the battle's been lost and won.  And that's several minutes away.  In 3e and 4e I can actually react to a changing situation rather than simply watch it unfold.



For me, this ability to actually make meaningful decisions in the course of the conflict's resolution is pretty central to engaging play.



S'mon said:


> 4e doesn't have to be used for these linear railroads
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I think of it as light narrativism, and as fitting with Ron Edwards actual _deployment_ of the term "narrativism", which is more expansive than his formal defintion. For example, he characterises The Dying Earth as narrativist because it produces cycnical and satirical humour of a Vancian kind - but that is "addressing an engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence " only in a fairly attenuated sense:

_The Dying Earth facilitates _Narrativist play, because its Situations are loaded with the requirement for satirical, judgmental input on the part of the players.​
My 4e game serves up fantasy-trope-filled situations that are loaded with the requirement for straight-laced, judgemental input on the part of the players. Less witty than The Dying Earth, but not too po-faced!, and hence, I think, best described as narrativist within the Forge vocabulary.

The reason I say that it is not high concept sim is because it lacks this feature:

In Simulationist play, morality cannot be imposed by the player or, except as the representative of the imagined world, by the GM. Theme is already part of the cosmos; it's not produced by metagame decisions. Morality, when it's involved, is "how it is" in the game-world​
Whereas one of the most important aspects of GMing, for me, is to create situations that invite the players to impose their own morality - What is worth doing to free the slaves? Is a promise given to a priestess of Torog binding, even when given by one's interrogator's without one's own knowledge simply in order to extract information? Should chaos be embraced or repudiated?

All pretty standard fantasy stuff: but when the players are answering these questions through their play, its narrativist, not high concept sim.


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## pemerton (Sep 21, 2012)

On hit points: in no version of D&D are these simply abstract and not "dissociated".

You are playing Basic D&D. Your 3rd level fighter has 20 hit points. Your PC is confronted by a bandit, 20' away, armed with a bow. An arrow does 1d6, so maximum damage is 6 - or 7, on the off chance that the bandit has +1 arrows. So your PC _cannot_ be killed by a bowshot while closing with the bandit.

When playing your PC, you know this. In fact, knowing this is pretty crucial to mainstream D&D play, as it is what makes the combat-heavy nature of D&D viable. But your PC _cannot_ know this. No fighter, no matter how good a swordmaster (to use the 3rd level title), _knows for certain_ that an arrow shot from 20' away will not kill him or her.

And the contrast, in play, between the bow-scene in D&D, and the same scene in Rolemaster or Runequest, is obvious. In RM or RQ you know that a crit could kill you, and so you will be cautious about letting the bandit take a shot for free.


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## Bluenose (Sep 21, 2012)

S'mon said:


> Yes - I think this supports what I said about there being a clash of expectations, and this being the source of annoyance with 4e.
> 
> (OT) Your wargamer example is interesting, it brought home to me that traditional wargames seem very much steeped in a Clausewitzian paradigm of what a battle is and how it should work. The Mohammed/Mao three-stage system for insurgency war, or Sun Tsu perhaps, would have no trouble with the idea of defeating the enemy on the moral level before any physical force is used. Our wargames are ultimately derived from Prussian kriegspiel and they embody a force-on-force model where maneuver and supply are important but much is excluded as irrelevant that other theorists would see as critical.




Sun Tzu was writing more about the approach to a war as a whole, rather than about individual battles (So is Clausewitz, mostly). At most, what the Russians call the "Operational Art" of getting an advantage before a particular battle. There are other Chinese military writers who address tactical matters. Playing campaign wargames or recreations of historical battles gives you much more appreciation for this than the equal-points set-piece-battles that are pure tactical tests.



pemerton said:


> I don't know if I'm "immersion-sensitive" or not, but I know that I find hit points annoying in every version of D&D except 4e, because only 4e takes them to their logical conclusion as luck, divine favour and plot protection.
> 
> Or we switched to different systems, like Runequest, Rolemaster, HERO etc that don't have the same problem!.




I think very largely the people who found hit points dissociative, *and cared about it*, stopped playing D&D and simply don't care how D&D does it and won't even know this sort of discussion is taking place.


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## S'mon (Sep 21, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I think of it as light narrativism, and as fitting with Ron Edwards actual _deployment_ of the term "narrativism", which is more expansive than his formal defintion. For example, he characterises The Dying Earth as narrativist because it produces cycnical and satirical humour of a Vancian kind - but that is "addressing an engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence " only in a fairly attenuated sense:
> 
> _The Dying Earth facilitates _Narrativist play, because its Situations are loaded with the requirement for satirical, judgmental input on the part of the players.​
> My 4e game serves up fantasy-trope-filled situations that are loaded with the requirement for straight-laced, judgemental input on the part of the players. Less witty than The Dying Earth, but not too po-faced!, and hence, I think, best described as narrativist within the Forge vocabulary.




Hmm, interesting, thanks - so this means that Edwards' actual use of the word 'Narrativism' is pretty much just GDS 'Dramatism'*, and GreyICE's definition of Narrativism above is a lot less inaccurate than it would appear to be going by Edwards' formal definition! 
This also means that all the people over the years who've posted to say "I reject Edwards' definition of Narrativism, I'm just going to use it to mean Story-creation!" weren't really disagreeing with him after all!  (The people who use it to mean play-through-prewritten-story are still wrong, though).

*Rather than a narrow subset of Dramatism.

Edit: Your own game still sounds like it meets the formal definition of Nar, though.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 21, 2012)

S'mon said:


> Yeah - my brain sticks with the associated 'meat' version of hp, despite designer efforts. Then I get that sinking feeling in my gut when a 'dying' 4e PC, who's maybe one death save from croaking, is then up and fighting again after an encouraging Martial word from his warlord buddy.




Odd... I'm almost the opposite.  In no way do I see hit points in any edition as meat.  They just don't work that way (possibly because I played GURPS and MERP before any edition of D&D).  They are an abstract narrative resource to me.

In fact I see the damage system of TBZ (a Japanese tabletop RPG that's just finished its Kickstarter) in which your physical wounds add to your rolls* as more meaty and less about abstract resource management than I do D&D.

* You have two damage tracks; a stun and a long term one.  And you get to decide which to take damage on.  Three levels on the long term one, and you get a +1 bonus to your rolls at each level.  The only way you die is to intentionally take the third wound on the physical track (giving you +3 to all rolls), which says "This is something I am prepared to die for".  Then you die if you are knocked out.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 21, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> I think very largely the people who found hit points dissociative, *and cared about it*, stopped playing D&D and simply don't care how D&D does it and won't even know this sort of discussion is taking place.




This may be largely the case.  I know @pmerton has a primarily Rolemaster background.  I have one that's heavier on GURPS (and, for that matter, WFRP) than on D&D and in recent years is strongly influenced by indy gaming.  And certainly in my case and I think in @pmerton's, the idea that D&D is associated or a process-sim of any sort makes me go cross-eyed.


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## pemerton (Sep 21, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I know @pmerton has a primarily Rolemaster background.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the idea that D&D is associated or a process-sim of any sort makes me go cross-eyed.



Yes to the second sentence.

On the first - I started with B/X, moved to AD&D, really started to learn how to run the sort of game I wanted to run (very non-Gygaxian, non-Pulsepherian) from GMing Oriental Adventures, then in 1990 shifted to Rolemaster within a month of discovering it, and only came back to GMing D&D with 4e.


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## pemerton (Sep 21, 2012)

S'mon said:


> Hmm, interesting, thanks - so this means that Edwards' actual use of the word 'Narrativism' is pretty much just GDS 'Dramatism'*, and GreyICE's definition of Narrativism above is a lot less inaccurate than it would appear to be going by Edwards' formal definition!
> This also means that all the people over the years who've posted to say "I reject Edwards' definition of Narrativism, I'm just going to use it to mean Story-creation!" weren't really disagreeing with him after all!



I think, for Edwards, the key element that shifts "story creation" from high concept sim to narrativism is whether the player inputs are in some sense pre-given ("I'm going to do it this way, because we're playing Star Wars and that's how Star Wars goes") or an expression of sincere, authentic evaluation.

If one were very postmodernist one might reject this contrast - Edwards' own aesthetic theory seems firmly modernist to me! I'm not a full-fledged post-modernist, but I think there can be some blurring at the edges - and The Dying Earth would seem to be an instance.


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## S'mon (Sep 21, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I think, for Edwards, the key element that shifts "story creation" from high concept sim to narrativism is whether the player inputs are in some sense pre-given ("I'm going to do it this way, because we're playing Star Wars and that's how Star Wars goes") or an expression of sincere, authentic evaluation.
> 
> If one were very postmodernist one might reject this contrast - Edwards' own aesthetic theory seems firmly modernist to me! I'm not a full-fledged post-modernist, but I think there can be some blurring at the edges - and The Dying Earth would seem to be an instance.




It seems to me that most people will take this Dying Earth game - _The Dying Earth facilitates Narrativist play, because its Situations are loaded with the requirement for satirical, judgmental input on the part of the players_ - get in a Vancian mindset, and the 'satiricial, judgemental input' they make will be Vancian-perspective satire & judgement, possibly far removed from their own personal value systems. Just as when I play a Vancian characer such as my 4e D&D Thief Larsenio Roguespierre, I play him from a Vancian actor-stance perspective. In the Dying Earth game you're playing from a Vancian author-stance perspective, to create a game & story that models Vancian tropes. That's Dramatism, a very useful term which I wish Edwards & co would use, rather than mush it in with world & process Simulation.


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## ExploderWizard (Sep 21, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Actually, mechanics can do a lot to encourage or discourage roleplaying, and CERTAINLY can do a lot to inhibit certain storylines.




Storylines?  Man I thought we were talking about roleplaying.


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## Tequila Sunrise (Sep 21, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I don't know if I'm "immersion-sensitive" or not, but I know that I find hit points annoying in every version of D&D except 4e, because only 4e takes them to their logical conclusion as luck, divine favour and plot protection.





JustinAlexander said:


> The topic of hit points in these discussions is usually more misleading than enlightening: Prior to 4E, there was an interpretation of hit points (supported by most editions of D&D) which was associated but heavily abstracted. (And that abstraction was possessed of variable flaws depending on which edition we're talking about.)



I admit I'm not familiar with the fine points of difference between each edition's explanation of hit points; largely because hit points have offended my sense of immersion since my 3e years*, so I don't even go by the official company line. But I do know that officially, hit points have always been abstract; stamina, luck, divine favor, etc. So I'm surprised that others see a meaningful difference between hit points in different editions.

*And in retrospect, TSR's explanation of hit points offends my sensibilities just as much as WotC's.


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## Tequila Sunrise (Sep 21, 2012)

FireLance said:


> Hmmm... for some time now, I've been considering the possibility of setting up a Martial Daily foundation (not to be confused with the Marshal Daly foundation, if it exists ) to teach young children the concept of non-magical abilities that can only be used once between extended rests so that when they grow up and become potential gamers, they will no longer be bothered by the concept of martial daily abilities. This could take the form of reading primers ("See Soveliss run. See Soveliss use _split the tree_ on a pair of goblins."), fairy tales ("After an extended rest to regain the use of _knockout_ and _brisk stride_, Jack climed up the beanstalk to the giant's castle again."), and other fiction ("Bomorir rose, Agaron's inspiring words still ringing in his ears. Once again buoyed by the warlord's encouraging speech, he found, deep within himself, the strength to fight on despite his wounds. _This cave troll is tough_, he thought, _it's time to use brute strike._")
> 
> I'm planning to start with my own kids. Anybody care to make a donation?



I'm broke at the moment, but I have a creative donation to make: in addition to teaching kids their ABC's, I'd like to teach them their AEDU's.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 21, 2012)

JustinAlexander said:


> Often I find in these discussions that people want to define a "dissociated mechanic" as meaning something other than what I defined it to mean. Then they'll argue against their definition. Which would be fine, I guess. But then they'll claim that they've actually said something meaningful about the concept of "dissociated mechanics" as I originally defined it. But all they've really done is construct a strawman.




In my experience it's the people trying to use the term that way who define it.  And then exploration indicates they mean what I'm talking about.  I have different issues with the way you defined it than the way it's commonly defined.



> The topic of hit points in these discussions is usually more misleading than enlightening: Prior to 4E, there was an interpretation of hit points (supported by most editions of D&D) which was associated but heavily abstracted. (And that abstraction was possessed of variable flaws depending on which edition we're talking about.)




This, I believe, is historical revisionism.  1e is emphatic in defining hit points as skill, luck, stamina, and divine protection - and out and out says that the meat definition is ludicrous.  Entirely compatable with 4e.  2e on the other hand indicates that they are meat.  3e ducks the whole question quite neatly.  And 4e almost entirely agrees with 1e but gives a second axis of lont term stamina.


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## Umbran (Sep 21, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> I think you're fairly close, but I think you're giving too little credit to the Gamist in this.  The Gamist can grasp the mechanic.




Of course he can grasp the mechanic.  



> The problem, for the gamist, is... that's it.  There's no meat to the bones, from his perspective!




Oh, really? 

What you say still suggests to me that the issue is not on the game aspect, but on some specific expectation of how games are structured and played (say, like wargames, or tactical combat games).  They have an expectation that the rules provide the richness, rather than the action on the board.

Contrast this with probably the most played game on the planet - Go.  Or Chess, if you prefer.  I'm guessing most RPG "gamists" have not played much of, and certainly not mastered, either of those games.  Both have incredibly simple rules - there is no "meat" there either.  The meat is not in the rules, but on the board, and in the other player.

A typical wargamer or tactical combat gamer interacts with the rules first, and the board and other players second.  The primary action is in building the character (or army, or deck of collectible cards, or the like), and the gameplay is rather limited to driving the action to the realm where the construction is most effective, and letting it do its work.  

But a player of Chess, or Go, cannot do that.  There's nothing like that to do - the rules are focused on what you build in terms situations on the board during play, not off the board before it.

The gamist, playing FATE, should approach it like Go.  The interesting bit is not playing with the rules, but playing with the other person, using the rules as a framework and intermediary.


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## GreyICE (Sep 21, 2012)

Some do.  Some don't.  I'm running a FATE game at the moment, and I'll happily say two things: First, I love it, and second, it's not for everyone.  

Yes, gamists can excel at FATE.  They almost always do when there's a game system that can be comprehended and solved.  But FATE isn't oppositional roleplay.  The Storyteller works with the players to create a story.  To a lot of gamists it doesn't "feel" right.  Some like it, some want to be playing a more structured system.  

No one system is right for everyone.  There's systems that most everyone can agree are suboptimal (skills in 3E or 4E... D&D has a radioactive history with skills), but there's no system that is right for everyone.


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## LostSoul (Sep 21, 2012)

Hey Justin, I have a few questions to ask.



JustinAlexander said:


> I'd have to agree. It does. But that's not the sense in which the word "dissociated" was being used when I coined the term "dissociated mechanics". The dissociation of a dissociated mechanic is not describing some "feeling" or psychological condition that a person has while using the mechanic. It is the dissociation between the mechanic and the game world.




In your essays and here, you say that it's the dissociation between the mechanic and the game world.  Makes sense.

In the second essay you say that a dissociated mechanic is one where the player's choice is not equivalent to the character's choice.  Is that the easiest way to spot the difference between associated mechanics and dissociated ones, the definition of dissociated mechanics, or both?

When the character can make a choice in the game world that's outside of the purview of the player, that's an abstract choice, right?

In my 4E hack that I've been working on, basic resolution follows the following principle: the players (must) describe what their characters are doing, and from that description we pick modifiers and DCs for the roll.  The roll resolves what the character was doing, as previously described by the player.

I'm not sure that's associated or dissociated because the mechanics don't, in themselves, have a tie to the game world.  It seems like you have to add in that association as you play through resolution.  But maybe they do - for example, you add your STR modifier to your attack if you're using "Strength and raw power", and the DC for the attack roll is Reflex if you are trying to "Touch or tag the target".  Any thoughts on that?


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## prosfilaes (Sep 22, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> I think very largely the people who found hit points dissociative, *and cared about it*, stopped playing D&D and simply don't care how D&D does it and won't even know this sort of discussion is taking place.




I found hit points dissociative, and left D&D, but came back and made my piece with them.

I think the hit points as meat is unfairly prejudicial. Ultimately, heroic/superheroic characters do things that real life people can't do; take flying trips in lead refrigerators, for example, or more generically, survive explosions, things that meat can't do. Surviving a colossal dragon's breath is ludicrous no matter what HP means. All I need is for HP to reflect something concrete in the game world, not just be a number.


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## JustinAlexander (Sep 22, 2012)

S'mon said:


> Yeah - my brain sticks with the associated 'meat' version of hp, despite designer efforts. Then I get that sinking feeling in my gut when a 'dying' 4e PC, who's maybe one death save from croaking, is then up and fighting again after an encouraging Martial word from his warlord buddy.




This is one of the things that made DMing 4E just an endless pain for me. One of my particular strengths as a GM is describing combat in visceral and exciting detail. But 4E completely disrupted my ability to do that because the system doesn't actually tell you what type of wound a person suffered until after they've _healed_ it. (And more than that: Not only does it not tell you; it doesn't let you define it for yourself, either, because you'll end up getting contradicted if somebody uses a different method to heal it.)



pemerton said:


> You are playing Basic D&D. Your 3rd level fighter has 20 hit points.  Your PC is confronted by a bandit, 20' away, armed with a bow. An arrow  does 1d6, so maximum damage is 6 - or 7, on the off chance that the  bandit has +1 arrows. So your PC _cannot_ be killed by a bowshot while closing with the bandit.
> 
> When playing your PC, you know this. In fact, knowing this is pretty  crucial to mainstream D&D play, as it is what makes the combat-heavy  nature of D&D viable. But your PC _cannot_ know this.




Ultimately, I'm just not that interested in getting into the hit point discussion again. It's pointless. You want to go with the "only the last few points count"? Great. More power to you.

You want to claim that this is the only way to interpret pre-4E hit points? You're wrong. You want to claim, as Neonchameleon does in a later post, that 1E exclusively endorses this interpretation? You're simply wrong. (In point of fact, the 1E DMG is explicit in stating that any attack which inflicts hit point damage is a physical wound.)

I consider both the Axe to the Face argument and the Death by Dodging argument to be fundamental misreadings of AD&D and D&D3. But if you're really wedded to them, there's nothing in the mechanics that's going to thwart your dissociated ambition.

Also, your math is wrong and you're mistaking abstraction for dissociation.

That'll be my last word on hit points in this thread.


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> I found hit points dissociative, and left D&D, but came back and made my piece with them.
> 
> I think the hit points as meat is unfairly prejudicial. Ultimately, heroic/superheroic characters do things that real life people can't do; take flying trips in lead refrigerators, for example, or more generically, survive explosions, things that meat can't do. Surviving a colossal dragon's breath is ludicrous no matter what HP means. All I need is for HP to reflect something concrete in the game world, not just be a number.




Eh, pre-4e hp are meat, but most hp on high level PCs are just a little bit of meat - a scratch, a singe. Why do they take such light wounds? Skill, luck, divine providence. But they're still getting hit/scorched. The hp represent damage. If you're at negative hp, you're always in a bad way - until 4e, when whether you are in a bad way or not can only be determined retrospectively. 

4e death/dying rules IME are _really really_ bad and can lead to inappropriate player behaviour. For instance, we recently had the Leader PC, Esmerelda the Bard, at negatives, in a negative energy zone taking continuing damage being drained of surges as she rolled death saves. Esme's player James, normally outgoing, has a strong tendency to clam up/fall silent when things are going badly, often causing people to overlook him. So Esme failed a save, made a save, and the other players, all newbie-ish and not used to thinking about 4e healing rules, were used to PCs popping back up with Esme's healing words and with her down they really struggled to grok the idea that Esmerelda was in serious trouble and they had better do something fast - they were really reluctant or blase about using actions to save her. You would never see that in eg the 1e or 3e systems where it is usually very clear that a dying PC is dying and needs help fast. In 1e-3e 'dying' in game mechanics terms maps reasonably well to 'dying' in-world.  In 4e dying is a retrospectively determined Schrodinger, the system seems to be telling you that most of the time, whether you are really dying in-world _cannot be determined at this time_. The one exception in 4e is a dying PC with 0 healing surges left  - when they are game-rules 'dying' then they are in-world 'dying' also, to a similar extent as 1e-3e dying PCs.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 22, 2012)

JustinAlexander said:


> You want to claim that this is the only way to interpret pre-4E hit points? You're wrong. You want to claim, as Neonchameleon does in a later post, that 1E exclusively endorses this interpretation? You're simply wrong. (In point of fact, the 1E DMG is explicit in stating that any attack which inflicts hit point damage is a physical wound.)



Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61* 
_Damage scored to characters or certain monsters *is actually not substantially physical*  - a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are  considered - *it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the  magical protections.*_​ It's certainly explicit in saying that the hit points aren't substantially physical even if they do have a cosmetic physical impact.  I don't believe it directly contradicts itself in another place.
Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e PHB, page 34* 
_Let us suppose that a 10th level fighter has 55 hit  points, plus a bonus of 30 hit points for his constitution, for a total  of 85 hit points. This IS the equivalent of about 18 hit dice for  creatures, about what it would take to kill four huge warhorses. *It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic flghter can take that much punishment.*_​ It is also explicit in rejecting the meat argument, calling it ridiculous.  There may be a minor physical wound involved.  But the substantive part of the attack, openly and explicitely "is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the  magical protections".


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 22, 2012)

S'mon said:


> 4e death/dying rules IME are _really really_ bad and can lead to inappropriate player behaviour.




4e rules never IMO properly explained a conceptual shift as a shift.  In 4e Hit Points are, the way I see them, basically a stun track with the real damage being measured in healing surges.  A 4e PC on negative hit points is about the equivalent of a boxer on the canvas, but with one with people ready to rush in with knives.


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> 4e rules never IMO properly explained a conceptual shift as a shift.  In 4e Hit Points are, the way I see them, basically a stun track with the real damage being measured in healing surges.  A 4e PC on negative hit points is about the equivalent of a boxer on the canvas, but with one with people ready to rush in with knives.




But this is a stunned boxer who without help will _die_ in an average of about 40 seconds! So there's this huge shift from hp as 'stun track' to negative hp = 'dying!' to 'whoops, it was just stun track!" when the PC gets healing.

Re 1e-3e hp, I tend to treat it as proportional - a PC on 90/100 looks as badly hurt as one on 9/10; a PC on 10/100 looks as badly hurt as one on 1/10. I haven't ever experienced major cognitive dissonance with this approach. I'm not bothered that healing magic is less effective on more powerful people.


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## pemerton (Sep 22, 2012)

JustinAlexander said:


> One of my particular strengths as a GM is describing combat in visceral and exciting detail. But 4E completely disrupted my ability to do that because the system doesn't actually tell you what type of wound a person suffered until after they've _healed_ it.



I don't see any huge difference here from 3E, as far as the rules structure goes: a PC at negative hp in 3E has a 10% chance per round, and then per hour, of stabilising.

Not to mention, any trained nurse (+5 heal check and a roll of 10+) can stabilise a dying character, who will then recover all his/her hit points in a few days to a week of healing. What sort of injury is near-fatal yet can be so easily treated and recovered from? Not disembowelling, maiming etc. Perhaps some head wounds?

Of course, 3E has a _practical_ difference from 4e - almost every dying PC is going to be treated with magical healing, which means - provided we ignore the phrase "Cure Light Wounds" - one can narrate away to one's heart's content, knowing that divine healing will cover up any gaps between narative and mechanic.

To achieve the same result in 4e, ban warlords, and house rule that a Heal check can't trigger second wind on an unconscious PC.



JustinAlexander said:


> You want to claim that this is the only way to interpret pre-4E hit points?



The only claim I made about pre-4e hit points is that they are "dissociated", because they permit the player to make decisions on the basis of information that the PC does not and _cannot_ possess - namely, that a particular arrow shot _cannot_ be fatal.

I'm actually surprised that such a claim is controversial, given that _it is the whole point of hit points_ to achieve this result. And the point of crit-based games like Runequest and Rolemaster to get rid of this feature of D&D, thereby putting the player in the same epistemic situation as the PC.



JustinAlexander said:


> In point of fact, the 1E DMG is explicit in stating that any attack which inflicts hit point damage is a physical wound.



I suppose that's one way of reading the phrase "not substantially physical" (as quoted by [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]).



JustinAlexander said:


> Also, your math is wrong



I don't think so. Arrows in B/X D&D do 1d6 damage. The only damage adjustment possible to a bow shot, in Moldvay Basic, is +1 for +1 arrows. As for the hit point total of a 3rd level fighter, it is 3d8 plus 3 times any CON bonus. Twenty hit points would be on the high side, but well within the realms of possibility. And a PC at 20 hit points cannot be killed by a single bowshot with a maximum damage of 7. There would always be at least 13 hit points left.



JustinAlexander said:


> and you're mistaking abstraction for dissociation.



I hear this said quite often.

But I've never been told what it is that is being abstracted by a system that _gives the player access to information that the PC cannot have_ - namely, that a bow shot _cannot_ be fatal.


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## GreyICE (Sep 22, 2012)

Why is everyone trying to apply real world logic to D&D?  That never works.  

D&D runs on heroic logic.  John McClane gets the loving  beat out of him, yet staggers on, and never seems all that affected.  Malcolm Reynolds gets shot, is freezing to death, and still manages to try his hand at starship repairs.  

Of course someone who is down is dying.  He's bleeding heavily and woozy.  And the Warlord tells him "bandage that up and get up.  you've got promises to fill before you let yourself die."

It's action movie logic, not real-world logic.  D&D has always operated there.  The world where no wounds inflict lingering injuries, the world where jumping off a cliff seems reasonable, a world where an exploding ball of flame can go off next to you for... No effect.  Because you're that good.


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I don't see any huge difference here from 3E, as far as the rules structure goes: a PC at negative hp in 3E has a 10% chance per round, and then per hour, of stabilising.
> 
> Not to mention, any trained nurse (+5 heal check and a roll of 10+) can stabilise a dying character, who will then recover all his/her hit points in a few days to a week of healing. What sort of injury is near-fatal yet can be so easily treated and recovered from? Not disembowelling, maiming etc. Perhaps some head wounds?




Blood loss, maybe? It doesn't need to be likely; it just needs to be conceivable enough for fantasy. In any case it then becomes a Suspension of Disbelief, rather than a Dissociation (between mechanics and world-fiction) issue.

BTW my Pathfinder game has now had three PCs 'bleed out', with the first two of them only being at a few negative hp to start with, and an untrained healer repeatedly trying and failing to save them (the last one was already 1 pt off death before the grey ooze gripping him died).   It was _very_ "fantasy effin Vietnam". 

In 3e or PF it doesn't seem to matter that it's very possible for the trained medic to quickly stabilise the dying PC, what seems to matter for SoD is that it's possible for the untrained medic to fail miserably. But in either case this does not resemble the 4e DC 10 heal check to Activate Second Wind on the dying PC, which can't really map to anything in-world (unless you rewind the narrative) and is thus a Dissociation issue.


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> But I've never been told what it is that is being abstracted by a system that _gives the player access to information that the PC cannot have_ - namely, that a bow shot _cannot_ be fatal.




A bow shot certainly can be fatal _if the PC lets it_. Say a 1d4+1 AD&D crossbow vs a Fighter with 50 hp, the crossbowman can fire before the Fighter closes to melee. If the PC really just stands there and doesn't try to dodge, he is choosing not to use the combat rules, he takes the full force of the bolt and dies or is critically injured. The 50 hp Fighter can choose to use his abilities to not get killed by the mook with the bow, unless sleeping or helpless - sleeping allows 1e assassination % roll or 3e Coup de Gras, truly helpless is usually auto-dead in 1 round. Deliberately choose to make yourself helpless,  you can get shot in the gut* and bleed out just like anyone else. 

I really can't see what the issue is with this. Even in IRL there are lots of people who would be very very unlikely to be killed by the lone mook with the x-bow. There are plenty of people IRL I am confident could kill me, even should I be pointing a crossbow or gun at them from 20' away across an open field. In fantasy literature and movies they're ubiquitous. If those people do get killed, it can easily be modelled by the crossbowman actually being a 1e Assassin, or 3e high level Rogue with loads of Sneak Attack, etc.

*In 4e though your PC actually can get shot in the gut, by a Highwayman with _Shot to Gut_ (Monster Vault: Threats to Nentir Vale) - and be fine!


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I'm actually surprised that such a claim is controversial, given that _it is the whole point of hit points_ to achieve this result. And the point of crit-based games like Runequest and Rolemaster to get rid of this feature of D&D, thereby putting the player in the same epistemic situation as the PC.




In Runequest/BRP it's equally impossible for the unarmoured man to be hit several times yet keep fighting. Something which IRL happens frequently. Runequest merely designs around modeling the average man being hit by the average blow, and excludes outliers. That can assist immersion, if the PC is supposed to be an average man. But Runequest is no more realistic than D&D. At least in D&D it is possible to model the full range of possible outcomes from death-in-one-shot to repeated minor wounds, depending on the hit points of the man. Can't do that in Runequest per RAW.


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## mmadsen (Sep 22, 2012)

S'mon said:


> In Runequest/BRP it's equally impossible for the unarmoured man to be hit several times yet keep fighting. Something which IRL happens frequently.



Yes, that the nature of hit points.  Either they're low, and characters can't survive multiple deadly attacks, or they're high, and characters can't die from a single deadly attack.  They're either predictably lethal or predictably non-lethal.

Saving throws, on the other hand, model the unpredictability of real-life injuries -- but don't offer up plot-protection by default.


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## JustinAlexander (Sep 22, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I don't see any huge difference here from 3E, as  far as the rules structure goes: a PC at negative hp in 3E has a 10%  chance per round, and then per hour, of stabilising.




In 3E, all damage taken was physical damage. Period. No exceptions.

In 4E, some damage is actually just being winded or low on morale. This is evidenced by the healing abilities that, for example, restore your hit points by boosting your morale. But here's the catch: There's no way to know whether a wound was physical or just a morale bummer until after you've healed it. (Because the nature of the wound is determined by the nature of the ability used to heal it.)

Thus it's impossible to describe the nature of a wound at the moment it's inflicted. (Unless you just don't care about a rules-mandated retcon a few minutes later.)

I'm not sure why you think the stabilization mechanics are relevant to any of this.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 23, 2012)

S'mon said:


> But this is a stunned boxer who without help will _die_ in an average of about 40 seconds! So there's this huge shift from hp as 'stun track' to negative hp = 'dying!' to 'whoops, it was just stun track!" when the PC gets healing.




This is a boxer who's gone down bleeding.  That is what you know.  You _don't_ know why without a detailed medical examination.  That it's something serious is a risk, and you need to account for that risk - but the rules don't zoom in that far.  Indeed, they can't.



S'mon said:


> In 3e or PF it doesn't seem to matter that it's very possible for the trained medic to quickly stabilise the dying PC, what seems to matter for SoD is that it's possible for the untrained medic to fail miserably. But in either case this does not resemble the 4e DC 10 heal check to Activate Second Wind on the dying PC, which can't really map to anything in-world (unless you rewind the narrative) and is thus a Dissociation issue.




That "Activate second wind" was IMO a mistake.  But it's not the real world you map 4e to - it's holywood physics.  And that's pulling someone back into the fight.  Too easy, definitely (and I keep forgetting that it's the second wind that's DC 10 and stabilise at DC15 as this makes no sense to me).



S'mon said:


> I really can't see what the issue is with this. Even in IRL there are lots of people who would be very very unlikely to be killed by the lone mook with the x-bow. There are plenty of people IRL I am confident could kill me, even should I be pointing a crossbow or gun at them from 20' away across an open field. In fantasy literature and movies they're ubiquitous.




Likewise.  But this assumes that the crossbow bolt _misses_.  Not that it gets a good hit.



JustinAlexander said:


> In 3E, all damage taken was physical damage. Period. No exceptions.




And this runs into huge realism problems in a lot of places.  The first is that it makes falling weird.  The second is that it makes PCs tougher than the armour they wear.  And the third is that it means that critical hits simply aren't.  If the PC was skilled enough to "turn a serious blow into a less serious one" (as stated by the 3.5 SRD) then the hit wasn't a critical hit in the first place.  There is no one in the world who, unarmoured, should survive a full on hit from an orc with an axe.



> In 4E, some damage is actually just being winded or low on morale. This is evidenced by the healing abilities that, for example, restore your hit points by boosting your morale. But here's the catch: There's no way to know whether a wound was physical or just a morale bummer until after you've healed it. (Because the nature of the wound is determined by the nature of the ability used to heal it.)




This is a very common misapprehension.  There is _very_ little in 4e that restores hit points out of nothing.  In order to do that you need surgeless healing (the Cleric has quite a bit including Cure Light Wounds, the Shaman has some, and I don't think the Warlord has _any_).  There are, however, a lot of ways that allow someone to dig deep into their own reserves and _overcome_ the immediate impact of the wound and bring themselves back onto their feet.  

A wound is not healed by Inspiring Word.  While the healing surge is lost, the wound is still there.  It has just, through grit, determination, or endurance, been _overcome_.  (Modulo however many bonus d6 the Healing Word/Inspiring Word provided - which may be actual healing in the Healing Word's case but is morale and determination in Inspiring Word).

Yes, this is cinematic.  The whole of 4e is cinematic.


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## pemerton (Sep 23, 2012)

S'mon said:


> Blood loss, maybe?



Good suggestion. But that still puts an upper limit on the amount of blood-and-gore that can be narrated. No disembowelments or loppings off of limbs, for example.



S'mon said:


> In 3e or PF it doesn't seem to matter that it's very possible for the trained medic to quickly stabilise the dying PC, what seems to matter for SoD is that it's possible for the untrained medic to fail miserably.



This is also possible in 4e - just as an untrained person can miss a 15+ check, they can (less often, obviously) miss a 10+ check.



S'mon said:


> But in either case this does not resemble the 4e DC 10 heal check to Activate Second Wind on the dying PC, which can't really map to anything in-world



Why not? Isn't it the healer cradling the head of the "dying PC" and urging them not to go yet into that good night? Or, for a more Pulp Fiction feel, giving them an adreline shot?



S'mon said:


> A bow shot certainly can be fatal _if the PC lets it_.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If the PC really just stands there and doesn't try to dodge, he is choosing not to use the combat rules, he takes the full force of the bolt and dies or is critically injured.



This implies that hit point loss equals dodging. Which seems at odds with hit points equals meat.



S'mon said:


> I really can't see what the issue is with this. Even in IRL there are lots of people who would be very very unlikely to be killed by the lone mook with the x-bow.



Again, this seems to imply that hit points equals dodging. Whereas in my example the archer can achieve the best possible hit (no crit rules in Moldvay Basic, so a role of 6 on the d6 represents best possible) and the fighter keep going.

(I'm really just reiterating [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]'s point here.)



JustinAlexander said:


> In 3E, all damage taken was physical damage. Period. No exceptions.



I'm looking at the 3E Psionics handbook (the original one, not the XPH), p 81. 2nd level Telepathy power Inflict Pain:

You telepathically stabe the mind of your foe, causing horrible agony. The telepathic strike deals 3d6 points of damage.​
In what way is that physical?

Phantasmal Killer is more of a borderline case: a successful Fort save leads to 3d6 points of damage. What's that? Maybe the shock of a heart attack that the person survives. But in that case, 4e psychic damage can be analysed the same way - the physical shock (on the heart, the brain) of strong emotions like fear or shock.

And as Neonchameleon has explained (and [MENTION=3424]FireLance[/MENTION] too, in some other threads earlier this year), there is no reason why damage in 4e can't all be physical. Hit point recovery is just pressing on despite the injury.



JustinAlexander said:


> Thus it's impossible to describe the nature of a wound at the moment it's inflicted.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm not sure why you think the stabilization mechanics are relevant to any of this.



The relevance is this: in 3E, the rules constrain the narration of wounds in a certain way: you must be able to explain how they stabilised and a person recovered from them on his/her own in a week or so. That is, no disembowelments, maimings etc.

And in 4e, the rules constrain the narration of wounds in a certain way: you must be able to explain how, perhaps with some urging from his/her friends, a person pushes on despite the injury and keeps going without noticeable impariment. That is, no disembowelments, maimings etc.

What injury might one narrate in 3E, consistent with it being recovered from in accordance with those stabilisation rules, that you couldn't narrate in 4e, consistent with its "recovery by inspiration" rules?

S'mon and I have talked about head wounds and blood loss. To me, these seem no more problematic for 4e than 3E.



S'mon said:


> In Runequest/BRP it's equally impossible for the unarmoured man to be hit several times yet keep fighting.



This is true if all the wounds are to the same location, especially because of RQs weird weapon die expressions: sword 1d8+1, dagger 1d4+2. If you changed some of those to get onto single dice - say, sword 1d10, dagger 1d6 or 1d8 - then it would be possible, as typical abdomen hit points are 4, and 3 min-damage hits would still leave 1 hp in the abdomen.

If the wounds are to different locations then it is certainly possible to sustain multiple wounds in RQ and keep going.


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## rounser (Sep 23, 2012)

There's a lot of lipstick application to the proverbial pig going on in this thread, IMO.  A surfeit of mechanics for D&D which are unenvisionable or difficult to map to anything going on in the fantasy world are IMO just plain old bad game design, not narrativist, dramatist, cinematic, or any kind of self-important sounding game design theory jargon word.  But again this obvious flaw gets the runaround.


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## S'mon (Sep 23, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> This is a boxer who's gone down bleeding.  That is what you know.  You _don't_ know why without a detailed medical examination.  That it's something serious is a risk, and you need to account for that risk - but the rules don't zoom in that far.  Indeed, they can't.




I think "the rules don't zoom in that far.  Indeed, they can't" is another way of saying what Justin said - "it's impossible to describe the nature of a wound at the moment it's inflicted". 

I would tend to go further - the rules do actually say "PC X is critically injured! He's dying!" when PC X is making death saves. So the rules are saying something important about the nature of the injury. But then the second wind is activated, or the PC receives a morale-boost healing ability that activates a surge, and the rules say: "Wait a minute! He was just low on morale!"
So from a rules-mechanic perspective, if anything it's less a Schrodinger indeterminate state, more an explicit retcon. Stuff like this happens in film and TV quite often though - Zander appears to have been killed by the vampire, then Buffy goes to check him and he's fine - so the more I can accept 4e as a Dramatist story-creation game rather than a world-sim game, the less it bothers me.


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## S'mon (Sep 23, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> This is a boxer who's gone down bleeding.  That is what you know.  Y
> Likewise.  But this assumes that the crossbow bolt _misses_.  Not that it gets a good hit.




The high level PC with lots of hp is capable of ensuring that the bolt does not get a good hit. A bolt that gets a good hit can still kill anyone mortal, eg it's a viable method for 1e assassination % or for kill-helpless-character-in-one-round, no matter your level.

Personally I don't much like the rapid hp escalation and flatline defenses of 0e-3e, I prefer the 4e approach where defenses go up by level, and hp scale more slowly - this is a bit closer to both real life and movie physics. I don't mind Red Sonja taking the occasional scratch, but I'd think she should avoid most shots entirely. It should be both less likely that the bolt will hit, and less likely that it does serious injury if it does hit.
But again, there is a bit of an SOD issue, but not a dissociation issue - everything involved in the mechanics of shooting & damage does map onto events in-world.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 23, 2012)

pemerton said:


> The only claim I made about pre-4e hit points is that they are "dissociated", because they permit the player to make decisions on the basis of information that the PC does not and _cannot_ possess - namely, that a particular arrow shot _cannot_ be fatal.




Why can't PCs know that? That's your own interpretation of D&D worlds. Mine is that they do know that the risk of a non-magical arrow alone killing them, unless it's a powerful bow wield by a powerful person, is nigh zero. In fact, that doesn't depend on the HP as physical interpretation; whatever HP are, I think it's one valid interpretation for PCs to have an understanding of how little some things threaten them and that damage is fairly neatly cumulative. What PCs do should make sense from an in-world perspective, and to some extent here the actions of the players are constrained by the tactical elements of D&D. I'm willing to resolve that problem here by making the game world a closer match to the rules of D&D.


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## S'mon (Sep 23, 2012)

pemerton said:


> This implies that hit point loss equals dodging. Which seems at odds with hit points equals meat.




You need to grok that hit points  are proportional meat - if you lose half your hp to an attack, you are just as wounded at 50/100 as at 5/10. But increase in hp with levelling  is almost entirely increase in dodging/mitigation ability, yup (per EGG, no one has more than about 12 'real wound' hp). But even the lightest wound is still a wound - and frankly that seems to be the case in 4e too, given that there are still lots of secondary effects like poison damage that key off hits and only make sense if the blow connected.


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## FireLance (Sep 23, 2012)

rounser said:


> There's a lot of lipstick application to the proverbial pig going on in this thread, IMO.  A surfeit of mechanics for D&D which are unenvisionable or difficult to map to anything going on in the fantasy world are IMO just plain old bad game design, not narrativist, dramatist, cinematic, or any kind of self-important sounding game design theory jargon word.  But again this obvious flaw gets the runaround.



That's because it _isn't_ "bad game design" or "an obvious flaw" to some people. I offer the following as an example of the difference between "It is bad" and "I think it is bad". Note the careful use of the phrase "This approach doesn't work for me", indicating that the views expressed are an opinion, and not objective truth.

There are a number of ways in which you could approach the issue of hit points.

First, you could take the approach that hit points are entirely "meat", and that a 4 hit point wound means exactly the same thing for a normal man with 4 hit points and a 6th-level fighter with 40 hit points. This approach doesn't work for me because this means that a 6th-level fighter could be sporting up to nine wounds that would have killed a normal man (sword thrust to the gut, arrow through the neck, broken skull, etc.) and would (1) still be making attack rolls normally; and (2) eventually be able to recover through non-magical means.

Second, you could take the approach that hit points are partly "meat", and partly some other factor, such as the ability to dodge attacks and turn otherwise fatal injuries into less serious ones (for the sake of this argument, let's call this other factor "vigor"). I see this approach as an improvement over the "entirely meat" approach because when a 6th-level fighter takes a 4 hit point wound, as long as it doesn't reduce his hit points to 0 or less, he isn't actually stabbed in the gut. Instead, he is able to avoid the full effect of the attack at the last second, so that a sword thrust that would have stabbed a normal man in the gut is reduced to a grazed stomach or something along those lines. The 6th-level fighter has still lost 4 hit points, but the physical effect of the loss of those 4 hit points is different from the physical effect that it would have had on a normal man. 

Now, the approach that hit points are only partly "meat" could be further subdivided into whether, when hit points are lost and regained, they are always lost and regained in exactly the same proportions of "meat" and "vigor", or whether "meat" and "vigor" points can be regained separately.

The approach that "meat" points and "vigor" points are always lost and regained in the same proportions does not work for me, not because of the hit point rules, but because of the healing rules. If a normal man with 4 hit points can recover from a 3 hit point wound with 3 days of natural healing, it seems to me that a 6th-level fighter with 40 hit points with 30 hit points of wounds should be injured to a similar extent and should also be able to recover completely in 3 days. Unfortunately, this has not been the case in most editions to date. Interestingly enough, if hit point recovery were made proportional to full maximum hit points (something which was done in 4e), it would have made this approach more acceptable to me. 

Given that I already have a preference for hit point approaches where hit points represent both "meat" and "vigor", and a preference for approaches in which "meat" and "vigor" points can be gained and lost separately, it is not too far a step from that to an approach where "vigor" points can be regained far more quickly than "meat" points.

That's all there is to it, and I certainly would not presume to suggest that a preference for any other approach is "bad game design" or "an obvious flaw".


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## S'mon (Sep 23, 2012)

An aside on D&D combat as process-sim, flashing blades vs sloggers:

Gygax apparently based his AC/hit point system on a battleship warfare game. The system gives everyone scads of hp as they level, and defense goes up only with armour. This has the weird effect that (in 0e-3e):

1)Two high-level swashbucklers hack at each other, taking off scads of hp, until one keels over from accumulated damage. I remember a duel in a 3e campaign exactly like this. But in feel it resembles more the armoured sloggers of _Excalibur_ than the duels of _Princess Bride_.

2) Two low level characters in heavy armour trade thrusts, searching for a weakness, until one gets lucky and deals a deadly blow. We had an exchange like this in my AD&D campaign on Friday, it was a classic swashbuckling exchange between elf-maid and sneering villain - but it was only possible because both characters were in platemail!  

So in terms of the appropriate feel to combat, 0e-3e D&D seems to get it exactly backwards. It seems that heavy armour should be giving the slogger characters 'hit points' to hack through, while unarmoured swashbucklers should have a higher 'defense' score, but far fewer hp.
I will say that 4e seems to handle duels much much better. HP feel far more abstract, the combat roles work to distinguish skirmishers from sloggers, and at the same time the combatants are typically making choices every round which of several attack powers/techniques they'll use.


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## S'mon (Sep 23, 2012)

pemerton said:


> This is true if all the wounds are to the same location, especially because of RQs weird weapon die expressions: sword 1d8+1, dagger 1d4+2. If you changed some of those to get onto single dice - say, sword 1d10, dagger 1d6 or 1d8 - then it would be possible, as typical abdomen hit points are 4, and 3 min-damage hits would still leave 1 hp in the abdomen.
> 
> If the wounds are to different locations then it is certainly possible to sustain multiple wounds in RQ and keep going.




Uhm, don't all RQ PCs have a single hp pool, typically around 10-18 hp, as well as location hp? And realistically, when you play RQ, no one without damage reduction will ever take more than about 4 hits overall, using the listed damage expressions, without going down (especially as most melee types likely add a bonus damage die for high STR). That was certainly my experience - you almost never fall to 1 hit, and you almost never are still standing after 3.


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## Balesir (Sep 23, 2012)

S'mon said:


> Uhm, don't all RQ PCs have a single hp pool, typically around 10-18 hp, as well as location hp? And realistically, when you play RQ, no one without damage reduction will ever take more than about 4 hits overall, using the listed damage expressions, without going down (especially as most melee types likely add a bonus damage die for high STR). That was certainly my experience - you almost never fall to 1 hit, and you almost never are still standing after 3.



If I remember correctly (I may not - it's been a while*) hits to arms and legs don't also count against that "body pool". It also depends whether and how much healing you apply to yourself.

*: plus, we used to play several systems that were somewhat similar, and the main one of these definitely had this sort of rule.


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## mmadsen (Sep 23, 2012)

S'mon said:


> The high level PC with lots of hp is capable of ensuring that the bolt does not get a good hit.



What does that mean inside the game world that someone can _ensure_ that they won't take a good hit?


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 23, 2012)

S'mon said:


> An aside on D&D combat as process-sim, flashing blades vs sloggers:
> 
> Gygax apparently based his AC/hit point system on a battleship warfare game. The system gives everyone scads of hp as they level, and defense goes up only with armour. This has the weird effect that (in 0e-3e):
> 
> ...




No.  No it doesn't - it only comes close to doing that if you declare hit points to be proportional meat.  I've already quoted the 1e approach to hit points earlier in this thread and I'm going to do so again.
Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61*
_Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical  - *a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are  considered* - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the  magical protections._​  1e hit points for PCs and for skilled NPCs (monsters like ogres are a whole different story) are explicitely not meat - not even proportional meat.  Gygax did this for many reasons including the one you outline - and the one about critical hits.  Of course it in its own way throws into stark relief the almost unanswerable question "what is a hit point?", and this was probably the most house-ruled part of 1e even before Weapon vs Armour Type, and XP for GP because it feels wrong to hit with a natural 20 and not have hit properly.

This is why no other game I'm aware of other than Palladium has hit points that scale the way D&D does.  Hit points have always been an incoherent metagame mechanic to keep the game on rails - and they fall over when people look at them too hard.  The reason 4e hit points are hated by some isnt because splitting stun from endurance is less realistic, it's because you need to look at a fundamentally weird system again - and that system is best not looked at.



> So in terms of the appropriate feel to combat, 0e-3e D&D seems to get it exactly backwards.




2-3e please.  1e gets it right, but has the disjunction when you record 'damage' taken.



> It seems that heavy armour should be giving the slogger characters 'hit points' to hack through, while unarmoured swashbucklers should have a higher 'defense' score, but far fewer hp.




And many games including GURPS and I think Rolemaster do exactly that.  (Actually, Rolemaster armour is from a process-sim perspective a joy.  But even in the cut down MERP version you use a different lookup table for each armour type.)



> I will say that 4e seems to handle duels much much better. HP feel far more abstract, the combat roles work to distinguish skirmishers from sloggers, and at the same time the combatants are typically making choices every round which of several attack powers/techniques they'll use.




I'd agree.  The problems with 4e here are mostly to do either with naming conventions (call Healing Surges something like Endurance Points and a lot of them melt) and round the dying condition.  I'd prefer to go full on gamist/narrativist with the dying condition, call it something like "Down", keep the saves, but the downside of failing three death saves is DM determined and always (a) bad and (b) results in the PC being unable to adventure for a time.  The two ways of getting actually dead are negative bloodied and CDG (probably by a non-minion).


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## Bluenose (Sep 23, 2012)

Balesir said:


> If I remember correctly (I may not - it's been a while*) hits to arms and legs don't also count against that "body pool". It also depends whether and how much healing you apply to yourself.
> 
> *: plus, we used to play several systems that were somewhat similar, and the main one of these definitely had this sort of rule.




Damage to legs and arms certainly counted against the main pool, but I think only until the limb was reduced to zero (maybe depending on edition). So eight damage to a five point leg would do five to the main pool, but eight damage to the abdomen would all count. 

Exceed the hit points of the limb by six, and it's severed/mangled beyond repair. Exceed that on head/chest/abdomen, and it's a dead character. I saw more characters die that way than to overall damage, I suspect. You could re-attach a limb with Healing 6, but not bring someone back to life without very high-powered magic that most religions didn't have access to. Shamans could self-raise, of course. 


Also, if hit points are proprtional meat, Cure X Wounds spells should presumably have healed more damage on characters with more hit points. Otherwise, relatively minor wounds (20 damage on a 100hp character) require more magical healing than serious ones (20 damage on a 25 hp character). 4e at least gets that bit right.


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## pemerton (Sep 23, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> Why can't PCs know that? That's your own interpretation of D&D worlds. Mine is that they do know that the risk of a non-magical arrow alone killing them, unless it's a powerful bow wield by a powerful person, is nigh zero.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm willing to resolve that problem here by making the game world a closer match to the rules of D&D.



I can't say there's anything wrong with that per se.

But personally, I think it makes the world of D&D something different from how it is generally presented and played.



mmadsen said:


> What does that mean inside the game world that someone can _ensure_ that they won't take a good hit?



Good question. If hit points are luck and divine favour, how do you _know_ that you are going to be lucky? And what does it mean for luck to be "run down" over the course of the adventuring day?



S'mon said:


> Uhm, don't all RQ PCs have a single hp pool, typically around 10-18 hp, as well as location hp? And realistically, when you play RQ, no one without damage reduction will ever take more than about 4 hits overall, using the listed damage expressions, without going down



Well, you might get lucky and get a serious of minimum damage rolls (a fortnight ago, rolling 2d20 for the ongoing damage from a beholder's disintegrate ray, I got snakes eyes!).

But I think that we can infer from this that, in RQ, the sort of rapier slash that produces a streak of blood but no other impairment is _not_ a hit: it's just colour, probably suitable for the narration of a narrowly successful parry against a solidly successful hit.



Balesir said:


> If I remember correctly (I may not - it's been a while*) hits to arms and legs don't also count against that "body pool".



Sorry, on this occasion I think your memory is letting you down.



S'mon said:


> An aside on D&D combat as process-sim, flashing blades vs sloggers



I enjoyed this post, and would have XPed it if I could have.


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## mmadsen (Sep 23, 2012)

S'mon said:


> So in terms of the appropriate feel to combat, 0e-3e D&D seems to get it exactly backwards. It seems that heavy armour should be giving the slogger characters 'hit points' to hack through, while unarmoured swashbucklers should have a higher 'defense' score, but far fewer hp.



Absolutely.  If _everyone_'s wearing heavy armor and using mundane weapons, then combat feels more or less right, like an Arthurian tale -- only no one ever gets unhorsed and knocked out early.

If performing division wasn't such a pain, then having armor divide damage by a factor of two, three, or four might work better than increasing AC to get hit half, one-third, or one-fourth as often.


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## Tequila Sunrise (Sep 23, 2012)

JustinAlexander said:


> In 3E, all damage taken was physical damage. Period. No exceptions.





			
				3.5 Player's Handbook said:
			
		

> The most common way that your character gets hurt is to take lethal damage and lose hit points, whether from an orc's falchion, a wizard's lightning bolt spell, or a fall into molten lava. You record your character's hit point total on your character sheet. As your character takes damage, you subtract that damage from your hit points, leaving you with your current hit points. Current hit points go down when you take damage and go back up when you recover.
> 
> What Hit Points Represent: Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. *For some characters, hit points may represent divine favor or inner power.* When a paladin survives a fireball, you will be hard pressed to convince bystanders that she doesn't have the favor of some higher power.



...You might want to do some reading before you start making absolute statements.

Personally, I'm all about 'all wounds all the time,'* official explanations be damed! But _every single edition has treated hit points with the same sort of abstract hand-wavey explanation._ Let's not pretend otherwise.

*Barring, of course, psychic damage situations such as pemerton pointed out.


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## S'mon (Sep 23, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> What does that mean inside the game world that someone can _ensure_ that they won't take a good hit?




It means they're just_ that_ good.


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## S'mon (Sep 23, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> No.  No it doesn't - it only comes close to doing that if you declare hit points to be proportional meat.  I've already quoted the 1e approach to hit points earlier in this thread and I'm going to do so again.
> Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61*
> _Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical  - *a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are  considered* - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the  magical protections._​





Gygax's description of what two high level swashbucklers hacking away at each other's hp pool actually represents, is different from how it actually feels in play. Gygax says I'm supposed to think "Errol Flynn battling the Sheriff of Nottingham", but in play it actually feels more like "Boorman's Death of Uther".  
I just raise this point because the lameness of that 3e duel has stuck with me for 9 years, whereas in my Friday AD&D game I just had the exact opposite experience, but it was only possible in AD&D because both duelists were in platemail. And this difference in impression... impressed me. ​


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## mmadsen (Sep 23, 2012)

S'mon said:


> It means they're just_ that_ good.



I'm totally on board with high-level fighters being _just that good_ -- but _just that good_ at what exactly?  Because they're not especially good at avoiding getting hit, yet they can _ensure_ that they won't get hit _well_ -- at first, and right after getting healed.


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## S'mon (Sep 23, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> I'm totally on board with high-level fighters being _just that good_ -- but _just that good_ at what exactly?  Because they're not especially good at avoiding getting hit, yet they can _ensure_ that they won't get hit _well_ -- at first, and right after getting healed.




Like I said, I don't think it's realistic, or particularly good design.

Edit: Although attritive hp that increase with level to huge numbers is a way of giving some plot protection, I'm not sure they really do that very well in practice; post 3e the equal-CR monsters are designed to take PCs from full to 0 hp pretty fast. I tend to think that increasing defence plus a small increase in durability is probably best.  On the other hand, D&D levels are a very powerful carrot, and hp increase seems to be part of that.


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## rounser (Sep 23, 2012)

Me:  A surfeit of unevisionable mechanics that don't map to the fantasy world are, for D&D, obviously bad game design.

Disassociation enthusiasts:  Ah, but hit points, plus these quotes from Gygax taken 20 to 30 years out of context mean that not only are you wrong, but the creator of the game condones our healing surges and marking and CAGI as D&D done right!

Me:  No, I'm aware of hit points and their wargaming origin.  They are a single instance, their existence doesn't give you carte blanche to introduce a tidal wave of stuff that maps even less to fantasy reality than they do.  And we all know that if Col Pladoh were still here, you wouldn't quote him to his face because he doesn't condone these 4Eisms, and you're quoting him decades out of context, and you're well aware of that.  

And if anything, the failure of 4E seals the argument on whether 4E was a legitimate D&D with this kind off design in it.  To enough of it's audience, the answer was a resounding "no" to such a degree that it relinquished market lead to a game that didn't include such bad game design elements.  Am I stretching by making this link?  Not as much as you quoting Gygax so far out of context.

*Mod Note:* see my post below ~Umbran


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## JustinAlexander (Sep 24, 2012)

Tequila Sunrise said:


> ...You might want to do some reading before you start making absolute statements.




Take your own advice.

I've tried to be very patient and very explicit in stating that "only the last few hit points count" was a workable explanation of the rules (albeit not the explanation supported by most editions of the game). It makes me a little sad that the people subscribing to that position in this thread are apparently incapable of extending the same live-and-let-live courtesy, apparently out of their desire to fight an edition war by proxy.


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## Tequila Sunrise (Sep 24, 2012)

JustinAlexander said:


> Take your own advice.
> 
> I've tried to be very patient and very explicit in stating that "only the last few hit points count" was a workable explanation of the rules (albeit not the explanation supported by most editions of the game). It makes me a little sad that the people subscribing to that position in this thread are apparently incapable of extending the same live-and-let-live courtesy, apparently out of their desire to fight an edition war by proxy.



Nice red herring, but I'm not warring here. You outright lied about the official 3e explanation of hit points, and I corrected you with a direct quote. You try to back your lie up with a self-reference, and I...


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## Libramarian (Sep 24, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> @Libramarian : Yeah, I've read your reasonably long-winded essays. But to summarize an awful lot of text, you could simply say essential difference between simulationism and narrativism is that simulationism says "Here is a world. Live in it" and narrativism says "Here is your story. Tell it." (Gamism is, of course "Here is a game. Play it.")
> 
> Focusing on the sorts of stories that the players want to play is the core concept of narrativism. Is simulationism completely incapable of this? For 1 player? No. For 5 players? Unless they all share very common interests, generally, yes.



Using your form, Narrativism is "Here is an audience and a premise, create a story." Gamism is like "here is an audience and a game, win it." The audience (the other players around the table) part is important.

Simulationism is "here is a world or a genre, live in it". GNS considers genre emulation to be simulationism. It says sticking close to a checklist of genre tropes is more akin to simulating physical or historical reality than story creation. Some people have problems with this but I am on board with this, at least theoretically.

Anyway my point about 4e is, while I know at least pemerton finds 4e's scene focus and skill challenge mechanics useful for narrativist play, I find it misleading and frankly kind of pretentious when people try to argue that something like Come and Get It is useful for narrativist play. The idea between CAGI and related dissociated mechanics is the 4e designers chose to "brute force" class balance by homogenizing (and nerfing) the player-directed mechanics. It's about balance, which is generally a gamist technique.

There is no necessary connection between a dissociated mechanic and narrativism. Dissociated mechanics can support gamism, narrativism or simulationism, or they can be pointless and not support any creative agenda.

I certainly don't think dissociated mechanics are necessarily bad. I think they should be used more carefully than they are in 4th edition.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 24, 2012)

pemerton said:


> But personally, I think it makes the world of D&D something different from how it is generally presented and played.




I disagree; in fact, I think it makes it match how it is played. D&D has a deep tactical war aspect, and when that mode switches on, characters act like something is potentially fatal if and only if it is in fact potentially fatal in the player's estimation. If the characters lived in a world where one arrow could potentially fell them, they wouldn't be so quick to charge archers.


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## pemerton (Sep 24, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> I disagree; in fact, I think it makes it match how it is played.



We may be at cross-purposes - when I talked about how "the D&D world is generally played" I wan't meaning the way the players play their PCs in combat. I was meaning the way the background fiction is generally presented in rulebooks, setting books, etc, and the way that stuff is generally brought out in play.

For example, if hit points are really divinely-infused toughness, why don't they go away in an antimagic field, like other SU and SP abilities? Or, if they are innate physical toughness, then why don't you get them when you shapechange, like other EX abilities?

The way hit points are treated in the fiction suggests that they are not part of the fiction at all, either as divine favour or "meat". The way they are treated in the fiction suggests that they are metagame plot protection.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 24, 2012)

JustinAlexander said:


> You want to claim, as Neonchameleon does in a later post, that 1E exclusively endorses this interpretation? You're simply wrong. (In point of fact, the 1E DMG is explicit in stating that any attack which inflicts hit point damage is a physical wound.)
> ...
> That'll be my last word on hit points in this thread.






JustinAlexander said:


> Take your own advice.
> 
> I've tried to be very patient and very explicit in stating that "only the last few hit points count" was a workable explanation of the rules (albeit not the explanation supported by most editions of the game). It makes me a little sad that the people subscribing to that position in this thread are apparently incapable of extending the same live-and-let-live courtesy, apparently out of their desire to fight an edition war by proxy.




Not the way I read it.  You seem to have been claiming that reading the rules as written in 1e was directly wrong.  And by citing your link first you are excluding a wide swathe of D&D rules and second you seem to be saying "Justin Alexander's interpretation overrides the actual rules as written".

Fallacy the first falls apart when you take into account that the goblin scored three critical hits in those ten attacks.  So the goblin scored a critical hit that didn't do more than a trivial flesh wound.  In what possible universe can that be described as a critical hit?  Fallacy the first therefore _does not work with 3.X or any other system where critical hits merely do hit point damage._

Fallacy the second might be a fallacy because it doesn't fit with D&D rules.  But how often is someone actually hit in the Errol Flynn swashbuckling hit points were meant to replicate?  This merely underlines that hit points don't quite do the job intended.

As for your so-called beautiful abstraction, I find this no more beautiful than the 4e dying rules.  It's a kludge intended to reflect one part of the game rules in the real world.  It mostly says "we can't say what a hit point really means".  The whole thing's a slightly incoherent kludge that works until you examine it closely, but any interpretation I've ever seen falls apart with a common condition.  In AD&D it's swashbuckling (for that matter the same goes for 3e).  In 3e it's critical hits.  In 4e where the game embraces the action movie physics that hit points produce, it's dying.  And this is the most fixable one of all.



S'mon said:


> Gygax's description of what two high level swashbucklers hacking away at each other's hp pool actually represents, is different from how it actually feels in play. Gygax says I'm supposed to think "Errol Flynn battling the Sheriff of Nottingham", but in play it actually feels more like "Boorman's Death of Uther".
> I just raise this point because the lameness of that 3e duel has stuck with me for 9 years, whereas in my Friday AD&D game I just had the exact opposite experience, but it was only possible in AD&D because both duelists were in platemail. And this difference in impression... impressed me.




Indeed.  The problem with hit points is that they don't feel right for the impression they are trying to give.  They are a metagame mechanic that will fall over in one direction or another if you investigate them too hard.  It feels wrong to treat hit points in the 1e way for a swashbuckling duel - they are, after all, called "Hit points".  Gygax wrote at length in 1e about why treating them as meat is unsatisfactory.  Although it's probably more satisfactory than treating them in the way Gygax intended.  With a rename, the 4e cinematic hit point/stun and healing surge/endurance mechanic would work well - but the dying rules are a mess.  Hit points have always been a problem for D&D because they are an almost pure metagame and pacing mechanic people try to throw simulationist justifications around.


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## GreyICE (Sep 24, 2012)

Libramarian said:


> Using your form, Narrativism is "Here is an audience and a premise, create a story." Gamism is like "here is an audience and a game, win it." The audience (the other players around the table) part is important.
> 
> Simulationism is "here is a world or a genre, live in it". GNS considers genre emulation to be simulationism. It says sticking close to a checklist of genre tropes is more akin to simulating physical or historical reality than story creation. Some people have problems with this but I am on board with this, at least theoretically.
> 
> ...




You managed to rephrase what I said into something longer and somewhat less accurate, but which uses more irritating words.  That'd be exactly what's wrong with those terrible essays, yes (a world already IMPLIES a genre man, you don't need to separate the two, and gamists enjoy playing games more than they enjoy winning them (a hard fought game that is quality and lost is more fun than an easy game and an easy victory).  

As for Come and Get it, no.  It's no more based in narrativism than "Improved Trip" is simulationist.  D&D has always had strong gamist elements.  I mean 1E is almost pure gamism in many respects.  It's a fun ability that is fun to use and fun to narrate - and also the whipping boy for far too many things.  If you can't handle a fighter luring a group of enemies in close and then punishing them for their mistake, you probably have an issue with a TON of genre fiction.  Because warriors luring a bunch of people in and then going nuts is pretty much a staple (watch goddamn Buffy the Vampire slayer and you'll see Buffy Summers do exactly that many times - ye gods this is not hard to find examples of).  So it's a fun gameplay element that also mimics a lot of fiction and was drawn from it (look at the name itself and you can see that). 

And that's where your entire argument, to me, runs off the rails.  Come and Get it is fun to narrate!  It's fun to use from a gamist perspective.  The simulationist is left out in the cold, I suppose, but oh well, can't please anyone.

Now look at trip mechanics.  From a narrative perspective, they are the most boring things in the universe - exactly how the trip mechanic works is defined heavily by the rules manual (compare to the very loose ways that 4E gives for being 'knocked prone' which are much more open to interesting narratives).  From a gamist perspective, well, they're powerful. And hellishly boring.  Trip someone, pin them down, make lots of attacks.  Fail your trip attempts - or find something that's hard to trip - Oozes can be tripped (and in fact get no modifiers to preventing it, so pretty easily), so not as much as you'd think - and go back to full BAB spam.  It's a game where you have two cards and you always know which one you'll play.  And from a simulationist perspective?

Oozes can be tripped.  So your simulation fails dramatically.  


But somehow the issue of how fun mechanics are at the tabletop gets lost in all this back and forth.  Here's the issue - Buffy jumping up on a tabletop, whistling to get the attention of a room full of vampires, and going "hey boys, I'm up here" is good old fashioned fun.  Sir Tripsalot tripping the zombie, followed by Sir Tripsalot tripping the Ooze followed by Sir Tripsalot tripping the dragon is good old fashioned BORING.  Maybe if your "beautiful example" of non-dissociative mechanics didn't make me want to fall asleep during gaming sessions I'd be a tad less skeptical about your creative direction.

P.S.  Can you please find another power other than Come and Get It?  Because it's one power in the entire book.  I mean why do we even need to defend it?  You can't defend the 3.5E drowning rules, they perfectly, in completely clear plaintext, allow drowning to heal somebody.  Every system on the PLANET will have a few things that make zero sense (and at least Come and Get It is a fun sort of zero sense in a lot of situations).  Go find a few more examples, plox.


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## Umbran (Sep 24, 2012)

rounser said:


> And if anything, the failure of 4E seals the argument on whether 4E was a legitimate D&D ...





Ladies and gents, a moment of your time...

It is all well and good to not like a game.  it is all well and good to say you don't like a game.  But trying to call a game objectively "illegitimate" is edition warring, in our book. 

This thread is not about 4e.  It is about how to design a game.  4e is merely one example.  Turning this into Edition War territory will not be tolerated.  Any further edition warring in this thread, by either side, is apt to result in summary eviction from EN World for several days, without further warning.

Questions?  Take them to e-mail or PM with the moderator of your choice.  Thanks for your time and attention.


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## Mallus (Sep 24, 2012)

The question I keep coming back to re: dissociated mechanics --I'm trying to be constructive so I left out the scare quotes-- is this:

What's the value of association? 

I think back to a 3.5e PC I ran for a year or so, Rashid. He was a reach-weapon melee character built to use (abuse?) the tripping rules. There wre no metagame-y restrictions on how often he could attempt to trip a foe, the rules took into account sim-y things like size and weapon type, the decision to trip a foe directly mapped onto his, etc.

But playing him in combat felt like playing a video game; specifically Soul Calibur --a Japanese 3D fighting game-- spamming a Seung Mina combo. These associated rules didn't draw me into the PCs perspective/experience. Quite the opposite. They reminded me I was playing one game while simultaneously reminding me of another.

So, again, what's the (inherent) value in association? What effect is it supposed to produce, in and of itself?


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## mmadsen (Sep 24, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> As for Come and Get it, no.  It's no more based in narrativism than "Improved Trip" is simulationist.



I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, because _improved trip_ seems like a decent way to simulate skill at foot sweeps and throws.

_Come and get it_, on the other hand, isn't _narrativist_ at all, because it isn't driven by story concerns: plot, character, etc.

More than anything, _come and get it_ seems Euro-_gamist_.  It's a neat little game mechanic with a patina of theme that comes right off if you scratch at it looking for _simulation_.


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## mmadsen (Sep 24, 2012)

Mallus said:


> What's the value of association?



Associated mechanics should reflect the modeled reality so clearly that they disappear, because there's no disconnect between what's happening inside the game world and what's happening in the rules.



Mallus said:


> There wre no metagame-y restrictions on how often he could attempt to trip a foe, the rules took into account sim-y things like size and weapon type, the decision to trip a foe directly mapped onto his, etc.
> 
> But playing him in combat felt like playing a video game...



A bad simulation can be disassociated.  It's not solely a matter of designer _intent_.


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## GreyICE (Sep 24, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, because _improved trip_ seems like a decent way to simulate skill at foot sweeps and throws.
> 
> _Come and get it_, on the other hand, isn't _narrativist_ at all, because it isn't driven by story concerns: plot, character, etc.
> 
> More than anything, _come and get it_ seems Euro-_gamist_.  It's a neat little game mechanic with a patina of theme that comes right off if you scratch at it looking for _simulation_.




Well, here's an interesting question.  Lets say I try and foot sweep you and miss.  So you get to try and foot sweep me?  Why?  I've seen MMA matches, if someone tries to knock someone else off their feet and fails, the other person doesn't necessarily have an opening to knock the first off their feet (it was in for clear balance reasons).  

Improved Trip was in for fixing the balance fix in the first place (lol) and letting you actually make trip attempts.  Which you could make against anything.  Why can I trip an Ooze?  What does that simulate?  I swing my feet through a lump of jelly, and it falls over on its back?  

I guess you can modify it so trip attempts only work on things with humanoid features.  And introduce a new rules system to cover non-humanoid creatures.  

This is the problem.  I am promised simulationism will work without introducing a rules manual that can be used to kill home intruders, but examples of 'good simulationism' include GURPS, which DOES have a rules manual that can be used to kill home intruders (once you add in all the submodules you need to make the game simulationist) and the editions of D&D that I'm promised are simulationist (uh... 3E) have rules that don't seem to be either good simulationism or GOOD RULES.  PERIOD.  

Forgive me for a feeling of creeping skepticism here.  

(also, seriously, find another whipping boy than Come and Get It, which suffers from the exact same problem as Trip mechanics - it assumes a certain class of targets, and then works on absolutely everything)


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## mmadsen (Sep 24, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Lets say I try and foot sweep you and miss.  So you get to try and foot sweep me?  Why?  I've seen MMA matches, if someone tries to knock someone else off their feet and fails, the other person doesn't necessarily have an opening to knock the first off their feet (it was in for clear balance reasons).



If you spend any time on the mat -- wrestling, judo, jiu-jitsu, whatever -- you quickly learn that going for a takedown opens you up to counters.  The rule may not model reality perfectly, but it's not ridiculous.



GreyICE said:


> Why can I trip an Ooze?  What does that simulate?  I swing my feet through a lump of jelly, and it falls over on its back?



What rule set are we discussing?  Because I was never under the impression that you could trip an ooze in 3E.  From Skip Williams' All About Trip Attacks (Part 2):

Who Can Be Tripped: Any creature that is subject to gravity and somehow holds itself off the ground is subject to trip attacks. Incorporeal creatures can't be tripped -- even by other incorporeal creatures -- because they can't fall down. A prone creature has already fallen down and can't be tripped. (This can prove significant when you've tripped a foe and wish to keep him down; see the section on being tripped [below].) Limbless creatures pretty much just lie on the ground (at least while using their normal land speeds or just standing around on a fairly level space) and usually can't be tripped unless they're climbing or in some other precarious situation. This includes creatures with the ooze type, snakes, and anything else that wiggles and slithers. The rules don't give any guidance on creatures whose body types make them immune to trip attacks, so you'll have to rely on your common sense here.​


GreyICE said:


> This is the problem.  I am promised simulationism will work without introducing a rules manual that can be used to kill home intruders, but examples of 'good simulationism' include GURPS, which DOES have a rules manual that can be used to kill home intruders (once you add in all the submodules you need to make the game simulationist) and the editions of D&D that I'm promised are simulationist (uh... 3E) have rules that don't seem to be either good simulationism or GOOD RULES.  PERIOD.



Why do you think you need every GURPS sub-module _to make the game simulationist_?  Isn't Basic GURPS _simulationist_?  I think you're confusing _simulationist_ with _hyper-detailed_.


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## GreyICE (Sep 24, 2012)

Interesting house rule you posted.  But that's not what the actual rules read.



> Trip
> You can try to trip an opponent as an unarmed melee attack. You can only trip an opponent who is one size category larger than you, the same size, or smaller.
> 
> Making a Trip Attack
> ...




Special Attacks :: d20srd.org


This is the d20 SRD.

If you're talking about HOUSE RULES to the SRD, well, that's interesting.  You can house rule 4E just as easily.   So what's the complaint, exactly?


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## Desdichado (Sep 24, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Interesting house rule you posted.  But that's not what the actual rules read.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Further clarification and discussion about how the rules work from the designer of the game is a "nice house rule?"

Now you're just being passive aggressive.


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## GreyICE (Sep 24, 2012)

Hobo said:


> Further clarification and discussion about how the rules work from the designer of the game is a "nice house rule?"
> 
> Now you're just being passive aggressive.




An article, published in 2006 (6 years after 3E released, 2 years after 3.5E released) on an internet site - not an official update of the 3.5 rulebook - and we're supposed to treat it as anything other than house rules?

Uh... why?  It's not like this was published a few days after 3.5 was released, or was incorporated into any release of the 3.5 rulebook, or in any way resembles an official part of the system.  I would guess that between 0.2% and 1% of the people who play 3.5E have ever read that article - and 1% would be very extremely generous.

I'm not being passive-aggressive.  I am literally telling you that you linked me to house rules for a 6 year old system, and told me that they were the equivalent of the ACTUAL rules that were published in the players handbook.  I can link you to house rules for 4E too.  

Also, 



> The rules don't spend much time explaining what a trip attack looks like in the game world. Fortunately, it's not too difficult to read what the rules have to say about trip attacks and form a picture from that.




Given the current debate we're having and the complaints about "4E had too much rules text, and you had to read the rules and form a picture from that" this sentence makes me roll about laughing.


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## LostSoul (Sep 25, 2012)

Mallus said:


> The question I keep coming back to re: dissociated mechanics --I'm trying to be constructive so I left out the scare quotes-- is this:
> 
> What's the value of association?




I believe that, when the choices you have as a player line up to the choices that your character has, it's easier to get into character and feel what the character feels.  You're not brought out of the role that you're playing.

edit: There may be other benefits.

I think this value is going to vary based on what you want out of the game.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 25, 2012)

Hobo said:


> Further clarification and discussion about how the rules work from the designer of the game is a "nice house rule?"
> 
> Now you're just being passive aggressive.




It's been 45 years since Barthes wrote Death of the Author.  The text stands on its own unless it is ambiguous or unless there is official errata.

And even if we take Skip Williams rulings there as official, for the entire life of 3.0 and over half the life of 3.5 this was not so.  We know that creatures were immune to things by category (for instance Constructs were immune to precision damage) and this wasn't stated for oozes, therefore we can assume it not to be so.  This means that if Skip Williams column is part of the rules of 3.5, it _changed_ them.  Arguments to common sense just show that common sense generally _isn't_.


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## LostSoul (Sep 25, 2012)

I think it's pretty clear that Skip Williams is saying that the intent of the rule, when written, was that it would be used in conjunction with the DM's common sense ruling.  "If the DM thinks you can this target in this situation, then you can; otherwise, you can't."  I think that would be a fair reading.

I personally think that this could be clearer, not just in the case of trip but throughout the text, but that's just me - a lot of people see it differently.


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## pemerton (Sep 25, 2012)

LostSoul said:


> I believe that, when the choices you have as a player line up to the choices that your character has, it's easier to get into character and feel what the character feels.  You're not brought out of the role that you're playing.



This is an empirical claim - a claim about the correspondence between certain game mechanics, and certain sorts of experience at the table.

In my own experience, so-called "dissociated mechanics" can help players get into character and feel what the character feels. Come and Get It, for example, requires the player to think about positioning his/her PC in relation to a group of foes - thereby experiencing the same sort of tactical thinking about position and the like that the PC is going through. And on earlier threads on this topic I've given the example of the player of a paladin in my game, who narrated the end of a baleful polymorph on his PC as his god turning him back, thereby further inhabiting and expressing this PC's unwavering religious devotion.

I'm not saying that my experiences are universal, or even typical. But I've got no reason to believe that the experiences of those who say that non-metagame mechanics help them immerse are universal or typical either. The counter-example provided by [MENTION=3887]Mallus[/MENTION] above, for example, certainly resonated with me.

I know that you (@LostSoul) have in earlier discussions of this issue tried to distinguish "dissociation" from absurdity. But if the goal of "association" is immersion/inhabitation of the PC and his/her situation, then I think that the distinction in question can't be drawn, at least for me. Because nothing is as likely to make me lose immersion in character and situation as absurdity like "PC hit points as meat" or the inane trip-fest described by Mallus.



LostSoul said:


> I think it's pretty clear that Skip Williams is saying that the intent of the rule, when written, was that it would be used in conjunction with the DM's common sense ruling.



Is there rules text in 3E that implies or suggests this in a way differenlty from 4e? My main memory of 3E is "rule zero", but that seemed to me to be about PC building rather than action resolution.


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## Iosue (Sep 25, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> It's been 45 years since Barthes wrote Death of the Author.  The text stands on its own unless it is ambiguous or unless there is official errata.
> 
> And even if we take Skip Williams rulings there as official, for the entire life of 3.0 and over half the life of 3.5 this was not so.  We know that creatures were immune to things by category (for instance Constructs were immune to precision damage) and this wasn't stated for oozes, therefore we can assume it not to be so.  This means that if Skip Williams column is part of the rules of 3.5, it _changed_ them.  Arguments to common sense just show that common sense generally _isn't_.



Er, I'd be more amenable to this argument if an EN World post by Rodney Thompson hadn't been used in the "Changes in Interpretation" thread as an authoritative source to clarify a point of 4e's rules.  A column by one of the game's authors, on the official website, titled "Rules of the Game", and without any preamble such as "this is how I play it", but presented as an authoritative examination of the rules deserves to be treated as more than "a house rule".  Claim it changed the rules, if you like, but we don't get to just write it off as a house rule.  Would a 4e rules clarification by Keith Baker on "Rule of Three" be considered "just a house rule"?  I doubt it.  

I am entirely unpersuaded by the "dissociated mechanics" argument.  But the arguments against are strong and sound enough not to resort to semantical nitpicking.  They are not weakened by conceding a point or two to the other side.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 25, 2012)

Iosue said:


> Er, I'd be more amenable to this argument if an EN World post by Rodney Thompson hadn't been used in the "Changes in Interpretation" thread as an authoritative source to clarify a point of 4e's rules. A column by one of the game's authors, on the official website, titled "Rules of the Game", and without any preamble such as "this is how I play it", but presented as an authoritative examination of the rules deserves to be treated as more than "a house rule". Claim it changed the rules, if you like, but we don't get to just write it off as a house rule. Would a 4e rules clarification by Keith Baker on "Rule of Three" be considered "just a house rule"? I doubt it.




Apples to oranges if this is about what I think it is.

The argument about 4e and skill challenges was asking what the rules actually said - and in no way did Thompson contradict the rules. But the rules in the DMG1 were illustrated in a way that could easily be read in a misleading manner. 

Skip, however, flat out adds rules that are nowhere presented in either 3.0 or 3.5.  If the 4e team made a 'clarification' of that magnitude they would have the decency to release it with official errata.  (It's worth pointing out at this point that it was a running joke on the Char Op boards that you only knew you were right when you had a CustServ or Sage ruling that disagreed with you).

Skip's column is therefore not a clarification, whatever else it is.  It flat out adds properties and rules that are not present in the actual rulebooks of the game.  They might have been _intended_ to be there.  But when a clarification literally changes the rules it ceases to be a clarification.


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## S'mon (Sep 25, 2012)

While I rarely agree with Skip Williams, was it really the case that 3e entirely lacked an "apply common sense in the interpretation of this rule" clause until he said it was there? 4e does seem to lack a 'common sense' clause, so I felt forced recently to let a PC knock a Titan prone against my better judgement because neither the power nor the stat block said he couldn't. It made the supposedly climactic fight highly bathetic.
But it it wasn't there in 3e I never noticed.


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## Desdichado (Sep 25, 2012)

S'mon said:


> While I rarely agree with Skip Williams, was it really the case that 3e entirely lacked an "apply common sense in the interpretation of this rule" clause until he said it was there?



Does it really need to?

Any GM who needs that stated or else his game is held hostage by a literal reading of the rules strikes me as too hapless to successfully run a game.


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## GreyICE (Sep 25, 2012)

Hobo said:


> Does it really need to?
> 
> Any GM who needs that stated or else his game is held hostage by a literal reading of the rules strikes me as too hapless to successfully run a game.




Unless that game is 4E, because then the DM can't make judgment calls.

All rules require interpretation.  All mechanical descriptions require imagination to adapt to the gameworld.  And no ruleset will be comprehensive enough to cover all corner cases.  This will never change.


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## Desdichado (Sep 25, 2012)

I agree with the second paragraph.  The purpose of your first paragraph, on the other hand, I don't see at all.


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## mmadsen (Sep 25, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> All rules require interpretation.  All mechanical descriptions require imagination to adapt to the gameworld.  And no ruleset will be comprehensive enough to cover all corner cases.  This will never change.



And this is why dissociated mechanics are so maddening.


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## LostSoul (Sep 25, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> And this is why dissociated mechanics are so maddening.




I'm not sure I follow this line of thinking.  Can you expand on it?


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## LostSoul (Sep 25, 2012)

S'mon said:


> While I rarely agree with Skip Williams, was it really the case that 3e entirely lacked an "apply common sense in the interpretation of this rule" clause until he said it was there?




It's covered on page 6 of the 3.5 DMG.


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## mmadsen (Sep 25, 2012)

LostSoul said:


> I'm not sure I follow this line of thinking.  Can you expand on it?



As GreyICE noted, all rules require interpretation, because no rule set can be truly complete.  Dissociated mechanics are so maddening because, by definition, the rules are divorced from what's "really" happening in the game world.  How do you make a good judgment call about what should happen, when what's happening in the rules seems unrelated to what's happening in the game?


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## Balesir (Sep 25, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> As GreyICE noted, all rules require interpretation, because no rule set can be truly complete.  Dissociated mechanics are so maddening because, by definition, the rules are divorced from what's "really" happening in the game world.  How do you make a good judgment call about what should happen, when what's happening in the rules seems unrelated to what's happening in the game?



This makes no sense to me, because there is no "what is happening in the game" - it literally doesn't exist. It is imaginary, which means that all that exists are the separate conceptions and models of it that people (players and GMs) hold in their minds. These models and conceptions need to be coordinated sufficiently for descriptions of actions and events based on one conception of the fiction to be intelligible in other conceptions held by other minds. This is a major function of the rules; to explain how events are taken to be resolved such that each model of the fictional reality can be constructed to accomodate those resolutions.

If the rules are "divorced from what's happening in the game world", is this because there is some independent arbiter of what the game world is with which they can disagree, or is it that the players refuse to adapt some part of their world models to accommodate what the rules say about how resolutions will be conducted? I would suggest the latter, since the former is palpably untrue (supposed GM absolutism not withstanding; communicating the entire of a world model sufficiently to allow synchronisation of conceptions would involve the GM communicating the de-facto rules as play progresses - an unrealistic task).

If the players are all fixated upon some fictional elements that don't fit with what the rules say about resolution, then they should change the rules. They should be aware in doing so, however, that the ways that resolutions are made does much to make the process of player decision making an interesting and varied activity - or not, as the case may be.


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## innerdude (Sep 25, 2012)

Balesir said:


> This makes no sense to me, because there is no "what is happening in the game" - it literally doesn't exist. It is imaginary, which means that all that exists are the separate conceptions and models of it that people (players and GMs) hold in their minds. These models and conceptions need to be coordinated sufficiently for descriptions of actions and events based on one conception of the fiction to be intelligible in other conceptions held by other minds. This is a major function of the rules; to explain how events are taken to be resolved such that each model of the fictional reality can be constructed to accomodate those resolutions.




In the absence of a clear ruling, I'd bet that most groups use "the real world" as the "independent arbiter" for how our characters experience the fiction. 

When a rules dispute comes into question, the typical sequence goes something like: 


The described result of the rule / mechanic does not fit with one or more members' conception of the fictional construct. 
The group attempts to resolve the dispute from within the current game parameters, situation, scene framing, and related rules constructions. 
If the result cannot be resolved from within the fiction, the "real world" as we experience it and common sense become the final arbiters. 

A player saying "The rule doesn't really work that way" is actually a player saying, "The result you've just described doesn't fit with want I want / believe / expect from the fiction your game portrays." Associated mechanics are easier to GM in disputes because they ultimately point to some real-world, causal phenomenon that either permits or prevents the described fiction from working. Obviously, both the players and GM have to agree that the "real-world" cause is in accord with the fiction. 

Associated mechanics ultimately protect both the player and GM better, because disputes are more easily resolved using known, experienced processes. "Well, the real world works this way, and you wouldn't really expect Y to happen if you did X, would you?" Are they perfect? No. Do GMs sometimes make mistakes in determining real-world cause and effect? Oh you betcha. But at least that association is THERE. Personally, I just like things to "make sense." My mind gets stuck on things that DON'T make sense, and I cannot easily move beyond them until they do. 

Mechanics have three recourses during a dispute---the GM puts his or her foot down and says "No," the GM basically has to say, "Well, that's what the rules say, even if I don't like it," or the GM is forced to make a snap judgement about the nature of the fiction itself. Depending on the group, none of these may be problematic. "Dissociated" mechanics, however, lack the ability to map to the fiction through any pre-existing "real world" view or model, they are completely arbitrary based on group accord. Hey, if everyone's willing to go along with whatever the in-the-moment fiction describes, great. But for some of us, the sense-making precedes the fiction.


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## Libramarian (Sep 25, 2012)

pemerton said:


> In my own experience, so-called "dissociated mechanics" can help players get into character and feel what the character feels. Come and Get It, for example, requires the player to think about positioning his/her PC in relation to a group of foes - thereby experiencing the same sort of tactical thinking about position and the like that the PC is going through. And on earlier threads on this topic I've given the example of the player of a paladin in my game, who narrated the end of a baleful polymorph on his PC as his god turning him back, thereby further inhabiting and expressing this PC's unwavering religious devotion.



I actually am completely on board with this idea that immersive mechanics are not necessarily process sim. NeonChameleon mentioned it earlier with the example of the FATE alcoholism mechanic being more immersive than the GURPS alcoholism mechanic. I find the AD&D rule of XP for GP to be immersive, because the direct power increase you get from finding a teasure hoard feels evocative of the relationship between money and power in the game-world, which would otherwise be harder to imagine because we don't spend much actual play-time on buying and selling. When you get a big whack of XP directly from finding the treasure, you feel your character's urge to let the shiny coins trill through their fingers while laughing maniacally. Whereas if you don't, it's hard to get that excited about it unless you have a really well-developed economic system in the game.

However, I think at this point we're talking about something subtle enough that it's going to be really, really hard to discuss it in an edition warlike environment without losing the signal in the desire to make a point in favor of one game or against another game.

I see what you mean about the feeling of tactical positioning with CAGI, but surely you could capture this in a different mechanic that also makes it easier to picture what is occurring in a way that makes sense.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 25, 2012)

Hobo said:


> Does it really need to?
> 
> Any GM who needs that stated or else his game is held hostage by a literal reading of the rules strikes me as too hapless to successfully run a game.




The problem is, and this seems to be especially a problem with D&D, is that "common sense" is not common. Does a fireball suck all the oxygen out of an area if cast underground? It says it melts metals; how hot does it leave them? Instantaneously heating a metal to its melting point and reducing it to below that would have no effect, so it's got to be hot for a while. So our swords that were in the range of a fireball should be superheated and do extra damage when we hit now, right? (That makes perfect sense, but it's the type of common sense DMs hate. The turn-around, that the weapons are too hot to hold, doesn't help the DM, as then monsters will be forced to drop their weapons with a fireball.)

I don't know how I feel about a suddenly appearing can't trip oozes rule. I do know that "common sense" rulings like that tend to annoy the heck out of me as a player, because they suddenly change the world my character was living in and planning in, and in practice on the fly common sense rulings don't seem to make things make more sense.

You want common sense in D&D, you can play E6 or something similar. You can't be hostage to stupidly literal readings, but a lot of the rules in D&D are written to be gameable, not simulations.


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## Libramarian (Sep 25, 2012)

Balesir said:


> This makes no sense to me, because there is no "what is happening in the game" - it literally doesn't exist. It is imaginary, which means that all that exists are the separate conceptions and models of it that people (players and GMs) hold in their minds. These models and conceptions need to be coordinated sufficiently for descriptions of actions and events based on one conception of the fiction to be intelligible in other conceptions held by other minds. This is a major function of the rules; to explain how events are taken to be resolved such that each model of the fictional reality can be constructed to accomodate those resolutions.
> 
> If the rules are "divorced from what's happening in the game world", is this because there is some independent arbiter of what the game world is with which they can disagree, or is it that the players refuse to adapt some part of their world models to accommodate what the rules say about how resolutions will be conducted? I would suggest the latter, since the former is palpably untrue (supposed GM absolutism not withstanding; communicating the entire of a world model sufficiently to allow synchronisation of conceptions would involve the GM communicating the de-facto rules as play progresses - an unrealistic task).
> 
> If the players are all fixated upon some fictional elements that don't fit with what the rules say about resolution, then they should change the rules. They should be aware in doing so, however, that the ways that resolutions are made does much to make the process of player decision making an interesting and varied activity - or not, as the case may be.



People come to the game with prior conceptions and models of what a fantasy game-world looks and feels and behaves like. They don't get all of this from the game itself. The coordination of the participants' separate conceptions and models may be a major function of the rules, but the rules are not a major contributor to this coordinating process. Most of it is just talking and having a shared cultural background.


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## pemerton (Sep 26, 2012)

innerdude said:


> In the absence of a clear ruling, I'd bet that most groups use "the real world" as the "independent arbiter" for how our characters experience the fiction.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Associated mechanics ultimately protect both the player and GM better, because disputes are more easily resolved using known, experienced processes.



I think I can see what you're saying, but I also think I disagree with it.

On the "real world as arbiter" issue, how does that work in a fantasy RPG? Using the real world as arbiter, for example, most of what happens in Conan or LotR is not possible.

I think that _genre_ is a more important arbiter than the real world. In other words, I agree with this:



Libramarian said:


> People come to the game with prior conceptions and models of what a fantasy game-world looks and feels and behaves like.








innerdude said:


> "Dissociated" mechanics, however, lack the ability to map to the fiction through any pre-existing "real world" view or model, they are completely arbitrary based on group accord.



I don't fully follow this. "Dissociated" mechanics generally aren't arbitrary - they tend to allocate some form of narrative power, whether directly (eg Come and Get It) or via mechanical mediation (the War Devil's Besieged Foe let's the GM impose a debuff on a PC that creates a mechanical incentive to a particular sort of narrative). Adjudication of these mechanics typically does not require working out what happens mechanically, but rather working out what is happening in the fiction, if that is left unsettled by the mechanics.

Genre is the guide and constraint on such narration, and it is no less available for this purpose than to guide the application of simulationist mecahnics.



Libramarian said:


> I think at this point we're talking about something subtle enough that it's going to be really, really hard to discuss it in an edition warlike environment without losing the signal in the desire to make a point in favor of one game or against another game.
> 
> I see what you mean about the feeling of tactical positioning with CAGI, but surely you could capture this in a different mechanic that also makes it easier to picture what is occurring in a way that makes sense.



I'm not sure whether you mean "surely I (permeton) could give another less divisive example", or "surely a mechanics that was different from Come and Get It could give the same tactically immersive experience"?

On the first interpretation of your comment: I GM 4e, so it is hard for me to give non-divisive examples, given that 4e seems inherently divisive. But another example would be the way that in-combat healing, death and dying work in 4e - these create a strong sense of tension and threat in play, which immerses the table in the combat situation. I've never experienced the "Schroedinger's confusing wounds" issue - a PC down and dying triggers concern by the players, dramatic and urgent response by the PCs (just as one would imagine if one of the team went down!) and uncertainty and tension ("Will he make it?") as the death save is rolled.

On the second interpretation: I'm sure that other mechanics could also produce a tactically immersive experience. Burning Wheel and The Riddle of Steel both aim at that, for example. But I generally don't find it hard to picture what is happening with Come and Get It. Mabye it's just the good fortune of the way I design encounters, but I've simply never encountered the issue of a dagger-armed mage, casting a ritual, suddenly breaking away and charging the fighter. It doesn't happen in part because of my encounter mix, but also because the PC typically wouldn't use Come and Get It in that situation - he would use Footwork Lure instead.

Just as, for some, the 15-minute day is purely an internet phenomenon (though for me it has been very real, particularly in Rolemaster), so for me the narrative chaos and confusion engendered by Come and Get It, and prone oozes, is purely an internet phenomenon. I just haven't come across situation that can't easily be narrated. (I think part of this is because the CaGI fighter in my group uses a halberd, and is a forced movement specialist - so Come and Get It typically plays out as just another expression of his ability to tactically dominate his enemies at reach.)


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## Desdichado (Sep 26, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> The problem is, and this seems to be especially a problem with D&D, is that "common sense" is not common.



I've never had that problem.  Maybe I'm just playing with the wrong players.

Or the right ones, as the case may be.


> I don't know how I feel about a suddenly appearing can't trip oozes rule. I do know that "common sense" rulings like that tend to annoy the heck out of me as a player, because they suddenly change the world my character was living in and planning in, and in practice on the fly common sense rulings don't seem to make things make more sense.



You live in a world where your character routinely trips oozes?  Oddly (or not) I can't think that the question has ever occurred to me in the 12 years that I've played d20.  Because I wouldn't ever try to trip an ooze.  It doesn't even make sense to do.


> You want common sense in D&D, you can play E6 or something similar. You can't be hostage to stupidly literal readings, but a lot of the rules in D&D are written to be gameable, not simulations.



I didn't say I want common sense (although I think common sense solves most of these "problems" long before they are identified as problems by people who possess it.)  You're referring to innerdude's post.  I'm the guy who said that GM's who can't handle these kinds of questions when they come up by making a ruling are too hapless to successfully run a game.


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## GreyICE (Sep 26, 2012)

Hobo said:


> You live in a world where your character routinely trips oozes?  Oddly (or not) I can't think that the question has ever occurred to me in the 12 years that I've played d20.  Because I wouldn't ever try to trip an ooze.  It doesn't even make sense to do.




Ever built a fighter who maximized trip?  It's one of the few builds of fighter that is viable (well, for a while.  It kind of peters out once the "one size category" thing becomes a fatal problem, but oh well).  

I admit to seeing the point of a player reading the rules and saying "well, could be fun, and it seems viable-ish unless I'm facing lots of huge opponents" and then being told "oh yeah, and unlike what the rules say, it also doesn't work on a whole host of things because DM Fiat lol."  

That just boils down to the fact that rules shouldn't encourage players to make 1-trick ponies, since that sort of character is terrible for the game from a simulationist perspective, a narrativist perspective, and a gamist perspective.

But it does underscore some of the arguments that "common sense" should top "the rules."  I mean maybe the ooze is smacked into pieces, and has to spend its next turn reforming, rather than moving.  That makes sense, yes?  So the "common sense" that oozes can't be put in a state where they are more vulnerable and have to spend time to reform actually looks completely wrong from that perspective.

P.S.  That's a huge argument FOR dissociated mechanics in my book.  Trip implies rather a lot of things - and it can be a rather sloppy action.  The idea of a guy in full plate dropping down and performing a leg sweep is frankly a tad ridiculous.  "Knocked prone" implies that the fighter found a way to topple the enemy.  Maybe with a large golem he didn't leg sweep it (that seems a tad ridiculous), maybe he chose to lunge forward with his shield at an opportune time and knock it over backwards.  

Abstract mechanics let you fit the narrative to the game world, while concrete mechanics (trip) often end up subtly ridiculous in many situations.


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## innerdude (Sep 26, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I don't fully follow this. "Dissociated" mechanics generally aren't arbitrary - they tend to allocate some form of narrative power, whether directly (eg Come and Get It) or via mechanical mediation (the War Devil's Besieged Foe let's the GM impose a debuff on a PC that creates a mechanical incentive to a particular sort of narrative). Adjudication of these mechanics typically does not require working out what happens mechanically, but rather working out what is happening in the fiction, if that is left unsettled by the mechanics.




Well, yeah, that's EXACTLY the point. Mechanical association rides on the assumption that its very nature is a necessary property of the resolution _before_ it happens. Association with the game world assumes that some kind of "real world" or "genre conducive" interpretation of the fiction is the most likely way to produce a "consistent" result, if the goal is to produce "immersive," "actor stance," "process resolution" gameplay. 

"Disassociated" mechanics, on the other hand, dispense with the notion that the _form_ or _process_ of resolution are more important than the mechanical result. It doesn't matter how it happens, but by golly, foe X has to shift two spaces and become fatigued. Can this be immersive? Of course it can, in the hands of talented players and GMs. But there's also the real danger of producing an unsatisfactory, illusion-breaking, genre-contrary narrative if the in-the-moment fiction building isn't up to the task. 

In terms of "creating a mechanical incentive to a particular sort of narrative," I think I'm pretty much in the camp that I prefer my RPGs to operate in the reverse mode. I'm creating a narrative incentive to interact with particular sorts of mechanics.


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## Siberys (Sep 26, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Abstract mechanics let you fit the narrative to the game world, while concrete mechanics (trip) often end up subtly ridiculous in many situations.




Amen to that.

Personally, I prefer dissociated mechanics precisely for this reason. An associated mechanic likely requires a more mechanical resolution, which pushes me out of the story and into 'hard game mode' - "Okay, first do this, then that, oh and make a die roll here". Any issues I have with a dissociated mechanic are likely to be flavor issues, though, and thereby force me to think about what's happening storywise - keeping me further in the fiction.

YMMV, of course.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 26, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> The problem is, and this seems to be especially a problem with D&D, is that "common sense" is not common. Does a fireball suck all the oxygen out of an area if cast underground? It says it melts metals; how hot does it leave them? Instantaneously heating a metal to its melting point and reducing it to below that would have no effect, so it's got to be hot for a while. So our swords that were in the range of a fireball should be superheated and do extra damage when we hit now, right? (That makes perfect sense, but it's the type of common sense DMs hate. The turn-around, that the weapons are too hot to hold, doesn't help the DM, as then monsters will be forced to drop their weapons with a fireball.)




(Remaining text omitted.)

What is curious is that no-one _ever_ seems to use that rule.  The notion of a player handling a roaring blast of heat sufficient to melt soft metals without losing all of their hair, probably their eyesight, probably most of the soft flesh in the face and hands, and having massive nasal, tracheal, and lung burns if they were unlucky enough to be inhaling during the blast, keeps them from using that ruling.  In my experience, the rule goes completely ignored -- having a completely zero chance to live on in player's minds because of the narrative consequences.

TomB


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## Argyle King (Sep 26, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> The problem is, and this seems to be especially a problem with D&D, is that "common sense" is not common. Does a fireball suck all the oxygen out of an area if cast underground? It says it melts metals; how hot does it leave them? Instantaneously heating a metal to its melting point and reducing it to below that would have no effect, so it's got to be hot for a while. So our swords that were in the range of a fireball should be superheated and do extra damage when we hit now, right? (That makes perfect sense, but it's the type of common sense DMs hate. The turn-around, that the weapons are too hot to hold, doesn't help the DM, as then monsters will be forced to drop their weapons with a fireball.)
> 
> I don't know how I feel about a suddenly appearing can't trip oozes rule. I do know that "common sense" rulings like that tend to annoy the heck out of me as a player, because they suddenly change the world my character was living in and planning in, and in practice on the fly common sense rulings don't seem to make things make more sense.
> 
> You want common sense in D&D, you can play E6 or something similar. You can't be hostage to stupidly literal readings, but a lot of the rules in D&D are written to be gameable, not simulations.





I think part of the problem is focusing on how D&D explains (or doesn't) those things.

Personally, I like the fact that some of the games I play try to have a little bit of 'common sense' in the rules.  For example, in GURPS, metal armor isn't very effective against the lightning bolt spell.  It's a small detail, but one I like, and it adds to the game experience for me.

I see a lot of comments in this discussion which bring up D&D 4E and tactics.  I've had a lot of fun with 4E, but I find it strange that people view it as a 'tactical' game.  Barely any of the 'tactics' I use when playing my 4E characters are tactics I would expect to use in combat and hope to survive; I've stated elsewhere that I feel 4E rewards using tactics which I feel would be bad tactics during a combat.  (...and, yes, to answer the inevitable question, I have been in combat.)

I completely agree that fantasy is not the same as reality.  However, I see no reason why that means there cannot be some manner of ballpark baseline for how things work that makes sense.  When an epic tier ooze in D&D 4E has a high charisma score, what does that really mean beyond the level of the creature saying it should have that score?  I think that is where I find disassociation... the way the game is described and portrayed really has no meaning to me beyond the way the metagame parts of the system categorize things.  

As far as the narrative goes, I also don't understand the idea that simulation somehow kills the narrative.  Back on page one there was an example given about a mech game with lasers doing damage... rerouting power; etc.  Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that was more-or-less what drove the narrative for a lot of Star Trek episodes; the crew struggling to hold the ship together and rerouting power.  Also, for me, the story of someone like Audie Murphy is far more interesting than any DBZ episode I've ever watched.  

I have a hard time separating "sim" and "narrative" in these discussions because -for me- I often view them as being the same thing.  The sim is the means through which I create the narrative.


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## S'mon (Sep 26, 2012)

Hobo said:


> I'm the guy who said that GM's who can't handle these kinds of questions when they come up by making a ruling are too hapless to successfully run a game.




There have been several posters on this thread objecting to the idea that the GM should apply common sense to the Trip rules or other mechanics. Hopefully you see the problem now. It can be impossible to satisfy both 
A) demands that events make sense in-world, and
B) demands that rules be applied as written so as not to nerf PC abilities.


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## pemerton (Sep 26, 2012)

innerdude said:


> "Disassociated" mechanics, on the other hand, dispense with the notion that the _form_ or _process_ of resolution are more important than the mechanical result. It doesn't matter how it happens, but by golly, foe X has to shift two spaces and become fatigued.



I don't agree with the "it doesn't mater how it happens". That may not matter to resolution (but it may - the very essence of an RPG is that some bit of narration introduced only for colour is liable to getting picked up on by someone else as an anchor for action resolution), but it may matter to other important aspects of the game (eg the fictional stakes, and how they are unfolding in the situation at hand).

EDIT: The tone of this I think is coming of as more combative than I wanted it to - I'm not contesting your account of your play experiences, I'm just trying to pick up on other ways in which I have found that things can matter.



Johnny3D3D said:


> I've had a lot of fun with 4E, but I find it strange that people view it as a 'tactical' game.  Barely any of the 'tactics' I use when playing my 4E characters are tactics I would expect to use in combat and hope to survive



I think of it as tactical in the sense that (i) position and movement matter, (ii) it provides players with the resources to make and implement choices around position and movement, and (iii) it has resolution mechanics that permit this stuff to be resolved without the _GM_ having to take too much responsibility for whether or not the players' choices will be mechanically effective.

The rationality of those choices from a real-world perspective isn't something I analyse too closely (I'm not and never have been a real-world combatant). For me, it's more the drama of PCs engaging and disengaging, the sorcerer teleporting around the battlefield, the fighter using Mighty Sprint to hurl himself into the fray and rescue his friends, etc.

On other threads I've given some examples of recent encounters that I've run, where movement and position mattered. In Rolemaster, or classic D&D, I never got that degree of "tactical" element - ie movement, position and terrain contributing to dramatic depth - because the mechanics to support it, on either GM or player side, simply weren't there. The most sophisticated stuff that I ran was fights in waste-deep water, or on uneven terrain, or at the top of stairways. But I never had beholders TKing PCs on the edge of 200' underground drop-offs, PCs discovering ropers when they look for cover behind stalagmites, or fights in giant caverns with lava, a heated underground river, and three other terrain types (solid rock, cooling lava, and a safe ledge on the other side of the river) all present, and all mattering to action resolution (plus toxic fumes from the molten rock, and steam from the river providing obscurement between those on the ledge and the rest of the cavern).

This is the sort of dramatic situation into which I find 4e's mechanics - including its "tactical" (ie movement/terrain/position) mechanics - facilitate immersion.


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## S'mon (Sep 26, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I see a lot of comments in this discussion which bring up D&D 4E and tactics.  I've had a lot of fun with 4E, but I find it strange that people view it as a 'tactical' game.  Barely any of the 'tactics' I use when playing my 4E characters are tactics I would expect to use in combat and hope to survive; I've stated elsewhere that I feel 4E rewards using tactics which I feel would be bad tactics during a combat.  (...and, yes, to answer the inevitable question, I have been in combat.)




4e combat is tactical within 4e rules. As you say, the tactics it tends to promote tend to be the opposite of what you would actually want to do in a similar situation IRL. For instance, in 4e I may want my Fighter to be surrounded by enemies, IRL I would want the opposite.

I definitely find games that promote more realistic tactics to be more immersive. A combat system that encourages me to defend a choke point is generally more immersive than one that encourages me to surround myself with attackers. The latter can still be fun in a 'Hollywood action movie' sense though, and it may create a more dramatic narrative. 

I'm not sure overall which approach I find more fun; I enjoy both sorts of game.


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## pemerton (Sep 26, 2012)

S'mon said:


> 4e combat is tactical within 4e rules. As you say, the tactics it tends to promote tend to be the opposite of what you would actually want to do in a similar situation IRL. For instance, in 4e I may want my Fighter to be surrounded by enemies, IRL I would want the opposite.
> 
> I definitely find games that promote more realistic tactics to be more immersive. A combat system that encourages me to defend a choke point is generally more immersive than one that encourages me to surround myself with attackers. The latter can still be fun in a 'Hollywood action movie' sense though, and it may create a more dramatic narrative.
> 
> I'm not sure overall which approach I find more fun; I enjoy both sorts of game.



I agree with you about the tactics that 4e promotes. I certainly enjoy that sort of dramatic narrative; I don't know if I also prefer it.

I will add one qualification to my agreement, though: the encouraged tactics have changed a bit with the PCs levelling up. At lower levels, when they had fewer tricks up their sleeves, holding choke points and similar defensive positions was more often a desirable option. In that sense, I feel there's been a development of the PCs, even though at the most basic level the maths has remained pretty constant (given the level scaling).


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## tomBitonti (Sep 26, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> Personally, I like the fact that some of the games I play try to have a little bit of 'common sense' in the rules.  For example, in GURPS, metal armor isn't very effective against the lightning bolt spell.  It's a small detail, but one I like, and it adds to the game experience for me.




Which is perhaps wrong.  Wouldn't metal armor tend to conduct charge away from someone?  That is, charge trying to cross a person's body would much rather follow a metal band than go through the relatively non-conductive flesh and bone inside.

Ever since first edition "wearing metal" has (by common sense?) equated to "more vulnerable to electricity" based on the simple statement  "metal conducts well".  Hard for me to say one way or another, but I'm wondering if the "common sense" here is just wrong.

(On the other hand, having all that metal means the charge will definitely travel very close to you, whereas otherwise it might have chosen to arc preferentially through something more at a distance.)

(In any case, the example of a "lightning bolt" is a bit odd, compared to, say, a "fire bolt".  I can imagine a burst of flame as being a fire bolt, and that that could be directed the way a stream of water is directed.  But for lightning, you need to lay out a conductive path: Electricity follows the path of least resistance with fixed rules.  You can't project it like a stream of water from a hose, you have to "lead it by the nose" by creating a path for it.)

Thx!

TomB


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## Argyle King (Sep 26, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I think of it as tactical in the sense that (i) position and movement matter, (ii) it provides players with the resources to make and implement choices around position and movement, and (iii) it has resolution mechanics that permit this stuff to be resolved without the _GM_ having to take too much responsibility for whether or not the players' choices will be mechanically effective.
> 
> The rationality of those choices from a real-world perspective isn't something I analyse too closely (I'm not and never have been a real-world combatant). For me, it's more the drama of PCs engaging and disengaging, the sorcerer teleporting around the battlefield, the fighter using Mighty Sprint to hurl himself into the fray and rescue his friends, etc.
> 
> ...




I don't scrutinize the rationality of the choices too much either.  Many of them are so obviously irrational that they tend to stick out.

I find those encounter ideas to be pretty cool, but -for me- their portrayal in 4E is more of an issue of that's what the game says I should be doing at that level more so than it is immersive or an encouragement of drama.  I find the movement and such to be enjoyable -at least more enjoyable than the alternative of not having such things, but that is because the structure of the game is built in such a way that I cannot make other tactically satisfying decisions that I would want to make without having powers which allow me to do so.  Some tactics/strategy I'd use wouldn't have any meaning in the game because the game world is build in such a way that they aren't legitimate concerns or even possible in some cases, so, yeah, I'll take the 4E approach during a 4E game over the alternative of not having those options at all.  

One thing I also find strange is that there seems to be an implication (not necessarily by Pem) that abstract mechanics somehow promote drama via genre tropes or something similar.  I do not find a problem with that except for that there also seems to be an implication that less abstract mechanics necessarily get in the way of drama.  I mentioned Audie Murphy earlier; personally, I find the idea of one guy making a stand against a German platoon to be pretty dramatic; even more so since he didn't have a super power or a genre appropriate trick up his sleeve to guarantee his success.  I find that dramatic.  I also find it to be a very interesting story and narrative.

I'm not completely against abstractions.  I'm willing to accept a lot of them.  I'm also willing to accept some amount of disassociation.  However, I have a limit that I'm generally comfortable with.  Also, I feel that in action movies, rpgs, and similar stories that highlighting realism can actually be used to enhance the fantasy.  Fantasy and realism need not be at odds; I'm most satisfied when the two are blended together in a way which allows me to engage my desire to imagine, game, and escape the real world.  

The last thing I mentioned there -escape- is an interesting case.  I want that ability to escape from reality, but there needs to be a touch of realism or else my mind has a hard time accepting the fantasy, and my ability escape is hindered.  Strange I think; that I need a little reality to be able to escape reality, but that is how it works for me.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 26, 2012)

S'mon said:


> There have been several posters on this thread objecting to the idea that the GM should apply common sense to the Trip rules or other mechanics. Hopefully you see the problem now. It can be impossible to satisfy both
> A) demands that events make sense in-world, and
> B) demands that rules be applied as written so as not to nerf PC abilities.




This is a _massive_ misrepresentation of the other side of the thread to you.  The argument being made is that common sense isn't and fighters are competent to handle a range of fantasy creatures rather than practice exclusively against humanoids.  Therefore their abilities should be handled on a "Say yes unless you have a damn good reason."

And we go right back to brass tacks and find out where the problem is.  I consider the game rules a reflection of the real world situation and techniques.

And what does the fighter do when he wants to trip?  He uses the momentum and balance of his opponent, and force at the right time to disrupt them and send them where they don't want to go.  The most common case of the outcome of this is the target being sent to one knee or onto the ground.  Which fits the prone condition.  The core question for any given monster is whether simmilar approaches will work.  Is it possible to use timing, positioning and leverage to unbalance them?

With a snake IMO the answer is a resounding "yes".  If it's a cobra, the thing rears to strike _anyway_.  Shifting the pivot when it rears is tripping even by a narrow definition and will disrupt it  and with luck send the thing toppling over sideways.

With a snake lying on the ground the story is different.  But can you use timing, positioning, and leverage to unbalance them?  Sure you can.  You convince them to roll over your stick, shield, or chain, then use the leverage you have to flick or force the head back onto itself, exposing its underbelly and leaving it facing the wrong way.  Timing, positioning, and leverage.  The same approach as used to trip someone.

Or do you really think that trips all need to be ankle sweeps and because you are talking about a power called trip you can't use a judo-style throw?  Because to me that's what the narrow interpretation that says you can't trip a snake implies.  Trips are all sweeps to the ankle and never throws simply because the name says "trip".  And they all knock people down on their face and never on their back simply because it says prone and not supine.

So I think I've covered why being unable to trip a snake means that the fighter is spectacularly limited in a diverse fantasy setting.  And that for all 3e's range of options there are no judo throws if this is true.

Now oozes.  This boils down to the question of what an ooze is.  Using the 3.5 SRD we know that oozes are six inches to two feet thick (other than the cube), and they can create pseudopods or slam with their bodies.  If they are six inches thick or more they have at worst an incredibly high surface tension.  And if they intentionally slam then they have a direction at any given time.  Which gives them a front edge, all held together.  Timing and momentum and either an acid immunity an absolute willingness to sacrifice your equipment can take this front edge and throw it back into the main body of the ooze so either the ooze can disentangle itself or it can absorb the old front edge and make a new one, both of which take time and focus.  

What oozes are not are things that flow near-placidly across the floor, seemingly going for nothing and with a comparatively low surface tension, and just flowing round and dissolving things.  If it makes pseudopods and slam attacks it has a local front and can be thrown back against its direction.  Which even the Gelatinous Cube does.

The point here is that your common sense does not match mine.  I consider trip to be called trip because that is _the most common expression_ of what the fighter is doing.  Which is not the equivalent of "Mashing the A button" as making every trip an ankle-sweep would be.  It's using their skills to exploit when the target is going to have its balance change to disrupt that foe.  If trip is the rule you use for a judo throw (as IME it is) then you can trip a snake or an ooze as trip isn't limited to literal trips.  If there are no rules for a judo throw then fighters are ridiculously limited, and massively inferior to even real world fighters.

I therefore deny your claim that common sense has anything to do with this.  Because the sense of what happens is not common.



S'mon said:


> 4e combat is tactical within 4e rules. As you say, the tactics it tends to promote tend to be the opposite of what you would actually want to do in a similar situation IRL. For instance, in 4e I may want my Fighter to be surrounded by enemies, IRL I would want the opposite.
> 
> I definitely find games that promote more realistic tactics to be more immersive. A combat system that encourages me to defend a choke point is generally more immersive than one that encourages me to surround myself with attackers. The latter can still be fun in a 'Hollywood action movie' sense though, and it may create a more dramatic narrative.




4e basically starts with the idea that "We have a world where the tactics as seen e.g. in Xena or in 300 make sense".  And then takes its world from there.  I don't consider this notably less immersive than I do WFRP or GURPS - you just have to go with the world. And it provides a lot of world building to this effect.


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## S'mon (Sep 26, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> 4e basically starts with the idea that "We have a world where the tactics as seen e.g. in Xena or in 300 make sense".  And then takes its world from there.  I don't consider this notably less immersive than I do WFRP or GURPS - you just have to go with the world. And it provides a lot of world building to this effect.




I agree with you about 4e emulating Xena and 300. However, while I generally enjoy both of those, occasionally stuff happens in both (esp Xena, at least after the first season), 'WTF?' moments. that do jar my Suspension of Disbelief. I don't buy into the silliness, and so my enjoyment is lessened. I had the same problem watching 'Expendables 2' recently.

It tends not to be 'power' stuff, though. The one that really stuck with me was Xena defeating the Persian invasion of Greece by defending a barn, and killing every Persian who went in the barn.  I could accept for the sake of the show that Xena could kill dozens of very Kiwi-looking Persians. But I couldn't get past "_Why don't they set fire to the barn?_"


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## GreyICE (Sep 26, 2012)

That's actually a great example of simulationist versus narrativist.

D&D 3E simulates fire.  It does 1d6 damage a round, reflex to negate.  Potentially lethal to level 1 characters.  At level 12 or so when you have some fire resist, laughable.  If we assume Xena is a ~level 15 Warblade then she's got just about nothing to fear from nonmagical fire.  

D&D 4E lets you set narrative damage for fire.  Want people to be panicking?  Go to page 42 chart, pick a moderate or high damage type, make that the environmental damage for being in the firefield. 

One tries to simulate fire.  One gives you the tools to make a narrative of fighting in a burning building.


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## innerdude (Sep 26, 2012)

pemerton said:


> ....the very essence of an RPG is that some bit of narration introduced only for colour is liable to getting picked up on by someone else as an anchor for action resolution




Which isn't one of dissociation's strengths. Dissociation, as generally exhibited in 4e, essentially says (and I'm pretty sure you've said some version of this in other posts) that no one narrative instance of a mechanic may have any bearing on another instance down the road. 

So which is it? This is one of The Alexandrian's big things too--if your chosen "flavor" for a given resolution is then "picked up by someone else as an anchor for action resolution," as a player you've either A) just created a house rule on the spot, or B) altered the fictional state of the world. In either case, the GM is losing control of some aspect of their game / session / milieu that they don't necessarily want to lose. 

And that's fine, I suppose, if both player and GM are okay with such give-and-take in terms of narrative control. The problem is, for those of us who prefer actor stance / process resolution, this kind of resolution makes it more difficult to "stay in character," because our character loses the ability to perceive / correlate one particular action resolution from scene to scene. 

(Side note before all of the "The character is really just in your head" critics jump in: If you don't find actor-stance playstyle to be your thing, that's fine; but for some of us, it's one of the high points of RPG play.)


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## GreyICE (Sep 27, 2012)

Yes, narrativism does kind of fly in the face of "The DM is God, the players are his worshipers and peons" model of gaming.  It heavily encourages a more even-handed method of gaming for creating the narrative, by giving players control over the flow of events.  DMG2 even describes allowing players creative control over aspects of your world on the fly, something that had previously been foreign to D&D (even if it was a staple of many other games).


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## pemerton (Sep 27, 2012)

innerdude said:


> Dissociation, as generally exhibited in 4e, essentially says (and I'm pretty sure you've said some version of this in other posts) that no one narrative instance of a mechanic may have any bearing on another instance down the road.



That's true, but not relevant to my point.

The fact that (say) Come and Get It is narrated on this occasion as deft polearm work does not preclude it being narrated, next time, as enemies rushing in Jackie Chan-style.

My point was that, when you narrate the enemies rushing in Jackie Chan-style, even if you _intended_ it to be mere colour, you have established something in the fiction, and that is something (as I said) that is liable to getting picked up on by someone else as an anchor for action resolution. For example, following the Jackie Chan-style narration, if another player forms the view that the NPCs in question are gullible, or headstrong, they might try to leverage that in some way by making a Bluff check to manipulate them into doing something else against their interests.

That's why I don't agree that the narration of a "dissociated" mechanic is never relevant to action resolution. Because from time to time even mere colour will get picked up on by someone else at the table.

(And it has just occured to me that this is really just a version of an old, old point. It was common in old advice articles in Dragon and White Dwarf to read things like "Don't narrate a room with diamond-studded walls, because you can never guarantee that the players won't find a way to have their PCs harvest the diamonds and thereby become so rich that they break the game". That warning rests on the same idea: that in an RPG "mere colour" is always liable to be leveraged into something more by clever and/or ambitious participants.)



Johnny3D3D said:


> One thing I also find strange is that there seems to be an implication (not necessarily by Pem) that abstract mechanics somehow promote drama via genre tropes or something similar.  I do not find a problem with that except for that there also seems to be an implication that less abstract mechanics necessarily get in the way of drama.



For me, it depends where the less abstract mechanics direct my focus, in play.

If the mechanics direct my focus towards tracking the passage of time, the usage of rations, iron spikes etc, and/or very complex mechanical implementations of attacks, damage and other aspects of action resolution, that can tend to dull the drama, for me at least.

Some contrasting examples, both from Rolemaster:

Rolemaster crits enhance drama, becaue the effects are generally concussion hit loss (which takes you directly closer to unconsciousness), bleeding (which equates to periodic hit loss plus a penalty to all actions), stun and similar action denial (which has an immediate effect just as it does in 4e or many other action-economy-based games), penalties to actions (which have an immediate and obvious significance), and/or descriptive effects like "knocked back 10'", "leg severed", "arm and shoulder shattered", etc. Any of these effects gives you an immediate sense of the threat to your PC, and the way that is changing the dynamics of the fight. 4e is the only version of D&D I have played that can give the same visceral feel, with its robust rules for conditions, ongoing damage, etc as well as hit point attrition.

Rolemaster healing, on the other hand, does not enhance drama at all. Magical healing is based around a very large group of spells that look to the details and severity of injury (healing cartilage is different from healing a tendon, for example; and healing a merely broken leg is different from healing a shattered leg); and there are reasonably complex recovery times to track. Natural healing is similarly detailed. The contrast between this and 4e D&D is very marked - the only time natural healing in 4e involves more than just changing a couple of numbers on the character sheet is the disease track, and that is dramatic! And in-combat healing, via magic or inspiration/determination, enhances rather than detracts from the drama.

For me, there is something of a tendency for "reaslistic" mechanics to suffer from the Rolemaster healing problem. But as Rolemaster crits show, the tendency need not be universal.


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## S'mon (Sep 27, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> D&D 3E simulates fire.  It does 1d6 damage a round, reflex to negate.  Potentially lethal to level 1 characters.  At level 12 or so when you have some fire resist, laughable.  If we assume Xena is a ~level 15 Warblade then she's got just about nothing to fear from nonmagical fire.




I have no idea what Warblades powers are - do they have fire immunity or regeneration? Neither sounds Xena-ish.

Anyway, leave the barn to burn for an hour - that's 600 rounds, or 30 rolls of '1' on your reflex save (why not Fort?) - 30d6 damage. 

Once the barn has burned to the ground, you go in - and a slightly singed Xena probably pops up from the hole she dug in the floor of the barn and starts killing your men, but at least you can now see what's going on! 

I think it probably bugged me so much because I once listened to some Norse revenge sagas on Radio 4 - Njal's Saga/The Tree of Strife, I think - the Norsemen very often had to deal with the problem of a superior lone warrior holed up in a building, able to kill anyone who came through the door, so burning down the building became S.O.P.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 27, 2012)

innerdude said:


> Which isn't one of dissociation's strengths. Dissociation, as generally exhibited in 4e, essentially says (and I'm pretty sure you've said some version of this in other posts) that no one narrative instance of a mechanic may have any bearing on another instance down the road.




No.  No it does not.  It says that no one narrative instance of a mechanic _must_ have a bearing on another instance.  Huge difference.  It says that you can do a judo throw even if the mechanic is called trip rather than that a judo throw is entirely undefined in the rules even when there is a monk class.  It says There Is More Than One Way To Do It - which doesn't mean that things can't be done the same way twice.  It merely means that things _need not _be done the same way twice.  And if they _are_ done the same way twice then the instances have a huge bearing on each other.



> And that's fine, I suppose, if both player and GM are okay with such give-and-take in terms of narrative control. The problem is, for those of us who prefer actor stance / process resolution, this kind of resolution makes it more difficult to "stay in character," because our character loses the ability to perceive / correlate one particular action resolution from scene to scene.




I'm not just fine with give and take in terms of narrative control.  I actively prefer it.  DMing for me is at its most exhillarating when I am having to keep up with the players just as much as they are with me.

And for those of us who prefer actor stance / narrative resolution, non-disassocated mechanics make things much harder to stay in character because there are_ vast_ swathes of obvious things that are undefined and that I therefore have no clue will work or not even if my character ought to.  If you look at the word "trip" and restrict trip attacks to that (as fully associated rules would mandate) then you literally can't judo throw someone under the rules.  To me, play like this is crippling and immersion shattering.  By restricting the game to a process-sim then outside the very limited number of processes being simulated I'm entirely in the realm of DM fiat and working almost blindly for things I should understand easily.  Unless the game allows it explicitely I don't know if I can do it and I certainly don't know how hard it will be.



S'mon said:


> I have no idea what Warblades powers are - do they have fire immunity or regeneration? Neither sounds Xena-ish.




I really should lend you both Sharn and the Book of 9 Swords at some point.  And Warblades have one "true grit" power that they can take at level 9 that allows them some measure of self healing if they are below half hit points.  (They also have one incredibly badly written "true grit" power they can take at level 5 that would allow them to put the barn out automatically under the rules as written but wouldn't allow them to throw off paralysis or domination).

Anyway, leave the barn to burn for an hour - that's 600 rounds, or 30 rolls of '1' on your reflex save (why not Fort?) - 30d6 damage. 



> so burning down the building became S.O.P.




I don't think the Evil Overlord List is the fault of cinematic RP mechanics.  Merely bad writing...


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## Argyle King (Sep 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> And for those of us who prefer actor stance / narrative resolution, non-disassocated mechanics make things much harder to stay in character because there are_ vast_ swathes of obvious things that are undefined and that I therefore have no clue will work or not even if my character ought to. * If you look at the word "trip" and restrict trip attacks to that (as fully associated rules would mandate) then you literally can't judo throw someone under the rules.*  To me, play like this is crippling and immersion shattering.  By restricting the game to a process-sim then outside the very limited number of processes being simulated I'm entirely in the realm of DM fiat and working almost blindly for things I should understand easily.  Unless the game allows it explicitely I don't know if I can do it and I certainly don't know how hard it will be.




Why must a trip and a throw be defined the same way?

Does it hurt the narrative (or the story) if trip and throw are two different options which each have strengths and weaknesses?  Does it hurt the narrative if fireball and lightning bolt behave differently?


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## prosfilaes (Sep 27, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> D&D 4E lets you set narrative damage for fire.  Want people to be panicking?  Go to page 42 chart, pick a moderate or high damage type, make that the environmental damage for being in the firefield.
> 
> One tries to simulate fire.  One gives you the tools to make a narrative of fighting in a burning building.




How does that work? I've played hundreds of hours of Prime Time Adventures; I know how to play a narrative-based RPG, at least some types. But you start throwing numbers at me like 102 HP and 24 AC and +12 Fort save, I expect to get to use them to interact with a simulationist world. I expect non-magical fire to be a certain number of d6 a round. If when I'm trying to make a wild jump onto a departing ship to escape authorities, ala Conan in Queen of the Black Coast, you make me roll an Athletics check and divide it by 10 and that's the number of squares I cross, then no, you don't get to just "make a narrative of fighting in a burning building" if the rules say my character is virtually immune to non-magical fire.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 27, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> Why must a trip and a throw be defined the same way?
> 
> Does it hurt the narrative (or the story) if trip and throw are two different options which each have strengths and weaknesses? Does it hurt the narrative if fireball and lightning bolt behave differently?




No they don't have to be the same.  If trips and throws were defined differently then you could work this (I'd argue that it was overcomplicating but this is a matter of taste).  However if you are going for process-sim then obvious options such as throws _need to be defined_.  Especially if one of the classes is called "Fighter" and one is called "Monk" (and based on Shao Lin monks).  You're playing an unarmed martial artist and have no rules for most of what is done in real life Aikido and about half of Judo.  Techniques that make up the backbone of combat for many unarmed martial artists don't even have a vague approximation until the Book of 9 Swords despite having had a class specialising in them and that can trip since 3.0 was first published.

If you use the same mechanics to trip and throw this works.  If you use separate mechanics to trip and throw, this also works.  What does not work is _not having mechanics to represent throws_.

(Or you could go the AD&D route and cut the conditions entirely and say that a throw does hit point damage in the same way as anything else).


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## GreyICE (Sep 27, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> How does that work? I've played hundreds of hours of Prime Time Adventures; I know how to play a narrative-based RPG, at least some types. But you start throwing numbers at me like 102 HP and 24 AC and +12 Fort save, I expect to get to use them to interact with a simulationist world. I expect non-magical fire to be a certain number of d6 a round. If when I'm trying to make a wild jump onto a departing ship to escape authorities, ala Conan in Queen of the Black Coast, you make me roll an Athletics check and divide it by 10 and that's the number of squares I cross, then no, you don't get to just "make a narrative of fighting in a burning building" if the rules say my character is virtually immune to non-magical fire.




The rules don't say your character is virtually immune to non-magical fire.  The rules say nothing at all about what's a good damage value.  Why should they?  HP are an abstraction, it's up to the DM to decide how dangerous the fire is to the characters.  

And people said 4E had entitled players.  "NO YOU CAN'T SET THE SCENE IN A BURNING BUILDING!  MY CHARACTER SHOULD BE VIRTUALLY IMMUNE TO NON-MAGICAL FIRE."  Can too.  Can drop beams from the building as it starts to collapse too, they do really good damage and it's an attack versus reflex.  

If you, as a player, ask what this is simulating, I'm gonna look at you and deadpan "fire bad."


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 27, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> I expect non-magical fire to be a certain number of d6 a round.




And here's where I get confused.  I do not expect the heat of a candle flame to do the same amount of damage as a magnesium fire.  I expect a fire in an empty wooden house to do a _lot_ less damage than one full of straw and with barrels of pitch stored in the corner.

And I expect the DM to set stakes (or as DM I set the stakes myself) such that the fire is a threat to PCs without instantly killing them.


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## Argyle King (Sep 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> No they don't have to be the same.  If trips and throws were defined differently then you could work this (I'd argue that it was overcomplicating but this is a matter of taste).  However if you are going for process-sim then obvious options such as throws _need to be defined_.  Especially if one of the classes is called "Fighter" and one is called "Monk" (and based on Shao Lin monks).  You're playing an unarmed martial artist and have no rules for most of what is done in real life Aikido and about half of Judo.  Techniques that make up the backbone of combat for many unarmed martial artists don't even have a vague approximation until the Book of 9 Swords despite having had a class specialising in them and that can trip since 3.0 was first published.
> 
> If you use the same mechanics to trip and throw this works.  If you use separate mechanics to trip and throw, this also works.  What does not work is _not having mechanics to represent throws_.
> 
> (Or you could go the AD&D route and cut the conditions entirely and say that a throw does hit point damage in the same way as anything else).





I wasn't specifically talking/asking about D&D; just a general thought about rpgs.


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## Balesir (Sep 27, 2012)

innerdude said:


> In the absence of a clear ruling, I'd bet that most groups use "the real world" as the "independent arbiter" for how our characters experience the fiction.



I suspect something close, but different. I think most groups use the way they _think_ the real world works as a model in the absence of any clear rule - or in the presence of any rule that superficially clashes with how they believe the world works - as an "independent" arbiter. Part of the problem is that how a player believes the world works is not really "independent". Using how the real world really works is not a viable option, sadly, as no-one has the source code...



innerdude said:


> A player saying "The rule doesn't really work that way" is actually a player saying, "The result you've just described doesn't fit with want I want / believe / expect from the fiction your game portrays."



Right - it says "I have a preconceived notion of how this game _should_ play, which I think should supercede what the game designers wrote". It's an approach I think is inferior to "well, let's see how this world worked according to how the designer (apparently) saw it - if we don't like it we can always change it or just choose a different game".



innerdude said:


> Associated mechanics are easier to GM in disputes because they ultimately point to some real-world, causal phenomenon that either permits or prevents the described fiction from working.



I have yet to see a "dissociated" mechanic that doesn't nod towards a range of possible genre trope or real world explanations for what is happening; the "associated" ones just seem to point more explicitly and narrowly to a specific cause or process that is supposed to be what causes the effect every time. This very "sameness" of cause is something that I (and, it seems, several others) find difficult to believe in itself.



innerdude said:


> Obviously, both the players and GM have to agree that the "real-world" cause is in accord with the fiction.



I don't honestly see that they do. If everyone agrees that the resolution of the action is what it is, then if different players have envisioned slightly different ways that it came about - ways that they individually find plausible - then why is that an issue? If we all agree on the resolution, then we can all synchronise our world models with that resolution in place. We don't _need_ to visualise the same route there in every detail; in fact, if we go to minute enough detail, that would be impossible to do.

A more serious charge would be that the outcome or resolution is unclear - that the players are unable consistently to envision "how things are" as a result of the mechanical resolution. Something like "Schroedinger's hit points" would qualify. It seems to me, though, that at least part of the issue here is players wanting to know precisely the "real" state of affairs at all times, when some uncertainty would be (a) more dramatic and exciting and (b) entirely plausible in the situation.

Take the case of the character being unconscious in 4e. They are making death saving throws to avoid dying. But, then, a leader spends healing resource on them and they get up and are ready to fight again. Is this plausible if they had a grievous wound (and, maybe, the healing wasn't earmarked "magical")? No - but nothing said they had a grievous wound, just that they were on the deck. Maybe they had a killing wound - maybe they didn't. In the chaos and confusion of combat, that's just something you don't get to know until later. Ambiguity and uncertainty are part of any stress situation - and they are part of what makes it exciting (for the audience) and terrifying (for the participants)!



innerdude said:


> Associated mechanics ultimately protect both the player and GM better, because disputes are more easily resolved using known, experienced processes.



How many gamers really know and have experienced hand-to-hand fighting with medieval weapons? Never mind the added presence of magical effects, impossible monsters and the simple fact that they are not in the "real" world. As I have learned more of medieval combat alone, I have come accross multiple cases where "common sense" is just plain wrong. Studies of safety incidents on industrial plant (something I have done as part of my job) shows me similar things about general "crisis" situations. The problem is that we like to think that we know and understand these things - but we really don't.

In itself, that's not a big issue - the game world is not the real world, after all, so there's no reason we can't have it act just the way we want it to. The problem starts when different experiences and degrees of knowledge mean that different people at the table have models of "reality" that differ markedly at several points where the game habitually goes. Like "crisis" or stressful situations, catastrophes and combats.



innerdude said:


> Mechanics have three recourses during a dispute---the GM puts his or her foot down and says "No," the GM basically has to say, "Well, that's what the rules say, even if I don't like it," or the GM is forced to make a snap judgement about the nature of the fiction itself.



Or make a pro-tem ruling, preferably in line with the rules, since that is what people (ought to) expect, and then discuss it as a group and decide whether it bugs everyone enough to make a house rule.

The rules aren't the stuff written in the book - the rules are the precepts and procedures you play by. Changing the rules instantaneously mid-stream is not really cool, whatever way it happens, but changing them with everyone buying in is entirely reasonable. It's even reasonable, for some groups who have an unwritten rule saying "no matter what the game rules say, our game worlds always work like this", and they alter any rule in the game they are playing to fit their set of "over-rules". I think that is a boring way of playing, personally (every game world you play in works the same way), but if some groups want to play that way I see nothing wrong with them doing so. This is one reason, I think, why it's hard to discuss this without feathers getting ruffled. If you are part of a group that has a "default world assumption set" then you won't see the issue with "changing rules mid-session" - because *your* rules aren't really being changed mid-session, you are playing to the same rules you have always done when the DM says "well, of course, trip doesn't work on oozes, as we all know..."



Libramarian said:


> People come to the game with prior conceptions and models of what a fantasy game-world looks and feels and behaves like. They don't get all of this from the game itself. The coordination of the participants' separate conceptions and models may be a major function of the rules, but the rules are not a major contributor to this coordinating process. Most of it is just talking and having a shared cultural background.



Of course people have their own views of how each game-world looks and feels. They don't even need to synchronise these views completely - indeed, it would be impractical to do so. But they do need to synchronise their understanding of how outcomes in the world arise - how interactions between their character and the rest of the world are resolved. And they get that understanding from the rules, whether those rules are what is written in the book or are an agglomeration of understandings and shared assumptions built up among the group members. Of these sources, one has to assume that the rulebook takes precedence unless otherwise agreed - otherwise, what would be its purpose?



Johnny3D3D said:


> Why must a trip and a throw be defined the same way?
> 
> Does it hurt the narrative (or the story) if trip and throw are two different options which each have strengths and weaknesses?



I don't think it hurts the narrative either way (defined as two separate mechanics or one abstracted mechanism), but it hurts _*the rules*_ if they have to be defined differently in every instance. The rules system either becomes bloated and overcomplex through a multiplicity of subsystems (for trip, for throw, for induced missteps, for faking out...) or it remains horribly constrained (you can try to trip, but aren't allowed to throw, induce missteps or fake out an opponent...). In short, the best way to get a varied and flexible world is by having flexible, abstract rules.



Johnny3D3D said:


> Does it hurt the narrative if fireball and lightning bolt behave differently?



I don't know of any rule system in which they both exist where they don't behave differently - what would be the point in having both effects if they were exactly the same?


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 27, 2012)

innerdude said:


> In the absence of a clear ruling, I'd bet that most groups use "the real world" as the "independent arbiter" for how our characters experience the fiction.




You miss a major point here.  In my experience, rules disputes are a product of either badly written rules or so-called associated rules.  With a so-called disassocated rule you can play the rules as written and not have them contradict the fiction because they aren't trying to nail the fiction down like jelly against a wall.  So you just do it, resolve it, shrug, and move on.

With a process-sim rule there's a whole raft of disputes that boil down to "that's not what's happening".



> The described result of the rule / mechanic does not fit with one or more members' conception of the fictional construct.




Almost invariably a problem of associated rules.  Disassociated rules sidestep this 95% of the time because people know that the rules are only an approximation of the world and other than for egregious examples stemming from horribly written rules "close enough" is good enough.  I can recall five rules disputes in my entire experience of 4e.  Three solved by slowly re-reading the line of the power, and no heat at all to the others.  This is not because I game with especially easy going people.



> The group attempts to resolve the dispute from within the current game parameters, situation, scene framing, and related rules constructions.




Trivial with a decent set of disassocated rules that accept that they are zoomed out.



> If the result cannot be resolved from within the fiction, the "real world" as we experience it and common sense become the final arbiters.




And as I pointed out to [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] above, common sense isn't necessarily common.  And the world doesn't follow the rules of the real world.




> A player saying "The rule doesn't really work that way" is actually a player saying, "The result you've just described doesn't fit with want I want / believe / expect from the fiction your game portrays."




Or they are just saying "The rule doesn't work that way.  It's not what's been written down."



> Associated mechanics are easier to GM in disputes because they ultimately point to some real-world, causal phenomenon that either permits or prevents the described fiction from working.




This, of course, is why they _cause_ disputes.  Because you can point to the horse shoe nail that is a causal phenomenon that permits or prevents the described fiction under the rules from working.  Disassociated rules say something more like "This is about right.  Roll it and move on."  And because they don't zoom in the clashes aren't there anything like as strongly.

The single best dispute resolution tool is "Say yes or roll the dice."  Disassociated rules encourage this.  Process-sim rules encourage you to look in detail at each step of the process.



> Associated mechanics ultimately protect both the player and GM better, because disputes are more easily resolved using known, experienced processes.




1: That's like saying that wearing plate armour and carrying a two handed sword protects you from a street mugging better.   Well yes, I suppose it does.  Have you ever tried wearing plate armour all day long?  Just on the offchance you're going to get mugged.

The disassociated method for preventing muggings is effectively putting up streetlights_._  It doesn't protect individuals once the muggings have started.  It just makes the muggings much, much less likely by illuminating the dark corners giving the muggers no hiding place and allowing bystanders to see (the Kitty Genovese incident in popular culture is a myth - and incidents like the Subway Incident are not uncommon).

2: I suppose you're an expert in swordplay?  And in the physics of dragons?  A lot of things are highly counterintuitive.



> My mind gets stuck on things that DON'T make sense, and I cannot easily move beyond them until they do.




So does mine.  Which is why associated rules must be written to a much higher technical standard than so-called disassocated ones.  My brain will happily fill in the blanks when the case is undetermined.  But when a process sim approach is used, it needs to be _right_.  So any mistake in the process sim approach will cause rules disputes.



Johnny3D3D said:


> I wasn't specifically talking/asking about D&D; just a general thought about rpgs.




And mine's about the same.  Trips and throws can absolutely be handled differently.  And indeed I would expect any system that had different rules for them to handle them differently.  But they are close enough in effect (target to floor hard) with just a little zooming out they can be handled the same way fairly happily.


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## mmadsen (Sep 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Almost invariably a problem of associated rules.  Disassociated rules sidestep this 95% of the time because people know that the rules are only an approximation of the world and other than for egregious examples stemming from horribly written rules "close enough" is good enough.



You seem to be conflating _disassociated_ and _abstract_.  A _disassociated_ mechanic is divorced from the "reality" of the game world; it doesn't _simulate_ it.  An _abstract_ mechanic doesn't provide much detail; it may or may not _simulate_ what happens in the game world.

Many war games are extremely _abstract_ but not at all _disassociated_.  You compare combat values, roll a die, and one side is forced to retreat, or whatever -- no nit-picky details, but fully grounded in reality.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 27, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> You seem to be conflating _disassociated_ and _abstract_. A _disassociated_ mechanic is divorced from the "reality" of the game world; it doesn't _simulate_ it. An _abstract_ mechanic doesn't provide much detail; it may or may not _simulate_ what happens in the game world.
> 
> Many war games are extremely _abstract_ but not at all _disassociated_. You compare combat values, roll a die, and one side is forced to retreat, or whatever -- no nit-picky details, but fully grounded in reality.




Not even close.

A so-called disassocated mechanic is one that doesn't simulate the game world _through a basic process-sim model_.

The FATE method of simulating an alcoholic is simultaneously disassociated (it relies on FATE points which don't simulate anything directly).  But it does simulate the world by providing all the right incentives to the player of the alcoholic.  And it therefore does it far, far better than the GURPS approach which simply encourages the player of the alcoholic to not drink while adventuring.

Likewise 4e marking - a textbook example of so-called disassociated mechanics.  Marking is about giving the marked target a disincentive to do what the physics of the world say is a good idea (squash the squishy) and an incentive to hit the big guy in their face.

In the FATE case and in the case of marking what is going on through the supposedly disassociated mechanics is not divorced from the game world.  It is just linked through the incentive structure, making the fictionally appropriate choice match up with the smart choice, rather than through a direct physical representation of the physical mechanics of the fiction.


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## mmadsen (Sep 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Not even close.



I'm not sure what I said that is _not even close_.



Neonchameleon said:


> A so-called disassocated mechanic is one that doesn't simulate the game world _through a basic process-sim model_.



That's what I meant by _simulate_.  Other methodologies can give plausible results without being a simulation.  We can get together and narrate a tale without _simulating_ the underlying scenario.



Neonchameleon said:


> The FATE method of simulating an alcoholic is simultaneously disassociated (it relies on FATE points which don't simulate anything directly).  But it does simulate the world by providing all the right incentives to the player of the alcoholic.  And it therefore does it far, far better than the GURPS approach which simply encourages the player of the alcoholic to not drink while adventuring.



GURPS is _a_ (rather) simulationist game.  The GURPS way is not the one and only way to implement a simulationist methodology though, and it has a number of flaws.

I don't know FATE, and I'm not against providing the player the right incentives to run his character a certain way, but it sounds like the mechanic you just described could be implemented as a straightforward simulation, where resisting alcohol uses up limited willpower, or on a _meta_ level, where the player is rewarded for having his character lapse.



Neonchameleon said:


> Likewise 4e marking - a textbook example of so-called disassociated mechanics.  Marking is about giving the marked target a disincentive to do what the physics of the world say is a good idea (squash the squishy) and an incentive to hit the big guy in their face.



Marking is another mechanic that can be implemented as part of a simulation or not.  It's not, for the most part, in 4E, but having a mechanic for engaging a particular foe isn't _necessarily_ disassociated.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 27, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> I'm not sure what I said that is _not even close_.




The cry of "disassociated mechanics" means neither more nor less than that the person using it thinks that one way of modelling the fiction is better than another.  I think that giving fighters extra gears when the chips are down so they can reach deep inside themselves is one _hell_ of a lot better a simulation of fiction than just allowing them to mash the 'A' button.  Or possibly the 'B' button.  Justin Alexander disagrees, and equates fighters pulling themselves back into the fight with fortitude once per extended rest or otherwise pulling out all the stops only occasionally with left handed diving catches once per game.



> I don't know FATE, and I'm not against providing the player the right incentives to run his character a certain way, but it sounds like the mechanic you just described could be implemented as a straightforward simulation, where resisting alcohol uses up limited willpower, or on a _meta_ level, where the player is rewarded for having his character lapse.




It's rewarded on a meta level.  In other words a disassociated model because there is no direct correlation between FATE points and anything in the world.



> Marking is another mechanic that can be implemented as part of a simulation or not.  It's not, for the most part, in 4E, but having a mechanic for engaging a particular foe isn't _necessarily_ disassociated.




Every time the marking mechanic is implemented there is something in the fiction that impacts the victim's choice of targets, making them favour one person above everyone else.  Whether it is the fighter in their face, the paladin challenging them, or even the bard being really obnoxious and then hiding behind someone else there is some reason to make the target most interested in the marker.

In the supposedly disassociated case of "Besieged foe", it's obvious what's going on.  The war devil is singling out his foe and saying "Get him!"  And all the demons in hell try.  The victim knows that this _only_ stops if he kills the war devil.  Therefore the victim wants the war devil even to the exclusion of other targets.

The trouble with most supposedly disassociated stuff in 4e is unclear explanations.  The powers _almost_ all (there are a very few glaring exceptions) start with "What would be a cool thematic thing for this monster or PC to do?"  Then the mechanical effect of the cool thematic thing is written down and given an appropriate name.  Then the mechanics are presented with either just the name or the name and one short sentence of text, with the writers expecting this to be enough and that they don't need to go through the fluff in laborious detail.  Finally the process-sim crowd shows up and compains that not everything is laid out in perfect detail and that the psychological fluff and cinematography's being treated as more important than the exact processes involved, or simply that they don't understand what is going on - and thus it must be disassociated.

Try re-reading 4e books with the assumption that literally everything except the AEDU narrative pacing structure is associated and that you just need to work out how.  If you do this then you will find that almost everything is associated.  Justin Alexander can claim that reading the rules as they were intended to be read by expanding to find the normally obvious fluff is houseruling all he likes.  But I prefer a system that has very dense fluff and doesn't force me to go through effects in what I consider agonizing detail, the way 3.5 Fireball does.  (And that's even without 3.5 fireball shattering my suspension of disbelief with its ability to melt bronze because a designer has not only filled in redundant detail, they've severely messed up their physics).

Which is why disassociated is the mark of wanting process-sim association.  Rather than narrative association.  (That said 4e steers close to the process sim side when put up against e.g. Wushu or Dogs in the Vineyard).


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## innerdude (Sep 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Disassociated rules say something more like "This is about right.  Roll it and move on." And because they don't zoom in the clashes aren't there anything like as strongly.




Hmmm, no, dissociated rules say something like, "Here's what happens. If you feel the need to figure out why, I guess you can. Otherwise, why don't you just move on?" 

My problem is, my brain pretty much forces me _to have to understand why_ before I move on. 

The other thing is too, I like the concept of FATE (I bought Legends of Anglerre), though I haven't played it (yet). Thing is, I don't really have a problem with its conceits, and even FATE makes SOME "concessions to realism" by making characters actually have skill ratings. But it's not trying to be the same kind of game as D&D (a loose high-concept "sim" with gamist tendencies). 

So why does the 4e model of powers seem so......wholly off-putting to me? I truly don't know why I can wholly embrace FATE, while 4e still just sticks in my craw mechanically. What's the difference between narrating what happens in "Come and Get It" and tagging an aspect of a room and saying, "This is what the room is like." In both cases it's changing "the fiction," right? 

I guess part of it is that it feels like "bait and switch." D&D is supposed to resemble "D&D." 4e significantly deviates from "classic" D&D tropes in terms of mechanical resolution. It's like, with 4e, I'm expecting a certain input to return a certain result, and I simply never get the result I want. 

Pemerton has obviously figured out how to make the 4e "result" be exactly what he (and his group) are looking for when they play it, and I respect his experience greatly. I honestly don't know why I can't seem to experience 4e the same way, yet I'm totally willing to give FATE a shot. Expectation is clearly part of it--I'd go into a FATE game expecting the result to be NOTHING remotely resembling a typical D&D play session, besides the overall "social contract" in place that says "We're playing an RPG tonight." 




Neonchameleon said:


> The single best dispute resolution tool is "Say yes or roll the dice."




Interestingly, FATE goes a different route---"Say yes, then roll the dice to see if it makes a difference." And maybe that's part of it. Simply tagging an aspect may or may not make a difference in the fiction in FATE, where 4e's powers often determine the result regardless of input. 



Neonchameleon said:


> Disassociated rules encourage this.  Process-sim rules encourage you to look in detail at each step of the process.




I don't know that association forces players to look at EVERY step of the process (although GURPS leans heavily in that direction.....and frankly, I don't like GURPS all that much). I think it does ask players to look at specific points _along_ the process, generally those that immediately impact the fiction. 

Also, there's a big difference between "full" association, "mild" or "casual" association, and non-association. I think most games achieve "casual" association with even a modicum of effort (though as many have demonstrated, if you look too closely, it breaks down under scrutiny). I think part of it too is that 4e makes very limited attempts at association. It simply wasn't a concern of those who developed the system. 

Anyway, I don't know why this subject keeps coming back to me as something "important" in my mind. I think part of it was that many people's initial reaction to "dissociated mechanics" was essentially, "No, you're just mentally challenged. Dissociation isn't real, and what you're describing isn't actually happening." Well, no, actually, I know what's happening in my mind, and the process and result are described fairly well by what Justin Alexander termed "dissociated mechanics."

So here's a slightly different question for those who enjoy more "narrative" mechanical structures: What triggers YOUR breaking point for "immersion"? Where does the "negotiation of fiction" break down? At what point does the situation / scenario / milieu simply become too much, and you say, "This is stupid, I have no desire to interact with this, at this level"?


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 27, 2012)

innerdude said:


> Hmmm, no, dissociated rules say something like, "Here's what happens. If you feel the need to figure out why, I guess you can. Otherwise, why don't you just move on?"




4e's definitely towards the "Work out what happens, wrap it up as a power, and then hand you the power".  Which might not be disassociated by the formal definitions.



> My problem is, my brain pretty much forces me _to have to understand why_ before I move on.




There are very few powers that I don't understand at least one method of why as long as I accept the basic At Will/Scene/Episode pacing of 4e.  And Come And Get It isn't process-mapped but is incredibly genre appropriate.



> So here's a slightly different question for those who enjoy more "narrative" mechanical structures: What triggers YOUR breaking point for "immersion"? Where does the "negotiation of fiction" break down? At what point does the situation / scenario / milieu simply become too much, and you say, "This is stupid, I have no desire to interact with this, at this level"?




Simple.  Not being able to do things I ought to be able to.  This is why AD&D shatters my immersion into a thousand tiny pieces.  Nothing about how it's associated, but one minute combat rounds.  I literally can't act against an unfolding situation for 59 seconds.  I might as well put a video in and watch it.  In 3.X it had literally never crossed my mind that some people read "Trip" as meaning trip and nothing else rather than a stand in for a range of techniques.  And prone as prone and nothing else.  Judo throws are something I ought to be able to do in character.  If I can't do them in 3.X because trip just means trip, that's a brick wall I'm beating my head against.

The second thing is enforced stupidity for game balance purposes.  I literally can't play a cleric, druid, or wizard in 3.X.  If I give a damn about what I'm doing I should be redlining my spell selection - the stakes seriously matter.  The only major reasons not to are (a) you don't have the spells (not that applicable for 3.X wizards, and not at all for CoDzilla - but works for the spontaneous casters because their spells aren't an in character choice), (b) you don't think the opposition's worth it so you're showboating by solving things with one hand tied behind your back or (c) you're playing a blithering idiot who doesn't know _how_ to redline their spell selection.  Which doesn't fit with either a high Int or a high Wis (but can work for the spontaneous high Cha casters again).


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## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

You know what's a terrible rule?  The 3E rules for drowning.



> Drowning
> Any character can hold her breath for a number of rounds equal to twice her Constitution score. After this period of time, the character must make a DC 10 Constitution check every round in order to continue holding her breath. Each round, the DC increases by 1. See also: Swim skill description.
> 
> When the character finally fails her Constitution check, she begins to drown. In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hp). In the following round, she drops to -1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she drowns.
> ...




If your low-Con Wizard is into the negative HP and you don't want him to die, stick his head in a bucket of water. As soon as he fails a DC 10 Constitution check he goes to 0 hp.  


Can we please stop picking on Come and Get It?

Or I'll start picking on these horrid drowning rules for every one of the flaws of 3E.  You don't like Come and Get It, I GET IT.  The fighter has other powers.  Go find a Rogue power you don't like!  Or a Ranger Power!  Come on!  Convince me you actually know what you're talking about, find a different whipping boy.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> The rules don't say your character is virtually immune to non-magical fire.  The rules say nothing at all about what's a good damage value.




That's not at all true. The rules are filled with instructions as to what the right damage value is. Over and over they tell you if this creature hits you with this weapon, it should be this damage. Page 128 of D&D 3.5 gives one fire-based example; alchemist fire does 1d6 this turn and 1d6 the next.



> Why should they?  HP are an abstraction, it's up to the DM to decide how dangerous the fire is to the characters.



Why I am I wasting my time leveling up if it's a lie? Getting more hit points is not about getting higher precision on the hit points. It's about being able to take more damage. If we're going to play a game where characters are pages and pages of numbers and mechanical notes, they've got to mean something.



Neonchameleon said:


> And here's where I get confused.  I do not  expect the heat of a candle flame to do the same amount of damage as a  magnesium fire.  I expect a fire in an empty wooden house to do a _lot_ less damage than one full of straw and with barrels of pitch stored in the corner.




Which is beside the point. If you want to say that a barn full of straw and with barrels of pitch does 7d6 damage a round, then go for it, and as long as you try and be consistent, I'm not going to complain. That's simulationist. What I'm complaining about it is:



GreyICE said:


> D&D 4E lets you set narrative damage for  fire.  Want people to be panicking?  Go to page 42 chart, pick a  moderate or high damage type, make that the environmental damage for  being in the firefield.




As a player, I'm stuck in a simulationist role in D&D. I'm objecting to games where the DM can arbitrarily ignore simulation and set a fire to be as powerful as they want, to hell with any known properties of fire and PCs in the universe, because it furthers the narrative but if my character wants to tie a rope to the bannister, swing down, grab the innocent victim and swing out of the barn, I've got to make simulationist skill checks about tying ropes and swinging and grabbing and the whole bit.

As the DM, you've got the power to define the world as you want. If you want to declare this is full of barrels of pitch that make this fire especially dangerous, go for it. Pack it full of gnomish fireworks, or add in a rod of the archmagi that will blow up if it catches, or enchant the whole thing so when the fire does enough damage to the barn, everything including the innocent victims is getting sucked into the Negative Energy Plane.

Just don't start setting values based on narrative. If we encounter a burning barn at first level, and another one at 7th, it shouldn't simply do more damage with no justification.


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## Desdichado (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> You know what's a terrible rule?  The 3E rules for drowning.
> 
> If your low-Con Wizard is into the negative HP and you don't want him to die, stick his head in a bucket of water. As soon as he fails a DC 10 Constitution check he goes to 0 hp.
> 
> ...



I see your problem!  Unfortunately, it's not with the stupid rule, it's with stupid players.

Seriously.  I'm not being "cute."  That's the stupidest interpretation of a rule I've ever seen.  If anyone at my table ever did tried to pull out that interpretation, I'd probably punch him in the face.


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## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

Hobo said:


> I see your problem!  Unfortunately, it's not with the stupid rule, it's with stupid players.
> 
> Seriously.  I'm not being "cute."  That's the stupidest interpretation of a rule I've ever seen.  If anyone at my table ever did tried to pull out that interpretation, I'd probably punch him in the face.




Sorry, clearly says that the player goes to 0 HP.  There's actually no way to argue it, 3.5E rules say that if someone fails their con check while drowning they go straight to 0, from any value at all, including negative values.  

Maybe it simulates how extra water in your system makes up for blood loss?  

Anyway, point made.  We can find stupid  in any system.  At least Come and Get It is really fun at the table.  The drowning rules are stupid everywhere for everyone.


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## D'karr (Sep 28, 2012)

Hobo said:


> I see your problem!  Unfortunately, it's not with the stupid rule, it's with stupid players.
> 
> Seriously.  I'm not being "cute."  That's the stupidest interpretation of a rule I've ever seen.  If anyone at my table ever did tried to pull out that interpretation, I'd probably punch him in the face.




The problem is that we don't "interpret" english.  We plainly read it.  That is the problem with "over-technical" rules that try to cover too much ground, and with rules that use "plain english" for some of their keyword terminology.

They tie themselves in knots when no additional explanation is really required, and it causes these weird corner cases.  Remember when people where talking about carrying around bags or rats to trigger certain mechanical effects from the rules?  In 4e there is even a mention of this making targets NOT be "bags or rats."  Was that specification necessary?  Not, except for pedantic internet chatter.

In the drowning rules does the meaning of unconscious have to be further defined as 0 HP?  Of course not, but the designers contort themselves trying to define everything.  Why?  To avert bad behavior, to save us from ourselves, and from rules lawyering.  Someone would argue that falling unconscious does no damage if the "rules" didn't say so.

Well, when the designers go to such extremes to remove the need for sound arbitration by the DM by attempting to spell everything out, they create these weird spaces where things don't work as described or intended.  Directly because they went to the trouble of *attempting* to spell everything out.

Monte Cook made a comment that is appropriate to this, "The designers of the newest edition (3.x) built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, 'What have we wrought?'" 

What they have wrought is a culture of players that only look at the rules as written for guidance instead of relying on the intent of the rule and the sound decision making capacity of the DM.

When people complain about "disassociated mechanics" IMO its all a hoax. A way to put down something by using "elaborate sounding" language.  Because maybe if somebody coined a term for it its really a valid complaint against a rules system, instead of what it really is, a personal preference.

I agree with Monte's second comment, "Don't let rules replace good DMing skills".  But that's just my opinion of course and YMMV.

I never had a problem with immersion due to "disassociated mechanics".  All rules in a game are disassociated.  They serve as representations for a fantasyt genre game. The rules don't provide immersion, the players and DM at the table do that.  When rules are pushed to absurdity the resulting immersion is absurd, that is why this whole idea of disassociation is a red herring.  The rules are only disassociated when the DM, and players choose to play them in that manner.


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## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

Oh and in case I mentioned, the 3E rules are ass at simulating drowning.  

You can begin to drown immediately at 6 seconds of immersion with a Con mod of 0.  If you do, you go to 0 HP.  

So at level 1 a Wizard with 10 constitution takes FOUR DAYS to recover from being submerged in water for SIX BLOODY SECONDS.

Good simulation, that.  What, is everyone with Con 10 and 0 ranks in swimming the Wicked Witch of the West?  I feel immersed in the story!  It's like we're in Oz already!

See how long we can continue in this vein?


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## mmadsen (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> The cry of "disassociated mechanics" means neither more nor less than that the person using it thinks that one way of modelling the fiction is better than another.



That is not at all how I'm using the term, and it's not how you (correctly) used it later in your own post:


Neonchameleon said:


> In other words a disassociated model because there is no direct correlation between FATE points and anything in the world.


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## FireLance (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Oh and in case I mentioned, the 3E rules are ass at simulating drowning.
> 
> You can begin to drown immediately at 6 seconds of immersion with a Con mod of 0.  If you do, you go to 0 HP.
> 
> ...



To be fair to 3e, there is that bit about holding your breath for twice your Constitution score in rounds first. So, unless the wizard starts breathing water immediately (or trying to, at any rate), he would have to be immersed in water and unable to breathe for at least 2 minutes first.


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## timASW (Sep 28, 2012)

FireLance said:


> To be fair to 3e, there is that bit about holding your breath for twice your Constitution score in rounds first. So, unless the wizard starts breathing water immediately (or trying to, at any rate), he would have to be immersed in water and unable to breathe for at least 2 minutes first.




He also left out that at 0 CON the wizard is already dead. He's not drowning, he's dead. But no one really expects w4rriors to understand 3e rules.


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## FireLance (Sep 28, 2012)

timASW said:


> He also left out that at 0 CON the wizard is already dead. He's not drowning, he's dead. But no one really expects w4rriors to understand 3e rules.



He said 0 Constitution _modifier_, which you would have with a Constitution _score_ of 10 or 11.

I should add that I also found your remark about "w4rriors" to be in rather poor taste. 4e happens to be my system of choice, but I have played and enjoyed 3e and I still retain a certain amount of familiarity with the system. By all means, support your system of choice and correct any mistakes you come across, but I do not see the need to either spread misinformation about or denigrate the fans of any system.


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## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

FireLance said:


> To be fair to 3e, there is that bit about holding your breath for twice your Constitution score in rounds first. So, unless the wizard starts breathing water immediately (or trying to, at any rate), he would have to be immersed in water and unable to breathe for at least 2 minutes first.




That's the same line as they have for holding your breath in a stinking cloud.  I was assuming that it was modifier because that alternative makes zero sense too.  The average person can hold their breath for 2 minutes?  Well... okay.  I guess for certain values of average that's correct.  "The average olympic swimmer" is indeed an average.  

Actually how do spells like stinking cloud work anyway?  "It's a nasty cloud!" "Cool, I hold my breath for 20 rounds.  LOL@Cloud."  

This is why I hate simulationism.  The more you look at it the more it starts to fall apart.

Anyway, what I am saying is you can get huge disconnects with EITHER system.  The advantage to abstract systems is that you don't bother to pin down certain things.  It leads to less rules lawyering, less table debates, less ridiculous moments.  Yes, you might have to work a little harder to explain HOW certain abstract things work.  It's not an easy flow.  There's a lot of on-the-fly creativity involved.  

For every power like Come and Get It in an abstract, narrative environment, you have a rule like the 'drowning rules' in a simulationist environment.  And the advantage of the ones like Come and Get It is that they're just fun to use.  Whereas I can't think of a single person who went "oh gee, the drowning rules, lets go get em out!" 

More like "oh hell, lets look something up again."  Does that dissociate anyone else from the game?


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## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> As a player, I'm stuck in a simulationist role in D&D. I'm objecting to games where the DM can arbitrarily ignore simulation and set a fire to be as powerful as they want, to hell with any known properties of fire and PCs in the universe, because it furthers the narrative but if my character wants to tie a rope to the bannister, swing down, grab the innocent victim and swing out of the barn, I've got to make simulationist skill checks about tying ropes and swinging and grabbing and the whole bit.
> 
> As the DM, you've got the power to define the world as you want. If you want to declare this is full of barrels of pitch that make this fire especially dangerous, go for it. Pack it full of gnomish fireworks, or add in a rod of the archmagi that will blow up if it catches, or enchant the whole thing so when the fire does enough damage to the barn, everything including the innocent victims is getting sucked into the Negative Energy Plane.
> 
> Just don't start setting values based on narrative. If we encounter a burning barn at first level, and another one at 7th, it shouldn't simply do more damage with no justification.




And people say that 4E disempowers DMs?

I'll be honest, if you were like "well, three levels ago, we were stuck in a burning building, and that time it did less damage, and now it does more" I'd be like "well, this fire is hotter.  And there's more falling debris."  And if you were like "well that doesn't fit my simulation of the world" and were an ass about it, I wouldn't invite you back to any game I'm running.  There's a strict limit on how much bull I'm willing to put up with, and players keeping copious notebooks and whining because something you did doesn't exactly match something you did friggin...

what is it anyway?  Gaining 7 levels from 1 to 7, call it 21 sessions, every week, HALF A YEAR AGO?   

And you expect me to remember or care?  W/E, that was then, this is now.  I'm trying to craft interesting and enjoyable stories and scenarios for the PCs based on the campaign world, their backgrounds, and the villains, and the history of what's happening around them.  

And there are players in the group whining that a burning building maybe did less damage half a year ago?  

Yeah, no.  If DMs have players like this they should just throw em out.  It's better for DM sanity in the long run.


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## D'karr (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Yeah, no.  If DMs have players like this they should just throw em out.  It's better for DM sanity in the long run.




I agree. I refuse to play with asshats, and it's worked out magnificently.  I haven't lacked for players ever.




-


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## prosfilaes (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> And if you were like "well that doesn't fit my simulation of the world" and were an ass about it, I wouldn't invite you back to any game I'm running.  There's a strict limit on how much bull I'm willing to put up with,




It amazes me; any time I discuss online what I want as a player, somebody always throws a temper tantrum and says they're going throw me out of their game, as if I should care. Is that it? You have some power over players in your game and you want to wield over other people and hit them over the head with it? Welcome to the real world; even on a D&D messageboard, your position as DM does not give you power over the other posters.

Seriously? Can you not even have a discussion about whether DMs should try and simulate a consistent world without throwing the other posters out of your game?


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## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

So multiple people, over multiple discussions, in multiple places, have said the attitude you describe is disruptive, hostile, and toxic to the level that they'd consider booting anyone with that attitude from the table?

And you... You're okay with this and think all those DMs are at fault?

I'm sorry, people who keep a diary of every decision the DM has ever made and throw them in his face half a year later when he does something different are lethal to the game.  It makes the DM's life suck.  "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

I'd rather have the tools to build an interesting encounter, than a bunch of moving parts that might do something.  Maybe.  And even back in 3E I know a lot of DMs who would ignore things like the 1d6 rule to make fire threatening.


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## S'mon (Sep 28, 2012)

D'karr said:


> When people complain about "disassociated mechanics" IMO its all a hoax. A way to put down something by using "elaborate sounding" language.  Because maybe if somebody coined a term for it its really a valid complaint against a rules system, instead of what it really is, a personal preference.




I thought 'disasocciated mechanics' was a pretty simple idea - that what the player is doing at the table does not map to anything happening in the game world. (It's nothing to do with the level of abstraction of the mechanic, as somebody noted above - rolling a d6 in a strategic wargame to resolve the German army's assault at Kursk is not dissociated).

My favourite example of an associated mechanic is the to-hit roll: the player rolling a d20 to-hit maps directly to the PC taking a swing at the monster with his weapon. IME it's very immersive.

An example of a disasocciated mechanic would be a rule I remember from Heroquest RPG, where you bid points in order to resolve a conflict. The more important victory is to you, the more points the player bids. The bidding does not map to any in-world process. It's disasocciated.


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## S'mon (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> That's the same line as they have for holding your breath in a stinking cloud.  I was assuming that it was modifier because that alternative makes zero sense too.  The average person can hold their breath for 2 minutes?  Well... okay.  I guess for certain values of average that's correct.  "The average olympic swimmer" is indeed an average.




Yes, the average healthy person can indeed hold their breath for around 2 minutes. If you assumed it meant 0 minutes then I guess you're not that.


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## Balesir (Sep 28, 2012)

S'mon said:


> My favourite example of an associated mechanic is the to-hit roll: the player rolling a d20 to-hit maps directly to the PC taking a swing at the monster with his weapon. IME it's very immersive.



It might be "immersive" if you really don't know how weapon fighting works, but it's really complete tosh. The idea of "making a swing" with your weapon runs against all the concepts of tempo and the creation of openings that such combat relies upon. It's in the same boat as the idea of a shield as a purely defensive implement and the idea that a weapon has a "damage type" that it (always) does. It does a tolerable job of regulating the outcome of a round of combat, but it really doesn't map to any specific character action in a plausibly "real" fight.

It's really a mystery, to me, why a combatant using skill to select a sequence of actions, predicated by current circumstances, to create and exploit an opening to strike an opponent with a weapon is "associated" while the same combatant using skill to select a sequence of actions, predicated by current circumstances, to trick, enrage, fake out or otherwise manipulate an opponent into an unwise move is not.  It's exactly the same sort of process going on, here.



S'mon said:


> Yes, the average healthy person can indeed hold their breath for around 2 minutes. If you assumed it meant 0 minutes then I guess you're not that.



Quite right - when I swam "seriously" I could hold my breath for two minutes under water fairly easily - and I'm no paragon of athleticism, I assure you! Free divers and the like can go over 5 minutes, though, and those 3.x drowning rules really don't cover that at all. It's not a 'modern' thing, either - pearl divers go back to antiquity.


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## S'mon (Sep 28, 2012)

Balesir said:


> It might be "immersive" if you really don't know how weapon fighting works, but it's really complete tosh. The idea of "making a swing" with your weapon runs against all the concepts of tempo and the creation of openings that such combat relies upon.




I strongly disagree, and your tone is pretty offensive.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> I'm sorry, people who keep a diary of every decision the DM has ever made and throw them in his face half a year later when he does something different are lethal to the game.




And? What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? I never said that. But you know what? As a DM, I think I'm doing a better job if I try to be consistent from game to game. That's the question, not whether players should throw things in DM's faces, but whether or not it is a value to create a consistent world for players to deal with.

I think DMs who change their mind every game, who have no idea how they ruled a player's ability last game so they rule it differently this game, are pretty lethal to the game. If you want your players to remember who the hobgoblin warlord of the nation next door is, perhaps you can remember the things that are important to them.



> I'd rather have the tools to build an interesting encounter, than a bunch of moving parts that might do something.




Right, because if fire is no longer a threat to the PCs, you're totally at a loss. I gave you a half dozen different ways you could keep simulationist consistency and build an interesting encounter. If your only option is "orc with pie" with 10 levels to make it a CR 10, then perhaps it's time to retire.

As I've said about 14 times here, the player is locked into a narrow set of simulationist/gamist choices. A DM isn't; I have a huge range of choices, including making up something completely new. All with accepting that once I've stuck the PCs in a burning building the next one should be pretty similar and that if the orphans on Hack Street have DC 15-20 Sense Motives today, they're probably have about the same when the PCs level up a few times.


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## Balesir (Sep 28, 2012)

S'mon said:


> I strongly disagree, and your tone is pretty offensive.



Sorry - that did come out a good deal harsher than I intended 

I stand by the idea, though, that the idea of "taking swings" at the opponent is a really poor - even misleading - way to look at melee weapon combat. Even the idea that you "attack with the weapon" is wrong; the main weakness of even _having_ a weapon is that it gives the opponent only one thing to defend against, so the first thing you do with a fighting style is make sure that's not true!

The moves made to score a hit are not the same - or even similar - every time. An attack routine might begin with a straightforward "swing", but unless the defender is totally unskilled that will not be the strike that connects, and the attacker will not expect it to be. An "attack" will almost always be a short sequence of (ideally) flowing actions that start (probably) with a rote move and then flow into followups that will depend on the situation and the actions and responses of the opponent. The aspect (edge, point, pommel) and strike location of the eventual connecting blow - if there is one - will usually not be planned or expected by the attacker when the move is started.


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## Desdichado (Sep 28, 2012)

D'karr said:


> The problem is that we don't "interpret" english.  We plainly read it.  That is the problem with "over-technical" rules that try to cover too much ground, and with rules that use "plain english" for some of their keyword terminology.



No, that's not the problem.  The problem is that clearly the rules were not meant to cover the case where someone was already in negative hit points to begin with.  If you play them as written, but not in the context that they're meant, then you absolutely are interpreting them.  Except you're interpreting them as a jack-ass instead of as a reasonable player.  No rule can cover 100% of the situations to which it might be put.  That's why there's a GM in the first place, to interpret which rules apply and when, and to make judgement calls and rulings when the rules are unclear or inadequate for an unusual situation.

So I stand by my original read on this situation: it's not a problem with a stupid rule.  It's a problem with stupid players.

Now the darkness spell, which casts "shadowy illumination" and therefore can be used to see with when it's too dark to see otherwise--that's a stupid rule.


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## Desdichado (Sep 28, 2012)

D'karr said:


> Monte Cook made a comment that is appropriate to this, "The designers of the newest edition (3.x) built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, 'What have we wrought?'"
> 
> What they have wrought is a culture of players that only look at the rules as written for guidance instead of relying on the intent of the rule and the sound decision making capacity of the DM.



Again; a problem with players, not the rules.  I never played that way in B/X.  I never played that way in Star Frontiers.  I never played that way in Top Secret.  I never played that way in White Wolf games.

Why is it that d20 is supposed to somehow change my behavior?  It doesn't.  I'm still the same player of all of those games--therefore I play them the same.  Blaming the rules for bad player behavior--_that's_ the hoax.


> When people complain about "disassociated mechanics" IMO its all a hoax. A way to put down something by using "elaborate sounding" language.  Because maybe if somebody coined a term for it its really a valid complaint against a rules system, instead of what it really is, a personal preference.



Of course it's a personal preference.  What causes you to feel "disassociated" from the game is a subjective thing.  It's _always been personal and anyone who claims otherwise is trying to sell you something fishy._

That doesn't mean that it isn't _also_ a valid description of how the rules interact with their preferences.  Some rules just don't work for you; and they "take you out of the game"--they don't feel natural.  They disassociate you from the game fiction in the middle of play.  Therefore, they're disassociative.  But those same rules might not for me.  Saying, "A-ha!  I figured it out!  There's no objective problem with disassociative rules in any game; it's all personal preference!" isn't particularly relevatory.  In fact, it's kind of a "Yeah, no kidding," kinda thing.


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## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> That's actually a great example of simulationist versus narrativist.
> 
> D&D 3E simulates fire. It does 1d6 damage a round, reflex to negate. Potentially lethal to level 1 characters. At level 12 or so when you have some fire resist, laughable. If we assume Xena is a ~level 15 Warblade then she's got just about nothing to fear from nonmagical fire.
> 
> ...




See this confuses me, because we just had a long thread on page 42 where it was pretty much agreed on by 4e fans that the table wasn't supposed to be used for scaling of the same fiction for the PC's level... and once you've set DC's and damage they should be consistent.  Yet here we have a 4e fan saying that's exactly what page 42 is for in 4e... which one is it?  I mean people claim it's the wrong way when non-fans of 4e cite it as the way things are supposed to be run in 4e and that they don't like it... but when a 4e fan claims this is how the game is supposed to be run, it's left unchallenged and isn't corrected.  I'm having a serious disconnect here...


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## Desdichado (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> I'm having a serious disconnect here...



Are you feeling... _disassociated?_


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 28, 2012)

S'mon said:


> My favourite example of an associated mechanic is the to-hit roll: the player rolling a d20 to-hit maps directly to the PC taking a swing at the monster with his weapon. IME it's very immersive.




The only game that even comes close to being immersive in is GURPS IMO - due to the one second combat rounds.

And that doesn't take into account sword and shield combat.  My shield is a weapon.  If Hammerborg is right about the way the vikings used their shields (and having experience with sword and round shield I believe he is), the weapon you initally attacked with was the edge of your shield - you then followed up with your sword to exploit the opening you had made.  Yes, you read that right.  Sword and shield fighting by one of the cultures that took it most seriously you'd attack first with your _shield_.  Edge on.  Swinging your sword at someone was to exploit the opening you've made or the opening they've presented you with. 

I won't say the swing is the least important part of the exchange because quite clearly it isn't.  But it's the smallest part.  And I consider the idea that an attack roll maps directly to a swing to be risible.  Because I can swing and attack more than once per minute.  Are we fighting using stop motion animation here?  If you treat the attack roll as an almost complete abstraction of a six second period including an OODA cycle or two it works but the second you try to say that the attack roll is the swing we're into stop motion animation territory and _extremely_ diassociated.

In combat your goal is first to create then to exploit openings.

For me the most immersive and the most associated form of D&D melee combat is comfortably the 4e version.  The only thing that challenges it is the Book of 9 Swords.

For immersion, to think as my character does, I need to replicate the OODA loop.  Observe.  Orient.  Decide.  Act.

*Observe.* What is going on around me?  This is where AD&D breaks down hard.  I update my observations and start a new loop _once per minute_.  Once per six seconds is ... acceptable if not great.

*Orient.*  This is where 4e and the Bo9S blows the competition out of the water and why I really dislike [MENTION=326]Upper_Krust[/MENTION]'s attempts to generalise powers in play (rather than as a dev tool).
The second O, orientation – as the repository of our genetic heritage, cultural tradition, and previous experiences – is the most important part of the O-O-D-A loop since it shapes the way we observe, the way we decide, the way we act.​You are at your fastest, and therefore your most effective, when you are using moves you have practiced to be instinctual.  Breaking it down to a list of pre-determined powers and combinations, not all of which will be applicable in any given situation for reasons the rules are too zoomed out to tell precisely is right for this step.  To get the Orient step right you need (a) multiple predefined non-trivial options and (b) for not all of them to be accessible at once.  AD&D fails here.  3.X makes a vague stab but because it does it with static feats you don't have the unfolding situations allowing different tricks and combinations, and generally just have one best button.  And the Bo9S Crusader structure is better than the 4e AEDU structure, but 4e has deeper and richer options for orientation because they include much more movement and positioning.

*Decide:* From your choice of actions what do you do?  In AD&D for a martial character this amounts to "Target him, mash the 'A' button."  Great.  Once again this fails anything resembling immersion.  (That said, 'quick' is a redeeming feature).  In 3.X normal combat it's 'move into position if you aren't already there and choose whether to mash button A or button B'.  You use your feat chain to weight one of your buttons and then normally just mash that button - and Full Round Attacks seriously cut your options down.  In Bo9S and 4e if you build properly, you decide where to move, how to move, exploiting the relative positioning of enemies, and swing at one then turn back to attack the other is entirely possible for fighters.  Positioning in a duel is probably as important as swordwork - and in rolling skirmishes it's probably moreso.

*Act:* Here's where you roll the dice and see what happens.  At this point there's little to choose between them.  Better systems on the act scale like WFRP 3e or Cortex/Leverage have two axes to play on - did you do what you were intending and were you lucky or unlucky with it.

So as we can see, mapping to the thought processes, the combat cycle should be *OODA*.  AD&D it's more like ..da.  3.X it's Ooda.  3.X Bo9S is probably O*O*Da and 4e is OO*D*a or possibly even O*OD*a.  (So far D&D Next looks to me as if it will end up as OODa at best, and 13th Age is O*O*d*a*).

So for mapping my thought processes to the thought processes I would use as a warrior in combat, 4e leaves everything except the Bo9S in the dust.  Not that there isn't a lot of improvement to be made - a lighter game using the WFRP 3E engine could get up to O*OD*A.  But as things stand there's just too much to track.


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## Viking Bastard (Sep 28, 2012)

Balesir said:


> I stand by the idea, though, that the idea of "taking swings" at the opponent is a really poor - even misleading - way to look at melee weapon combat.




Sure, but I don't think that's the point. I believe he's talking of the association in your mind between [ rolling the die = swinging the sword ]. It's that directness between the action in the fiction and the mechanical resolution; that it _feels_ like you're swinging the sword when you're rolling the die.

It's like the evolution from 1 minute rounds to 6 second turns: I'd argue that the 1 minute round, filled with it's assumed parries and multiple swings, is a better simulation than the [ roll = swing ], but people generally didn't play it like that. That feel of association is too strong.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> See this confuses me, because we just had a long thread on page 42 where it was pretty much agreed on by 4e fans that the table wasn't supposed to be used for scaling of the same fiction for the PC's level... and once you've set DC's and damage they should be consistent. Yet here we have a 4e fan saying that's exactly what page 42 is for in 4e... which one is it? I mean people claim it's the wrong way when non-fans of 4e cite it as the way things are supposed to be run in 4e and that they don't like it... but when a 4e fan claims this is how the game is supposed to be run, it's left unchallenged and isn't corrected. I'm having a serious disconnect here...




What's meant to change is the fiction.  Most of it.  If 10 level 1 goblins are throwing burning torches to set fire to a building level 1 PCs are in, that's a serious threat.  If it's level 11 PCs this is not a serious threat.  Neither are the goblins.  On the other hand if the level 11 PCs are holed up in a building  that the drow are attempting to burn down round their ears, the drow aren't going to be using hand held torches and casually tossing them.  It's more likely to be a mix of greek fire and magical napalm that's causing the building to burn.  Or it's a team of ogres throwing barrels of pitch through the window to force the PCs out.  Or it's a couple of _hundred_ goblins throwing torches - and that fire's going to be a whole lot hotter.  Try exactly the same trick on level 11 PCs as level 1 and _you are going to fail_.  Miserably and with good reason.  The assumptions of 4e include the idea that if people try that sort of stunt it will only be as colour or for entertainment purposes.

The 4e table assumes that people are trying things _that have a decent chance of success_.  And not being completely stupid.



mmadsen said:


> That is not at all how I'm using the term, and it's not how you (correctly) used it later in your own post:




No.  The way I defined what disassociated mechanics means is the way it's been used every time I've seen it from Justin Alexander onwards.  I can not think of a single rule in any RPG I've played or read that isn't there to model some part of the fiction, whether it's direct process-sim, pacing mechanics, narrative tension, or how to write a good sim.  Rules are _all_ there because they are thought to add something to the game and either make it better match the fiction or make it more fun.  (Monsters, spells, and powers are sometimes there because the designer was paid by the word, admittedly).

As I was pointing out with the part you quoted, the FATE point system is better for encouraging you to get inside the head of the alcoholic you are roleplaying as than a simple linear process map of the direct consequences in the way GURPS handles alcoholism.  I believe this is wrong and that models that encourage you to get into the head of the person you are roleplaying as are superior for the purposes of roleplaying.  This is a matter of which model is superior - the "associated" process sim or the "disassociated" psychological picture.

So yes, even in my quoted part it is how I was using the term.  Calling process sims "associated" is a claim of superiority of that model over other ones such as ones that give the right psychological inputs and outputs.


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## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> What's meant to change is the fiction. Most of it. If 10 level 1 goblins are throwing burning torches to set fire to a building level 1 PCs are in, that's a serious threat. If it's level 11 PCs this is not a serious threat. Neither are the goblins. On the other hand if the level 11 PCs are holed up in a building that the drow are attempting to burn down round their ears, the drow aren't going to be using hand held torches and casually tossing them. It's more likely to be a mix of greek fire and magical napalm that's causing the building to burn. Or it's a team of ogres throwing barrels of pitch through the window to force the PCs out. Or it's a couple of _hundred_ goblins throwing torches - and that fire's going to be a whole lot hotter. Try exactly the same trick on level 11 PCs as level 1 and _you are going to fail_. Miserably and with good reason. The assumptions of 4e include the idea that if people try that sort of stunt it will only be as colour or for entertainment purposes.
> 
> The 4e table assumes that people are trying things _that have a decent chance of success_. And not being completely stupid.




But that wasn't the situation that was given. The situation given was a burning building that was always a narrative danger no matter what due to the fact that the damage and DC's were scaled... not due to the fact that the fiction changed. I'm not the one you should be explaining this too as I remember all the arguments presented in the former thread as well as how those who don't like 4e were willfully mis-representing the rules of the game... and yet here's a fan of 4e stating that the chart is supposed to be used to scale a building fire as a "narrative" challenge with no mention of changing the fiction.... because honestly if the fiction is changing in a narrative system shouldn't it also change in a simulationist system, if we are comparing, as well? 


In other words we should be comparing like and like... So why are we comparing a regular fire in 3.x with magical drow-created demon-alchemist fire or whatever in 4e? I'm sorry but you're rationalization doesn't fit the comparison that was made.


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## mmadsen (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> No.  The way I defined what disassociated mechanics means is the way it's been used every time I've seen it from Justin Alexander onwards.



That's clearly not true, if only because _I just told you_ that's not how I'm using the term.  I am not using _disassociated_ to mean _bad_ and _associated_ (or _simulationist_) to mean _good_.

In fact, I see a few clear uses for _disassociated_ mechanics: (1) for characters who are not subject to the vagueries of luck, because they're the main characters of our story, and (2) for characters whose goals and desires don't match the players', e.g. alcoholics needing a drink.

What I dislike is the conflation of in-character and out-of-character decision-making, like tactical maneuvers that have one use per day or work regardless of context.  That's _disassociative_ in a bad way -- at least for those who share my taste in gaming.


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## Mallus (Sep 28, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> What I dislike is the conflation of in-character and out-of-character decision-making, like tactical maneuvers that have one use per day or work regardless of context.  That's _disassociative_ in a bad way -- at least for those who share my taste in gaming.



What about associated in a bad way -- like a 3.5e Improved Trip-monkey fighter, ie the PC I mentioned up-thread? He was a character that played like a someone spamming the same overly-effective combo in an arcade fighting game. 

I still don't see the value in talking about association without considering the results.

(and then there's the problem of "in-character decision making" itself -- I've never seen a player in a mechanically complex system, like both 3e and 4e, make PC decisions that weren't, in part, dependent on out-of-character decisions/choices).


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## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

Mallus said:


> What about associated in a bad way -- like a 3.5e Improved Trip-monkey fighter, ie the PC I mentioned up-thread? He was a character that played like a someone spamming the same overly-effective combo in an arcade fighting game.




You know I've seen this sentiment over and over again and I don't get it. When you watch MMA competititons, how many times does a wrestler or grappler continuously shoot in to try and take down an opponent? How many times does a striker throw a punch or kick as opposed to trying to go to the ground? Also how often do you see a fighter who practices and uses a million different moves, you don't. Most are specialized in one thing (wrestling, striking, grappling, etc.) with some little to moderate training in other areas... But most fighters tend to rely on what they specialize in for the most part. I'm seriously not getting the videogame connection... videogames are the ones with 5,000 maneuvers a fighter can use with the right combination of buttons... Real fighters are the ones who identify an overly effective technique or a pronounced weakness in an opponentws style and continuously capitalize on it.


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## Desdichado (Sep 28, 2012)

Mallus said:


> What about associated in a bad way -- like a 3.5e Improved Trip-monkey fighter, ie the PC I mentioned up-thread? He was a character that played like a someone spamming the same overly-effective combo in an arcade fighting game.



Ahhh... so many memories of quarters spent in my college days with Scorpion shouting teleport punching, then shouting "Get Over Here!", then uppercutting.  Over and over and over and over.


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## S'mon (Sep 28, 2012)

Balesir said:


> The moves made to score a hit are not the same - or even similar - every time. An attack routine might begin with a straightforward "swing", but unless the defender is totally unskilled that will not be the strike that connects, and the attacker will not expect it to be. An "attack" will almost always be a short sequence of (ideally) flowing actions that start (probably) with a rote move and then flow into followups that will depend on the situation and the actions and responses of the opponent. The aspect (edge, point, pommel) and strike location of the eventual connecting blow - if there is one - will usually not be planned or expected by the attacker when the move is started.




With a great axe? With a bow and arrow?


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## mmadsen (Sep 28, 2012)

Mallus said:


> What about associated in a bad way -- like a 3.5e Improved Trip-monkey fighter, ie the PC I mentioned up-thread? He was a character that played like a someone spamming the same overly-effective combo in an arcade fighting game.



It's a bad rule, and it's an associated mechanic, but I'm not sure I'd say it's _associated in a bad way_.  The problem is that it's overly effective -- and _consistently_ effective, in a way that doesn't ring true.

I agree that many simulationist games make the same mistake, of defining different attacks, giving them different bonuses and effects, and then letting the player choose which one to use each turn -- as if the opportunity for such an attack is always equally present.

As we all know, 4E got around this problem with a disassociated mechanic: the _player_ chooses when and where his character can use a _power_, with limited uses per day, encounter, etc.

A more associated mechanic would have some randomizer (or other condition) determine which moves are available when, or which moves are _easiest_ when.



Mallus said:


> I still don't see the value in talking about association without considering the results.



I don't see the value of arguing _for_ or _against_ association or disassociation without considering the different results in different contexts.



Mallus said:


> (and then there's the problem of "in-character decision making" itself -- I've never seen a player in a mechanically complex system, like both 3e and 4e, make PC decisions that weren't, in part, dependent on out-of-character decisions/choices).



Yes, the more complex and _detailed_ the system, the more important the system itself becomes -- but a simple, abstract system can be a realistic, simulationist system.  The opposite of _detailed and complex_ is not _unrealistic and disassociated_.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> In other words we should be comparing like and like... So why are we comparing a regular fire in 3.x with magical drow-created demon-alchemist fire or whatever in 4e? I'm sorry but you're rationalization doesn't fit the comparison that was made.




What we're comparing is the default assumptions of the game.  3.X assumes that all burning buildings are alike unless you say differently.  4e assumes that people adapt themselves to the capabilities of the opposition - i.e. the PCs. 



mmadsen said:


> What I dislike is the conflation of in-character and out-of-character decision-making, like tactical maneuvers that have one use per day or work regardless of context. That's _disassociative_ in a bad way -- at least for those who share my taste in gaming.




Yet I've already pointed out above how the AEDU structure is much much more associated to the thought processes you have as a warrior than any previous edition of D&D (except the Bo9S) has ever been.  "Why can't I do that again" is not a thought you should be having in character - it's pure metagaming.

And the reason you shouldn't ask that question in character is because if you stop to ask that question, an orc is going to hit you in the head with an axe while you are busy woolgathering.  One major difference even between skilled chess players and unskilled ones is that skilled players discard the bad moves even before they have thought consciously about it.  This speeds up thinking and _speed is life_.  Waste time on the D part of the OODA loop in combat and you die.

Once more I say, disassociative marks people who prefer process sims against people who prefer systems that encourage them to think like their characters.  It is nothing more than a matter of preference in game design about where you choose to focus the congruence.  You are focussing it on the process sim when I prefer to have choices that resemble the ones I would take in character.

(And tactical maneuvers that work regardless of context?  I trust you reject 3.X entirely on those grounds due to the encouragement to create pure spam characters).


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 28, 2012)

S'mon said:


> With a great axe? With a bow and arrow?




With a great axe (or at least a daneaxe) absolutely!  No less so than with a sword.  And footwork and getting your ranges right is far more important even than with a sword.



mmadsen said:


> As we all know, 4E got around this problem with a disassociated mechanic: the _player_ chooses when and where his character can use a _power_, with limited uses per day, encounter, etc.
> 
> A more associated mechanic would have some randomizer (or other condition) determine which moves are available when, or which moves are _easiest_ when.




This still makes it more realistic than any other edition of D&D there has ever been - which had a great yawning chasm where such an issue would have been.

I have specifically called out the Crusader from the Book of 9 Swords as having a better randomiser than 4e.  But even that doesn't (and indeed can't) give any directly associated reason.



> Yes, the more complex and _detailed_ the system, the more important the system itself becomes -- but a simple, abstract system can be a realistic, simulationist system. The opposite of _detailed and complex_ is not _unrealistic and disassociated_.




No.  But an ounce of disassociation can provide all the positive results of ten pounds of rules.  Indeed I can't think of an associated system that comes close to FATE for modelling an alcoholic.  Realism is another matter entirely.


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## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> What we're comparing is the default assumptions of the game. 3.X assumes that all burning buildings are alike unless you say differently. 4e assumes that people adapt themselves to the capabilities of the opposition - i.e. the PCs.




3.x assumes all burning buildings *alight with regular fire are the same* unless some in-world circumstance would change that... 

What does 4e assuming people adapt themselves to the capabilities of the opposition have to do with anything... That's an in-world circumstance and again the in-world circumstances have changed just like they would in 3.x.  The damage for fire should be the damage for fire.  No change of circumstance was introduced in that example and if it was, it would apply to both of the game types being compared.   Your arguments aren't making any sense as far as it relates to the example that was given


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> 3.x assumes all burning buildings *alight with regular fire are the same* unless some in-world circumstance would change that...




And this is an entirely ridiculous assumption IMO.

The heat produced by something burning is vastly different depending on what is burning, how densely it is packed (which can be slightly counterintuitive), how much is on fire at any given time, and a hundred and one other little factors.  3.X assumes that it will be a standard building in the absense of other information, 4e assumes that it will be a narratively appropriate building to burn for that party of PCs in the absence of other information.  In both cases other information overrides the default assumption.


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## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> And this is an entirely ridiculous assumption IMO.
> 
> The heat produced by something burning is vastly different depending on what is burning, how densely it is packed (which can be slightly counterintuitive), how much is on fire at any given time, and a hundred and one other little factors. 3.X assumes that it will be a standard building in the absense of other information, 4e assumes that it will be a narratively appropriate building to burn for that party of PCs in the absence of other information. In both cases other information overrides the default assumption.




Just so you know 3.x has different rules for heat (that scale up as the heat increases) as well as smoke inhalation/suffocation damage... all of which a character would be subject to in a burning building.  I thought we were discussing the damage that fire does when a character is being burned (which if this was the case would be another source of damage the PC would take) not the heat damage from being in the building.

As to your points about 4e... let me state this once more... That isn't what was stated or claimed in the example I am refering too.  You can discuss 4e all you want to, but I'm speaking to one particular post by a fan of 4e that goes against what you are saying.  Perhaps that's whou you should be extolling your views of proper 4e to...


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## mmadsen (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> "Why can't I do that again" is not a thought you should be having in character - it's pure metagaming.



Exactly.  And that's why the mechanic is disassociative.



Neonchameleon said:


> You are focussing it on the process sim when I prefer to have choices that resemble the ones I would take in character.



No character, in the game world, is thinking, _now is the time for my daily power!_  The player is _not_ thinking like the character.

Is the player making tactical choices?  Yes.  Are they the same as, or even similar to, the tactical choices the character is making?  No.



Neonchameleon said:


> (And tactical maneuvers that work regardless of context?  I trust you reject 3.X entirely on those grounds due to the encouragement to create pure spam characters).



I don't reject 3.X entirely; I dislike _those elements_ of 3.X.  I'm not fighting an edition war on behalf of 3.X.



Neonchameleon said:


> This still makes it more realistic than any other edition of D&D there has ever been - which had a great yawning chasm where such an issue would have been.



Who was challenging 4E's realism?



Neonchameleon said:


> I have specifically called out the Crusader from the Book of 9 Swords as having a better randomiser than 4e.



I'm not familiar with the Crusader from the Book of 9 Swords.  Can someone explain?



Neonchameleon said:


> No.  But an ounce of disassociation can provide all the positive results of ten pounds of rules.  Indeed I can't think of an associated system that comes close to FATE for modelling an alcoholic.  Realism is another matter entirely.



As I said before, disassociated mechanics make sense when the player and character should be disassociated, like when the character is plot-protected against the real odds of something or when the character desperately wants something that the player knows is wrong for him.

Also, a good simulation shouldn't have ten pounds of rules, because the more detailed and complex it becomes, the more likely it is to be _wrong_ -- and difficult to overturn.


----------



## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> But that wasn't the situation that was given. The situation given was a burning building that was always a narrative danger no matter what due to the fact that the damage and DC's were scaled... not due to the fact that the fiction changed. I'm not the one you should be explaining this too as I remember all the arguments presented in the former thread as well as how those who don't like 4e were willfully mis-representing the rules of the game... and yet here's a fan of 4e stating that the chart is supposed to be used to scale a building fire as a "narrative" challenge with no mention of changing the fiction.... because honestly if the fiction is changing in a narrative system shouldn't it also change in a simulationist system, if we are comparing, as well?
> 
> 
> In other words we should be comparing like and like... So why are we comparing a regular fire in 3.x with magical drow-created demon-alchemist fire or whatever in 4e? I'm sorry but you're rationalization doesn't fit the comparison that was made.




*sigh*

If I want to make a burning building threatening, I will make it threatening.  I'm the DM.  I call DM Fiat.  As I said, it doesn't much matter whether they're level 3 or 5, the building will be a threat.  Why?  Because for the love of god, I DO NOT KEEP A DAMN NOTEBOOK OF EVERY THING I HAVE EVER DONE.  Got it?  

I might have a burning building be threatening for a level 5 character, another DM might make it threatening for a level 3 character, and some other might make it threatening for level 8 characters.  And we do it in such a way that we have fun.

Yes, if some sort of "Dungeons and Dragons Accountant" walked to every single 4E table that had any sort of homebrewed setting they'd find all sorts of inconsistencies.  And said D&D Accountant's head would probably explode "THIS IS NOT WHAT LINE 34B SUBPARAGRAPH C ALPHA 3 SAYS YOU SHOULD BE DOING" he might thunder, in full rage mode.  "HOW DARE YOU HAVE FUN WITHOUT CONSULTING THE BIG BOOK OF RANDOM STUFF?  I SWEAR BY MY POCKET PROTECTOR AND THICK NERDY GLASSES YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE FROM IT!"  

Those of us in the real world will simply note that in 3E's heyday, we still made up damage expressions for burning buildings, because 1d6 per round is loltastic.  We just had a shoddy line in the DMG that people would drag out to start table fights with us over rules lawyering.  "But despite the fact this encounter is interesting and tense and stressful, I feel as if you're breaking the rules to make it happen."  "Uh, yeah, the rules are stupid.  Burning buildings are dangerous, you should not be able to meditate inside of them, or wander around in them like they're friendly puppy towns."  "Well that's not right, you should make the fire do what it says."  *sigh* "Fine it's a magical fire because everything threatening in this world HAS to be magical.  Are you happy now?"  "How is it magical?"  "Oh look, a bunch of burnt scrolls, they must have empowered the fire to new heights.  Now stop rules lawyering and ROLL INITIATIVE."


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## Desdichado (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Those of us in the real world will simply note that in 3E's heyday, we still made up damage expressions for burning buildings, because 1d6 per round is loltastic.



Over here in the real world, we just went with 1d6 per round, because it worked fine.  And, frankly, it's more realistic than most people give it credit for, although we didn't particularly care about that.

Now, if you fell in lava, on the other hand, you just died.  No save.

Lava is lava, after all.


----------



## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> *sigh*
> 
> If I want to make a burning building threatening, I will make it threatening. I'm the DM. I call DM Fiat. As I said, it doesn't much matter whether they're level 3 or 5, the building will be a threat. Why? Because for the love of god, I DO NOT KEEP A DAMN NOTEBOOK OF EVERY THING I HAVE EVER DONE. Got it?
> 
> ...





What is your point??? I mean if you want to have a discussion about DM Fiat, that's cool... but that's not what I'm discussing... 

EDIT: Also, since were using words in capital letters for no real reason... HEAT DAMAGE RULES... SMOKE INHALATION RULES are all in 3.x...USE THEM...if you want a non-loltastic "fighting while in a burning building" encounter... JUST sayin.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Sep 28, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> No character, in the game world, is thinking, _now is the time for my daily power!_ The player is _not_ thinking like the character.




No.  They are thinking "Now is the time to pull out all the stops".  Which is mechanically represented by the daily power.



> Who was challenging 4E's realism?




The term "disassociated mechanics" was invented as one of the early blasts of the trumpet in the edition wars.  And is, largely for this reason, almost invariably used as a slam against 4e.



> I'm not familiar with the Crusader from the Book of 9 Swords. Can someone explain?




At first level a crusader knows five maneuvers and has a deck containing five maneuver cards.  On turn 1 they draw two.  Then they draw one each subsequent turn until they run out, when they shuffle the whole lot again and draw a new hand of two.  This has the advantage that you don't always start with the same maneuvers and can repeat them as often as the opportunity turns up.



> As I said before, disassociated mechanics make sense when the player and character should be disassociated, like when the character is plot-protected against the real odds of something or when the character desperately wants something that the player knows is wrong for him.




Or in the third case where it's something that's important and should be taken account of but any actual modelling would have to go to a ridiculously low level.



> Also, a good simulation shouldn't have ten pounds of rules, because the more detailed and complex it becomes, the more likely it is to be _wrong_ -- and difficult to overturn.




This is always a mistake made by simulationists.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> What is your point??? I mean if you want to have a discussion about DM Fiat, that's cool... but that's not what I'm discussing...




No.  What you are discussing is that you are completely *missing the point*.  The 4e improvisational rules are there as a good guide in the absence of everything else.  You seem to think that they are as crippling as a physics model would be in a game where you can be dropped from orbit with a 100% chance of surviving at high level.

To understand why your attempts to drive a wedge between GreyICE's explanations and mine are simply missing the point we need to step back and consider things like the nature of a hit point.  (Answer: a unit of plot protection as used by Gygax that causes things to turn seriously weird when you think they are proportional to meat and yet as people are cut away at people don't slow down.  Damage before you hit 0hp is _purely_ cosmetic in D&D).


----------



## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> What is your point??? I mean if you want to have a discussion about DM Fiat, that's cool... but that's not what I'm discussing...
> 
> EDIT: Also, since were using words in capital letters for no real reason... HEAT DAMAGE RULES... SMOKE INHALATION RULES are all in 3.x...USE THEM...if you want a non-loltastic "fighting while in a burning building" encounter... JUST sayin.




Heat damage from extreme heat adds in another 1d6 per minute.  That's an average of about 0.5 damage per round.  No.

Smoke just shuts down the encounter as no one can do anything, which is kind of the opposite of dramatic.  "And then the orcs who accidentally knocked over the candelabra as they were kidnapping the princess, the princess, and our adventurers all stand here choking a little and doing nothing for a while."  At that point it's a Monty Python routine.


----------



## Argyle King (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> And people say that 4E disempowers DMs?
> 
> I'll be honest, if you were like "well, three levels ago, we were stuck in a burning building, and that time it did less damage, and now it does more" I'd be like "well, this fire is hotter.  And there's more falling debris."  And if you were like "well that doesn't fit my simulation of the world" and were an ass about it, I wouldn't invite you back to any game I'm running.  There's a strict limit on how much bull I'm willing to put up with, and players keeping copious notebooks and whining because something you did doesn't exactly match something you did friggin...
> 
> ...




You seem to be suggesting that it is somehow ridiculous for players to want rulings from the DM which are within the same ballpark of consistency.

"Hey, Dave, I know that your fireball spell did 3d6 a few weeks ago, but I don't find that interesting, so orcs are going to be immune to fire this week.  What?  You don't like it?  Get the hell out!"

I don't believe you'd have to ask me to leave that game.


----------



## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

You'd leave because you encountered a group of fire elementals at some point after learning fireball?

Well... okay.


----------



## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> No. What you are discussing is that you are completely *missing the point*. The 4e improvisational rules are there as a good guide in the absence of everything else. You seem to think that they are as crippling as a physics model would be in a game where you can be dropped from orbit with a 100% chance of surviving at high level.




No I don't think they are crippling for anything. 

They are meant for a style of play where things in-world that are interacted with are by default meant to scale to the level of the party. What I have seen done when I, or others who are not fans of 4e, state this is... various 4e fans do mental gymnastics to claim this intepretation is wrong and that the DC should scale with the party level only if the fiction matches a challenge for the party's level... otherwise it shouldn't. GreyIce on the other hand used an example of a burning building as the fiction and stated the DC's would scale with the party to create narratrive difficulty. Basically saying that regardless of the fiction... it should be dramatic and thus everything should scale to the level of the PC's. His way ultimately boils down to a system that assumes scaling per level for damage and DC's... which is the opposite of what I have seen you and many other fans of 4e argue when stated by a non-fan as a reason they don't care for the system.



Neonchameleon said:


> To understand why your attempts to drive a wedge between GreyICE's explanations and mine are simply missing the point we need to step back and consider things like the nature of a hit point. (Answer: a unit of plot protection as used by Gygax that causes things to turn seriously weird when you think they are proportional to meat and yet as people are cut away at people don't slow down. Damage before you hit 0hp is _purely_ cosmetic in D&D).




A hit point has nothing to do with what we are discussing and I'm finding your attempts to veer the core of the conversation onto other topics and examples a cheap rhetoric trick that's accomplishing nothing but to obfuscate the conversation. So no, I'm not going to engage in a hit point discussion with you right now because it bears absolutely no relevance to my point.


----------



## Argyle King (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> You'd leave because you encountered a group of fire elementals at some point after learning fireball?
> 
> Well... okay.




That's not anywhere near what I said.


----------



## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> No I don't think they are crippling for anything.
> 
> They are meant for a style of play where things in-world that are interacted with are by default meant to scale to the level of the party. What I have seen done when I, or others who are not fans of 4e, state this is... various 4e fans do mental gymnastics to claim this intepretation is wrong and that the DC should scale with the party level only if the fiction matches a challenge for the party's level... otherwise it shouldn't. GreyIce on the other hand used an example of a burning building as the fiction and stated the DC's would scale with the party to create narratrive difficulty. Basically saying that regardless of the fiction... it should be dramatic and thus everything should scale to the level of the PC's. His way ultimately boils down to a system that assumes scaling per level for damage and DC's... which is the opposite of what I have seen you and many other fans of 4e argue when stated by a non-fan as a reason they don't care for the system.





Uh, no.  This is this and that is that.

The example given in that thread was "You go to the city of brass at level 21 and all the doors have one DC.  You go back at level 26 and all the door locks have a different DC."

I mean there's compounding absurdities there (all the door locks have the same DC in the city of brass, no matter what?  Disregarding when you went there, WHAT?), but in general it's a setting.  It's sitting still.  

This is "Back in level 3 we were fighting in a burning barn and it did this, now we're racing through the nobleman's mansion, trying to save the visiting princess and as much of the nobility as we can, while Drow Assassins are attacking us.  And the fire does something different!  How can you be so inconsistent?"  

The answer is hah to you, I'm making a different scene.  Yes, if you somehow revisited the barn you burnt down at third level, and rebuilt it, and set it on fire again, I probably should use the same damage expressions.  But in the burning mansion I don't feel a need to because it's a different setting, a different story, and you want fire to be exactly identical in all circumstances.  Do you see how anal and ridiculous this is?  Do you see what sort of shackles it throws on the DM?


----------



## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> That's not anywhere near what I said.




Okay, so the orcs with fire resistance just need to be skinned correctly and its all good?

What if the villain purchased his important henchmen rings of fire resist when he realized that they were under attack by a pyromancer?


----------



## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Heat damage from extreme heat adds in another 1d6 per minute. That's an average of about 0.5 damage per round. No.
> 
> Smoke just shuts down the encounter as no one can do anything, which is kind of the opposite of dramatic. "And then the orcs who accidentally knocked over the candelabra as they were kidnapping the princess, the princess, and our adventurers all stand here choking a little and doing nothing for a while." At that point it's a Monty Python routine.




Uhm...  You're making some pretty big assumptions here... like no one in the party or the monsters will make their saves throughout the entire combat... that's a little unrealistic isn't it?


----------



## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Uh, no. This is this and that is that.
> 
> The example given in that thread was "You go to the city of brass at level 21 and all the doors have one DC. You go back at level 26 and all the door locks have a different DC."
> 
> ...




Hmmm, intersting view... I guess some DM's might think consistency makes the world logical and predictable enough that characters can in turn make logical decisions about their actions... But yeah I guess if a DM just does whatever he wants because it's a different scene and story... then yeah he has absolutely no shackles whatsoever.  Whether that's a good or bad thing is a matter of perspective.


----------



## Argyle King (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Okay, so the orcs with fire resistance just need to be skinned correctly and its all good?
> 
> What if the villain purchased his important henchmen rings of fire resist when he realized that they were under attack by a pyromancer?





Again, you seem to be missing what I'm saying.

You are currently offering in-game reasoning for in-game events.  I'd be ok with that.

If there's no reason behind why things have changed beyond "well, I'm the DM and I say so," that is not something I am ok with.  I'm also not ok with an arbitrary changing of how something works for no other reason than because the DM felt like it.  Sure, if a rule is broken or the group wants a houserule to change how something works or the DM gives a prior heads up that rules are changing, I'm ok.  If we're mid-game and the rules of the game change for no reason other than DM Fiat, I generally do not like that.

You keep adding more to what I've previously said.  There's no reason to.  The mock statement I made was meant to be cut and dry; simple -the DM changing something just because.  That was something I felt was implied by your previous statement -that you need not keep track of what happened before because you can just make it up without any regard for consistency; that consistency could suck it as far as you were concerned.  

That is why I would choose to leave.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> No I don't think they are crippling for anything.
> 
> They are meant for a style of play where things in-world that are interacted with are by default meant to scale to the level of the party. What I have seen done when I, or others who are not fans of 4e, state this is... various 4e fans do mental gymnastics to claim this intepretation is wrong and that the DC should scale with the party level only if the fiction matches a challenge for the party's level... otherwise it shouldn't. GreyIce on the other hand used an example of a burning building as the fiction and stated the DC's would scale with the party to create narratrive difficulty. Basically saying that regardless of the fiction... it should be dramatic and thus everything should scale to the level of the PC's. His way ultimately boils down to a system that assumes scaling per level for damage and DC's... which is the opposite of what I have seen you and many other fans of 4e argue when stated by a non-fan as a reason they don't care for the system.




I don't get your problem here.  Is it:

1: That different fires are treated differently?
2: That you have no problem running tenth level PCs through first level adventures?  Because that's what a non-scaling world means.

The 4e rules say "All else being equal, you scale the challenge to the PCs level".  This is a good starting point.

It might make it clearer for OSR players to put the damage expressions by approximate level of the dungeon as the rule of thumb rather than by level of the PCs.  But this is again level scaling, and you don't expect tenth level PCs to mess around in the first level of the dungeon.  (I once or twice _have_ had a first level bandit rading party try ambushing high heroic PCs but only for comedy relaxation).



> A hit point has nothing to do with what we are discussing




We are discussing
1: Level scaling and how this impacts play.
2: Worldbuilding in a world with hit points
3: Damage inflicted by fire.

Hit points are 100% relevant for all those things and are the clearest indication of how level scaling is built into the assumptions of D&D.



> So no, I'm not going to engage in a hit point discussion with you right now because it bears absolutely no relevance to my point.




Except it does.  For all the reasons I've gone into.  The changing of the challenges you should be facing and the stark power differential across levels is baked into the assumptions of D&D and is shown at its clearest through the hit point mechanic.

Level scaling has been one of the fundamental assumptions of D&D right from Gygax and Arneson.  And hit points demonstrate this.  That you don't like this demonstration doesn't make it irrelevant.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Sep 28, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> You are currently offering in-game reasoning for in-game events. I'd be ok with that.
> 
> If there's no reason behind why things have changed beyond "well, I'm the DM and I say so," that is not something I am ok with.




As I have never seen this happen in a game of 4e ever relating to level scaling and fire, I'm going to assume you've no problem then.  You literally need to be in two near identical burning houses that have been set on fire at almost identical times in relation to the fight and caught in the same way seven levels apart.  If the fiction is not different round the two cases I want to know why and with all due respect what the #@&* the DM thinks he is playing at.

If the fiction is different enough to make the encounter level different then I want to know why the building is catching on fire in almost exactly the same way.  You're asking about stepping into the same river twice here in any practical circumstance I have ever heard of.


----------



## tomBitonti (Sep 28, 2012)

*Hit points are inherently disassociative*

I think we need to be careful here.  There are problems with hit points when they are used to model more-or-less fixed tangible damage.

As an example, we don't need to use burning buildings.  Falling damage is more directly illustrative.  A non-magically augmented person can only do a little to improve the survivability of a fall.  Most of what they can do relies on knowledge and acrobatics.  That is modeled better (in 3E and 4E) by skill checks than by hit points.

I could create a similar example of a person being locked in a test chamber for a jet engine.  If there is no cover, there isn't much that they could do to avoid the blast of the engine.

The point here is that hit points have problems all by themselves.

Since hit points are a standard in D&D, (I think) one has to learn to ignore the problems.

Or: One of the strong fantasy elements of D&D is that damage is recoverable.  Mapping damage to hit points and allowing players to quickly recover from that damage is one of the strong features of the game.  _Hit points are a part of the fantasy of the game._

Thx!

TomB


----------



## mmadsen (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> No.  They are thinking "Now is the time to pull out all the stops".  Which is mechanically represented by the daily power.



What does _pulling out all the stops_ mean?  In a real fight, I don't simply choose to pull out all the stops and land my roundhouse kick to the head, or high-amplitude throw, or arm-bar -- and if I do land any of those moves, I'm no less likely to land them again on a different opponent.  Awesome moves aren't a resource you use up in real life, so characters in the game world wouldn't see them that way either.

The player and the character are making very different tactical choices.  The results can be perfectly plausible and seemingly realistic while the mechanics remain disassociative.

Again, the claim is not that disassociative mechanics always give implausible results, or that all simulations are inherently more accurate.



Neonchameleon said:


> The term "disassociated mechanics" was invented as one of the early blasts of the trumpet in the edition wars.  And is, largely for this reason, almost invariably used as a slam against 4e.



Certainly, but that doesn't mean that the term is meaningless.



Neonchameleon said:


> At first level a crusader knows five maneuvers and has a deck containing five maneuver cards.  On turn 1 they draw two.  Then they draw one each subsequent turn until they run out, when they shuffle the whole lot again and draw a new hand of two.  This has the advantage that you don't always start with the same maneuvers and can repeat them as often as the opportunity turns up.



I believe that many of the same people who dislike 4E's daily and encounter powers would not mind the crusader's random powers and would not find them as disassociative.



Neonchameleon said:


> This is always a mistake made by simulationists.



Yes, it is a common mistake to assume that more rules will yield a more accurate and realistic result.  When the rules are less specific and more abstract, the DM and players often have less trouble matching what the rules say to what should happen in the game world.


----------



## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I don't get your problem here. Is it:
> 
> 1: That different fires are treated differently?
> 2: That you have no problem running tenth level PCs through first level adventures? Because that's what a non-scaling world means.
> ...




Let's go with both... 

1. Because it creates an inconsistent world (unless there are conditions affecting the fire as I stated earlier).

2. Because if that's not possible it excludes a style of play that has been possible throughout all editions of D&D... the sandbox world... or do you disagree?



Neonchameleon said:


> It might make it clearer for OSR players to put the damage expressions by approximate level of the dungeon as the rule of thumb rather than by level of the PCs. But this is again level scaling, and you don't expect tenth level PCs to mess around in the first level of the dungeon. (I once or twice _have_ had a first level bandit rading party try ambushing high heroic PCs but only for comedy relaxation).




No this isn't level scaling. This in no way sets the default of a difficulty level on the fly... using a PC's level... instead it sets a level of difficulty consistent with the difficulty of the environment the PC's are in, whatever that may be.





Neonchameleon said:


> We are discussing
> 1: Level scaling and how this impacts play.
> 2: Worldbuilding in a world with hit points
> 3: Damage inflicted by fire.
> ...




I haven't been discussing 2 at all... and that seems to be the only one directly associated with the nature of hit points.




Neonchameleon said:


> Except it does. For all the reasons I've gone into. The changing of the challenges you should be facing and the stark power differential across levels is baked into the assumptions of D&D and is shown at its clearest through the hit point mechanic.




See and that's the problem... The PC's should determine the challenges they face through their actions, at least in sandbox play, so I don't understand your use of the word "should" here.




Neonchameleon said:


> Level scaling has been one of the fundamental assumptions of D&D right from Gygax and Arneson. And hit points demonstrate this. That you don't like this demonstration doesn't make it irrelevant.




Huh? So Arneson and Gygax scaled the diffculty for their PC's according to the PC's... even when they were different class levels and/or when they found a way to explore a higher or lower level of the dungeon they were exploring... I was never under the impression they played this way, intersting...


----------



## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> Hmmm, intersting view... I guess some DM's might think consistency makes the world logical and predictable enough that characters can in turn make logical decisions about their actions... But yeah I guess if a DM just does whatever he wants because it's a different scene and story... then yeah he has absolutely no shackles whatsoever.  Whether that's a good or bad thing is a matter of perspective.




The players will know what damage the fire will do, because I'll tell them.

They will ALSO know logical consequences of their actions.  Fire will hurt them.  This is a logical consequence.  If they choose to be in a burning building, they will be hurt and burnt unless they take a lot of prep time to make sure that they're safe in the building (or they're a party of tieflings, at which point lolfire).  

What they won't know are the MECHANICAL consequences of their actions.  In a thread about dissociation, THERE is a great, wonderful screaming example of it.

4E: "Fire is not healthy.  It will hurt you pretty badly if you spend time in it, unless you take proper precautions.  There might also be problems with smoke, it tends to cut off vision and mess with breathing (although the warforged will be fine there)."  


3E: "Fire does 1d6 points of damage per round.  If the room has grown hot enough, you take an additional 1d6 points of damage per minute.  You have to succeed a DC 15 con check that scales +1 each round you're in the fire, or lose your action."  

Seriously, which feels more dissociated to you?


----------



## Argyle King (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I don't get your problem here.  Is it:
> 
> 1: That different fires are treated differently?
> 2: That you have no problem running tenth level PCs through first level adventures?  Because that's what a non-scaling world means.
> ...




A lot of good points here; especially the last part...

That is part of why I have said in other discussions that maybe I did not realize that some of the problems I had/have with D&D were also in 3rd Edition simply because I did not know any better.  At the time -with few brief exceptions- my experience with rpgs was D&D.  Once 4th came around, I was at point where I was made more aware that things could be done differently.  Some of the changes I liked; some I didn't.  Either way, the important thing was that I felt I had more insight into my tastes and what I wanted out of a game because I was given a greater awareness that I had choice and that different options were available.  

Oddly, I credit 4th Edition with helping me to discover games that have more of a 'sim' element.  While (in the beginning) I generally found 4th Edition to be somewhat at odds with what I wanted out of my experience, there were a few areas in which it seemed to tone down D&D a little bit.  In particular, there was less of a power curve between levels; that was nice because my game didn't change all the time.  I also enjoyed combats which had more moving pieces.

HP did seem bloated at that time.  It always had, but it seemed somehow more.  Perhaps it was the weakness of the opposition (monsters.)  Still, D&D was what I knew, and I accepted the abstract nature of it.  I accepted it until I tried games in which HP was not treated the way D&D treats it.  I learned that I preferred a different way of doing it.  Likewise, I also learned that I preferred being able to roll a parry, a dodge, or a block far more than having a static defense where I just stand there and get hit.

I think what I am trying to get at is that I often feel there are things in D&D which really do not make sense in any context outside of D&D.  This is not meant as a bash against 4E, but, in other threads where I've mentioned some of why I felt 'disassociated' from the game, I think that is part of what I was trying to say.  There are a lot of times when my mind really had no connection to what was going on.  I had to learn a second version of reality -4E's reality.  

As both a player and a GM, I was making decisions based upon that second set of reality.  I often felt as though I was making decisions which the game said were right rather than decisions which felt right to me.  As a DM, I felt that made it harder to design encounters because I was designing from a viewpoint which was often at odds with my own.  As a player, there were a lot of times when I felt as though the right answer according to the game trumped what I felt would be fun.

I don't ask for a perfect simulation.  I can and often do accept abstractions in the name of playability.  However, as said elsewhere, I like to be in the same general ballpark.  I do not view all disassociation as bad.  However, if I feel that I often cannot connect with the game, I do view that as bad... at least in so much that I play rpgs to satisfy desires which are not the same desires behind why I would play something like parcheese.  

Another place I find issue is when a game is not (imo) consistent with itself, and that is somewhere that I find the "4E Reality" breaks down.  In my opinion, a world built upon how 4E works would look nothing like how many of the 4E settings look.  Some of the things don't make sense even when I try looking at them from the viewpoint that 4E asks me to look at them from.  On that note, I'll repeat something else I said elsewhere by saying that the most successful games of 4E I ran were ones in which I completely ditched to default setting assumptions.  Instead, I went with games which embraced the somewhat gonzo nature of certain things.  That went exceptionally well, and I was very happy with the results.

Unfortunately; at the end of the day, I feel as though I cannot use the system to tell a lot of the stories I want to tell.  That is part of why I find the discussions about 'the narrative' the be somewhat alien to me.  I find the system getting in the way of many of the narratives I want to have.  I at times find that I have a hard time telling certain fantasy stories because D&D has evolved into its own sort of genre; moving a story from a genre outside of that into it causes the feel to change. The opposite is also something I feel is true and a big part of why I find myself using other systems to play some of the D&D settings.  

None of this is intended as a slight against 4E.  I do enjoy the game now that I have a better understanding of what to expect from it, and I am aware I have other options for when I want other things.  I'm simply trying to give a little insight into why I feel the way I do about certain styles of mechanics.


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## mmadsen (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Seriously, which feels more dissociated to you?



You raise an excellent point, GreyICE.  When the players don't know the mechanics involved, and they can assume that the DM will do something reasonable, everything becomes _associated_ again.  The players are thinking through their characters' situation as if it were real and not a boardgame with arbitrary rules.


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## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> The players will know what damage the fire will do, because I'll tell them.
> 
> They will ALSO know logical consequences of their actions. Fire will hurt them. This is a logical consequence. If they choose to be in a burning building, they will be hurt and burnt unless they take a lot of prep time to make sure that they're safe in the building (or they're a party of tieflings, at which point lolfire).
> 
> ...




If yo're scaling it by level in 4e then they will know how much damage it does... Like I said if you want to discuss DM Fiat (which this post seems to be borderline claiming you can do with 4e but not with 3.x for some reason)...then fine let's switch gears, but DM Fiat isn't particular to any ruleset. That said we were talking about page 42 and it has definite values by (party) level. In fact I would say a character who knows those values has more information about anything his DM improvises by the rules than he will with the myriad of subsystems in 3.x.


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## GreyICE (Sep 28, 2012)

Imaro said:


> If yo're scaling it by level in 4e then they will know how much damage it does... Like I said if you want to discuss DM Fiat (which this post seems to be borderline claiming you can do with 4e but not with 3.x for some reason)...then fine let's switch gears, but DM Fiat isn't particular to any ruleset. That said we were talking about page 42 and it has definite values by (party) level. In fact I would say a character who knows those values has more information about anything his DM improvises by the rules than he will with the myriad of subsystems in 3.x.




Will he?  What will the player who knows the chart know?

Well he'll know that the DM has baseline values of damage for 'low,' 'moderate,' and 'high' that are appropriate for their level in terms of threatening the party.  He'll know that the low damage is not an immediate threat, but it is fairly painful (the fire is just getting started).  He knows that the moderate damage is pretty hurtful (the fire is going at a solid pace).  He knows that the high damage is not something you want to be taking round after round (the fire is a raging inferno).  He also knows the DM can wander outside those boundaries.  

As it was said earlier, at the paragon tier things like burning buildings aren't a large concern.  So maybe the player can guess that even a roaring inferno is going to be at worst 'low' damage, and thus while it's not nothing, it's not something that the party can't handle for a round or two.  

So yes, a player with a firm grasp of the mechanics can better estimate how long his character can survive in a fire (assuming average dice results).  That still is a hell of a lot more flexible than 1d6 per round, and also much less gameable (A ring of fire resistance 5 lets you take a nap in a 3E fire).  And if the DM tells the party how much damage they'll take in the fire (see: Honesty and openness in DMing) then when this player with all this knowledge sees a roaring inferno, they might be able to guess what the DM tells them - perhaps.  But all the other players don't need to guess, because they know.

Thus, system knowledge has rewarded the player with very little, which is good because system knowledge is a nasty little metagame skill that shouldn't affect your character's actions at the table.


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## Desdichado (Sep 28, 2012)

Metagame and disassociated don't mean the same thing to me, if I'm using the word disassociated to complain about a mechanic that I don't like.  I accept, and am fine with, the notion that metagame considerations are going to inform some of the decisions I make as a player.  Especially since I approach the game with more of a "collaborative author" stance, I can accept that there's stuff that needs to happen mechanically, or needs to be detailed in such a way that it's for me as a player, not me as a character.  Disassociation mechanics, on the other hand, are kind of an order of magnitude "worse".

I'm not sure that I can really describe exactly what causes a mechanic to feel disassociated from the fiction to me.  Like I said earlier, it's certainly a very subjective thing.  It's a mechanic that causes me to pay attention to it in a sense that it breaks my submersion in the game reality.  It somehow breaks the fourth wall in a way that metagame mechanics do not.

Granted, I find that I feel more disassociated from the game the more metagame considerations that there are.  Maybe all that I mean is that I can accept some metagame considerations, but when there's too many that cross my personal red line in the sand, then I get that disassociated feeling.

But all this talk about "process sim" (whatever that's supposed to mean exactly) and all the hyper-detailed physics examples strike me as completely missing the mark.  It's much more simple than that.  Mechanics make me feel disassociated with the game when I can't submerge them into my gaming experience.  When they repeatedly break the fourth wall and remind me that I'm playing a game, and that as such, it's often arbitrary in silly ways, or in ways that don't make any sense from a character standpoint.  When they drive behavior (or at least offer attractive incentives or compelling disincentives, regardless of what I choose to do) in me as a player that's inconsistent with what makes sense to me in my view of the character and the setting.


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## S'mon (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> For immersion, to think as my character does, I need to replicate the OODA loop.  Observe.  Orient.  Decide.  Act.
> 
> *Observe.* What is going on around me?  This is where AD&D breaks down hard.  I update my observations and start a new loop _once per minute_.  Once per six seconds is ... acceptable if not great.




I seem to remember that Boyd put the OODA loop for the individual infantryman at 3-6 seconds, which is close to 3e-4e's 6 second combat rounds, though by far the most of Boyd's work was with aircraft dogfights where OODA is longer, around 6-12 seconds AIR. However tank commander and squad leader OODA is more like 15-30 seconds, still less than the AD&D 1 minute rounds - which I agree are kinda silly - but pre-3e combat rounds could arguably be seen as squad-level OODA (given how initiative works in those games), for which 12-15 seconds or so is quite plausible.

Edit: BTW I came across OODA about 9-10 years ago not from the RPG/wargame angle, but from the political/military side, especially reading William S Lind on 4th generation warfare before and during the invasion of Iraq.  Some of what I learned later proved quite useful with the Neighbourhood Watch!


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## S'mon (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> This is always a mistake made by simulationists.




Dunno about that - I think I'm pretty simulationist, but I generally prefer Free Kriegspiel ("3 in 6 the Germans win, high roll favours the Russians") - it usually gives better results.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> 2: That you have no problem running tenth level PCs through first level adventures?  Because that's what a non-scaling world means.




My problem is exactly the opposite. I don't like running tenth level PCs through first level adventures, even if we've add a 0 to all the challenges. Instead of a regular Orc, it's an orc with 10 levels of fighter! And it's a 10th level pie, too! You talk about Gary Gygax, but a lot of the rules for scaling first came in in 3rd edition. If you wanted to scale up an AD&D 1 adventure by the rules, you couldn't just slap a PC level on the orcs, or give them the Advanced template; you actually had to swap them out for different monsters.


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## Imaro (Sep 28, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> My problem is exactly the opposite. I don't like running tenth level PCs through first level adventures, even if we've add a 0 to all the challenges. Instead of a regular Orc, it's an orc with 10 levels of fighter! And it's a 10th level pie, too! You talk about Gary Gygax, but a lot of the rules for scaling first came in in 3rd edition. If you wanted to scale up an AD&D 1 adventure by the rules, you couldn't just slap a PC level on the orcs, or give them the Advanced template; you actually had to swap them out for different monsters.




I have serious doubts regarding [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] in regards to his claims of scaling when it comes to Gygax and Arneson... almost everything I've seen on the matter suggests the opposite. It'd be great if he could provide some proof to back up such a claim...


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## Balesir (Sep 29, 2012)

S'mon said:


> With a great axe? With a bow and arrow?



With a bow, no - missiles _are_ a competely different game 

But with a (reasonable) greataxe, sure. Such an axe (a fairly reasonable one, not the ludicrous cleavers you see in some illos) can be used to hook, trip, punch, shove, block, butt stroke or jab. Oh, and swing. Your first move may well be a swing, but any capable opponent will either dodge or block it - and you'll anticipate that and have a few roll-on moves in mind.



Viking Bastard said:


> Sure, but I don't think that's the point. I believe he's talking of the association in your mind between [ rolling the die = swinging the sword ]. It's that directness between the action in the fiction and the mechanical resolution; that it _feels_ like you're swinging the sword when you're rolling the die.



That is exactly the directness I'm saying doesn't happen. What decides the outcome is the punch of the shield, or the shift of the feet, or the hook of the opponent's weapon - not the swing of the exploiting blade. By the time the blow that connects goes in, things generally have to be a done deal.

Typically, when a blow is initiated, it's already clear whether it will connect or not. That doesn't stop the blow completing - but, if it's not going to connect, the important thing is what will follow on from it - where will the respective weapons, shields and bodies end up after this move, and how might _that_ situation be exploited to create an opening for a connecting shot?

In short, when a fighter commences a swing (or stab, or lunge, etc.), he or she is not waiting with bated breath to see if it connects or not - that is something that is already clear to them. The supposed parallel between the anticipation of waiting to see the result of the die roll and getting to know whether or not the blow strikes home does not exist; it's more a question of "has my move created an opening?" - followed by "the swing".


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## Iosue (Sep 29, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> My problem is exactly the opposite. I don't like running tenth level PCs through first level adventures, even if we've add a 0 to all the challenges. Instead of a regular Orc, it's an orc with 10 levels of fighter! And it's a 10th level pie, too! You talk about Gary Gygax, but a lot of the rules for scaling first came in in 3rd edition. If you wanted to scale up an AD&D 1 adventure by the rules, you couldn't just slap a PC level on the orcs, or give them the Advanced template; you actually had to swap them out for different monsters.






Imaro said:


> I have serious doubts regarding [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] in regards to his claims of scaling when it comes to Gygax and Arneson... almost everything I've seen on the matter suggests the opposite. It'd be great if he could provide some proof to back up such a claim...




Scaling in OD&D, Classic D&D and AD&D was based on the interaction of character level, monster level and dungeon level.  It's one reason why they all use the word "level".  In general, characters were expected to be exploring dungeon levels at their character level, or up to two levels higher or lower.  Monster level was defined as HD, and it was recommended that monsters not be placed on dungeon levels more than two levels above or below their monster level.  In the event that, say, a 1st level monster was found on level 2 of the dungeon, the dungeon master was expected to increase the number appearing.  Or decrease it, if a higher level monster was found on a lower level.



			
				Dungeons & Dragons Vol. III: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures said:
			
		

> *P. 6 -*The determination of just where monsters should be placed, and whether or not they will be guarding treasure, and how much of the latter if they are guarding something, can become burdensome when faced with several levels to do at one time. It is a good idea to thoughtfully place several of the most important treasures, with or without monsterous guardians, and then switch to a random determination for the balance of the level.
> 
> *P. 7 - *Roll the die for every room or space not already allocated. A roll of a 1 or 2 indicates that there is some monster there. The monster(s) can be selected by use of the Monster Determination & Level of Monster Matrix which is given later in this booklet. The number of monsters is best determined by the level being considered and the kind of monster inhabiting the room or space.






			
				Moldvay Basic said:
			
		

> *P. B4 -* A 'monster level' indicates how tough and ferocious a type of monster is. A monster's level is equal to the number of hit dice (a measure of how much damage a monster can take and still survive; see MONSTERS, page B29) it has. Some monsters have special powers and the DM may consider them one "monster level" or (or hit die) higher than the number of their hit dice.
> 
> *P. B29 - *'Hit dice' also gives the level of the monster and the dungeon level on which it is most commonly found. In general, a monster's level equals its number of hit dice, ignoring any pluses or minuses. EXAMPLE: A monster with 3+1 hit dice is a third level monster and is most commonly found on the 3rd level of any dungeon. Note: if a monster has several special powers, the DM may consider it one level greater than its hit dice
> 
> A monster's level is only a guide, and a monster could be found anywhere in the dungeon, whatever the level. However, as a general rule, it is useful to limit monsters to 2 dungeon levels higher or lower than their hit dice. When monsters are encountered on dungeon levels less than the monsters' level, there should be fewer monsters than normal. And when monsters are met on dungeon levels greater than the monsters' level, there should be more monsters than normal.






			
				Menzter Basic said:
			
		

> *P. 63  of Player's Manual - *monster level -- A measure of how tough a monster is, usually equal to its hit dice.
> 
> *P. 22 of Dungeon Master's Rulebook - *
> Monster Levels
> ...






			
				AD&D DMG said:
			
		

> *P. 174*
> MONSTER ENCOUNTERED ADJUSTMENT FOR RELATIVE DUNGEON LEVEL
> 
> The Numbers column assumes that the encounter will take place on the level which is equivalent to the level assigned to the particular monster (cf. DUNGEON RANDOM MONSTER LEVEL DETERMINATION MATRIX). In order to adjust for the more difficult conditions on lower levels of the dungeon, and the relatively easier ones above, use the following rules:
> ...






			
				AD&D2e DMG said:
			
		

> *P. 98 -*Dungeon encounters are normally set up according to levels -- 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. Each level is a relative measure of the power of those creature on it. In general, the level of the table corresponds to character level, although characters may also encounter and defeat (or be challenged by) creatures from higher or lower level tables. Generally, when adventuring in a dungeon, characters should meet random encounters that are equal to or no more than two levels higher or lower than their own.
> 
> Sometimes dungeons themselves are arranged in levels (although this is by no means required). In this case, the dungeon level and the encounter table correspond. Characters on the 1st-level of the dungeon would encounter creatures from the first level encounter table. This not only keeps the power of the monsters in line with the strength of the typical party, it also maintains the logical structure of the dungeon level. It doesn't make much sense for extremely powerful monsters to mingle freely (and without consequence) among the weaker creatures that inhabit that level.




These were not hard and fast rules that had to be followed (not that scaling rules are hard and fast in 4e either), but recommendations to the DM for making dungeon levels and wandering monster encounters at a level appropriate for the characters.


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## Argyle King (Sep 29, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> My problem is exactly the opposite. I don't like running tenth level PCs through first level adventures, even if we've add a 0 to all the challenges. Instead of a regular Orc, it's an orc with 10 levels of fighter! And it's a 10th level pie, too! You talk about Gary Gygax, but a lot of the rules for scaling first came in in 3rd edition. If you wanted to scale up an AD&D 1 adventure by the rules, you couldn't just slap a PC level on the orcs, or give them the Advanced template; you actually had to swap them out for different monsters.




You could always port the adventures you want to run into a system without levels.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 29, 2012)

Iosue said:


> Scaling in OD&D, Classic D&D and AD&D was based on the interaction of character level, monster level and dungeon level.  It's one reason why they all use the word "level". ...




I don't get how this is a response to me. I'm not at all against characters running into appropriate challenges*. But what those systems didn't do was simply scale challenges. If you wanted a bigger orc, you didn't scale the orc, you switched him out for an ogre. They made a tenth level dungeon for tenth level characters and didn't just scale up a first level dungeon. Even with scaling, good adventures for recent versions of D&D at high levels aren't just low level adventures scaled up; they're adventures written for high levels, that don't have scaled up orcs sitting in a dungeon where you can't fly or teleport in. If characters have an ability, then they don't play around with the rules to negate it, and use 10th level as an reason to start bringing out fire giants and behemoth hippopotamus**, not numerically suped-up goblins.

* Digression: I'd like in theory to run and play in a universe where players have to learn to have their characters run away from things. In D&D 3.x, that's challenging to do without killing a lot of PCs--the ratio of NPCs that try to escape to the ones that succeed is painfully low, and even if PCs were wise enough to try escape, I don't think they'd be much more successful. My players, I think, aren't interested, so I'm not trying it out as a DM.

** Pathfinder CR 10s. And if my players don't break out into "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas" when they have to deal with one, they're losing XP.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 29, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> You could always port the adventures you want to run into a system without levels.




I'm not sure I see the point. In any system where characters advance, there's going to be a point where either you increase checks into the ridiculous level--and it's no fun dumping 36 points into Lockpicking for Lockpicking-20 to discover that all the locks have advanced accordingly--or accept that those things no longer challenge the PCs. I don't know of a levelless game that has the enormous mortal to demigod ascent that D&D does, but if there is, it has the same issues D&D does.

From another direction, D&D 3.x (in this case, Pathfinder) is in my case a group choice. There are games I'd really like to play, but they're all non-D&Desque. Perhaps I could search for a game in the dungeon fantasy realm that would make me more happy, but the matter is academic and I'm not interested enough to go searching for no value. I haven't even kept up with GURPS Dungeon Fantasy releases, though I think that would be an improvement for me in many ways.


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## JamesonCourage (Sep 29, 2012)

Balesir said:


> In short, when a fighter commences a swing (or stab, or lunge, etc.), he or she is not waiting with bated breath to see if it connects or not - that is something that is already clear to them.



I'm no professional fighter, but I've been in a life or death physical confrontation with weapons before (where swings and lunges were made), and this wasn't my experience. I was very concerned about whether my blow would land. And, I have much more plentiful anecdotal experience from sparring (martial arts, wrestling, padded weapons, etc.) that also makes me disagree with your claim, here.

Yeah, of course, sometimes you do know. You just know you've got it, or you're just setting someone up. But your claim here? I don't buy it as any sort of generalization. Agreeing to disagree. As always, play what you like


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## Iosue (Sep 29, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> I don't get how this is a response to me. I'm not at all against characters running into appropriate challenges*. But what those systems didn't do was simply scale challenges. If you wanted a bigger orc, you didn't scale the orc, you switched him out for an ogre.




No, they scaled challenges.  If you were first level, and you met a band of orcs, you met 2-8 orcs.  If you leveled up and went to the 3rd level of the dungeon, you met 4-16.

This is the fundamental disconnect, I think, and I guess it's not surmountable because after all the arguing it still exists.  In old editions of D&D, on the whole, challenges scaled with the characters.  If you went up in level and met lower level monsters, you met more of them to make it an appropriate challenge.  If you didn't, then you got less XP.  As you note, monsters also served as scaling challenges.  As you got powerful, you met more powerful monsters.

Now, for some folks, that makes no sense.  Why are there relatively few orcs on level 1, but a lot on level 3?  Also, while this is a decent enough system for an exploratory dungeon crawl, it doesn't work so well when you get out into the wilderness, or find yourself in a more freeform story type adventure.

DMs want some control of the system.  Even if they are making a sandbox and just want to know the relatively difficulty of a particular section of the map, DMs like to know the relative challenge of the encounters they are building.  Heck, way back in the day, Mentzer's Master Rules include a calculator for determining relative level challenges.

You know, the default way to play 4e is not to scale monsters.  It's to do just what we've noted here that TSR-D&D did: you either increase the number of monsters, or your swap out one monster for another.  All the monsters in the 4e MMs and MVs have Levels by their names, just so a DM can gauge their relative appropriateness for an encounter.

The only thing 4e does different is it gives DMs the option, if they want, to scale up the orc into a more powerful orc, _if they so want_.  This is still not any different from old style D&D; you had Goblin Kings with 3 HD and bodyguards with more hp than regular goblins, you had Orc Chieftains, no few monsters have HD given in a range so the DM can choose to make them weaker or stronger for whatever reason he might have.  And it's not like increasing the HD of a particular monster (and thus its saves, to-hit, and XP) was an uncommon hack, even if not officially set out in the rules.  There just wasn't a consistent system for it.

It seems to me that 3e provided for this very common DM need with a full system for scaling monsters up (adding levels), and 4e merely simplified and streamlined it.  And it's just a mechanical system -- it's expected that there will be narrative reasons justifying the scaling up, because it doesn't otherwise happen unless the DM wills it.  The DMG is chock-a-block with set, static DCs, with static damage.  There's no monster, trap or DC whose stats are determined by character level.  The DMG simply provides some tools for the DM to change them, if he's got a good reason to.

Some folks may not like playing in a game where a DM likes adjusting monsters up or down to fit his players, but that's a playstyle issue, not a game issue.


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## S'mon (Sep 29, 2012)

JamesonCourage said:


> I'm no professional fighter, but I've been in a life or death physical confrontation with weapons before (where swings and lunges were made), and this wasn't my experience. I was very concerned about whether my blow would land. And, I have much more plentiful anecdotal experience from sparring (martial arts, wrestling, padded weapons, etc.) that also makes me disagree with your claim, here.
> 
> Yeah, of course, sometimes you do know. You just know you've got it, or you're just setting someone up. But your claim here? I don't buy it as any sort of generalization. Agreeing to disagree. As always, play what you like




Yeah, I don't buy Balesir's claim either. It seems a a hugely exaggerated generalisation of something that can sometimes (not always) be the case in one-to-one fights between skilled opponents.

The one time in recent years when a guy took a swing at me on the street, he seemed pretty surprised when I blocked it.


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## chaochou (Sep 29, 2012)

Balesir said:


> In short, when a fighter commences a swing (or stab, or lunge, etc.), he or she is not waiting with bated breath to see if it connects or not - that is something that is already clear to them.




I understand exactly what you're saying about the intricacies and subtleties of combat.

For me, though - and I use this phrase with extreme caution - the combat you're describing 'isn't D&D'. Or to turn it around, a system where a man can have 80hp while a sword does 1d8 damage is not attempting to model the harsh realities of armed combat as we understand it.

For example, if we take your example with of the Viking shield and sword. Our aggressor goes in with the edge of his shield, turns the opponent's shield and similtaneously gets a clear shot in with his sword straight into the torso (that's a successful attack roll).

In our world, that's game over. That opponent is gone, either dead or so badly wounded that he'll be killed moments later while reeling in shock and pain. But that can't happen if that opponent has 50hp.

D&D combat is something of a moveable feast. At any given moment hp are open to interpretation, as is 'to-hit', as is AC. None of them mean anything concrete. Just an interplay of numbers to paint pictures with.

All of which is a rather long way of rationalising what D&D players have done for decades - describe combat based on damage inflicted relative to remaining hp, not on the 'attack roll'. This no doubt results in descriptions of combat which would be ridiculed by a Roman Legionnaire, or a spearman in Alexander the Great's army or a Viking raider. Hey ho.

For the kind of 'realistic' combat you're describing you need a system like The Riddle of Steel, by Jake Norwood (- if you do a Youtube search for Jake you'll find lots of videos of him fighting. He's well known in the swordfighting scene and knows his stuff.)


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## Imaro (Sep 29, 2012)

Iosue said:


> Scaling in OD&D, Classic D&D and AD&D was based on the interaction of character level, monster level and dungeon level. It's one reason why they all use the word "level". In general, characters were expected to be exploring dungeon levels at their character level, or up to two levels higher or lower. Monster level was defined as HD, and it was recommended that monsters not be placed on dungeon levels more than two levels above or below their monster level. In the event that, say, a 1st level monster was found on level 2 of the dungeon, the dungeon master was expected to increase the number appearing. Or decrease it, if a higher level monster was found on a lower level.
> 
> 
> These were not hard and fast rules that had to be followed (not that scaling rules are hard and fast in 4e either), but recommendations to the DM for making dungeon levels and wandering monster encounters at a level appropriate for the characters.





Hmmm, this isn't exactly what I am speaking of... I am asking for proof that Gary and Arneson actually ran games where they scaled the challenges for their players.  From the accounts I've been able to read of their actual games they didn't scale by character level and they didn't ensure that character's of a certain level only encountered challenges of a particular level.  From what I've read, there was a dungeon with levels and the PC's were basically allowed to explore whatever levels of the dungeon they could reach.  That's not scaling by party level, that's having a system to determine the difficulty of different levels in the dungeon(which is a different thing entirely since it is mostly for proper XP but it in no way ensures that the PC's meet appropriate challenges for their level.


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## mmadsen (Sep 29, 2012)

S'mon said:


> Dunno about that - I think I'm pretty simulationist, but I generally prefer Free Kriegspiel ("3 in 6 the Germans win, high roll favours the Russians") - it usually gives better results.




I thought I'd repeat what I cited in another thread, about free kriegspiel (free-form wargaming), since it illustrates the difference between _abstract_ (lacking detail) and _disassociated_ (lacking connection to the modeled reality):

The system for finding the results of combat in a free kriegspiel is classically simple. First of all the umpire looks at the position of each side: how many and what type of troops are involved; how their morale is bearing up; and what orders they have been given. He next considers the ground on which the action will be fought, and any special tactical problems which either side might encounter; whether there are any obstacles in the way of an attacker; whether a flank attack might be possible, and so on.

When the umpire has all relevant information at his disposal, he ought to be able to give an informed opinion on the probabilities of the result. He will not simply say something like 'The French infantry hassuccessfully stormed the hill', but will quote possibilities, such as: 'The French have a 50% chance of storming the hill successfully; a 30% chance of capturing half of it, while disputing the rest; and a 20% chance of being totally repulsed. High scores favour the French'. It is important that the umpire is as specific as possible with these figures, as this forces him to consider all the factors involved in the combat and to think through the full implications of his decision. He must also be clear whether a high dice roll will be good or bad for the attacker, i.e., whether the top 50% (a die roll of 5-9) or the bottom 50% (a roll of 0-4) will mean the hill has been carried. In this case he has stated that the high score will be good for the attacker.​


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 29, 2012)

Imaro said:


> Let's go with both...
> 
> 1. Because it creates an inconsistent world (unless there are conditions affecting the fire as I stated earlier).
> 
> 2. Because if that's not possible it excludes a style of play that has been possible throughout all editions of D&D... the sandbox world... or do you disagree?




1: There are _never_ no conditions affecting the fire.  Fires vary in heat from fire to fire.  You might as well talk about generic humans as about generic fires or even generic building fires.

2: See 1.  It doesn't exclude sandbox play in the slightest.  Even the real world is much more varied than you seem to believe.



> No this isn't level scaling. This in no way sets the default of a difficulty level on the fly... using a PC's level... instead it sets a level of difficulty consistent with the difficulty of the environment the PC's are in, whatever that may be.




You are talking about 4e rather than 3e here I assume?  Because on the one hand you are trumpeting the idea that all fires are the same and on the otehr you are saying that you set the difficulty by the difficulty of the environment.

There are three basic ways of setting difficulty and damage.

1: By level (PC).  This is for Adventure Path play because you deliberately trek from place to place that goes up in level.

2: By level (Environment).  The rules here are exactly the same as those for level (PC) with the single exception that PCs neeed to look round to work out what area they are in and make sure you aren't too far out of your level's areas.

3: By attempted simulation.  And if a burning building turns out to be non-threatening, so be it.

Gygaxian D&D was straight down the line type 2 with dungeon levels and the like.  3e drifts betweeen all three.  And 4e is a mix of type 1 and type 2 with the DMG 1 veering more to type 1 and the DMG 2 more to type 2.  



> Huh? So Arneson and Gygax scaled the diffculty for their PC's according to the PC's... even when they were different class levels and/or when they found a way to explore a higher or lower level of the dungeon they were exploring... I was never under the impression they played this way, intersting...




I have not once anywhere ever found the advice that you should lower the level of a 4e dragon to match that of the PCs - for one thing that would mean changing its size.  An adult dragon is always an adult dragon.  Or if you gratuitously challenge an entire company of veteran soldiers to single combat they don't mysteriously and miraculously all become minions.  It is merely that in adventure path play you are expected to have beatable enemies unless you do something spectacularly stupid.  Which is precisely the way it worked for Gygax/Arneson.

The world exists, contrary to your misunderstandings.  And about half the skill challenges in the DMG 2 are fixed level.  Most of the monsters have a set level.  But it is indicated what you are expected to do at certain levels whether through the adventure path model or through the dungeon levels.


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## Imaro (Sep 29, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> 1: There are _never_ no conditions affecting the fire. Fires vary in heat from fire to fire. You might as well talk about generic humans as about generic fires or even generic building fires.




Yet there are limits to how hot a fire can get. So there should still be some limitation on just how much damage a fire can do to a person.



Neonchameleon said:


> 2: See 1. It doesn't exclude sandbox play in the slightest. Even the real world is much more varied than you seem to believe.




It has nothing to do with being varied... a building fire has a peak temperature... if I run a game where the damage of fire steadily increases with PC level or I randomly create values of damage to create "narrative" tension at different levels it does tend to exclude sandbox (or at least make it more difficult to implement) play since much of sandbox play is based around learning from one's experiences and using that to inform future decisions.

Fire from a burning building that does 1d6 damage per round in one scene and 8d6 in another and 12d6 in another greatly reduces and/or eliminates my ability to judge whether my character should take certain risks... it also means there is no upper limit to the damage a regular fire can do since the numbers are whatever the DM wants them to beand/or scale with character level. The world isn't that varied




Neonchameleon said:


> You are talking about 4e rather than 3e here I assume? Because on the one hand you are trumpeting the idea that all fires are the same and on the otehr you are saying that you set the difficulty by the difficulty of the environment.




I am saying there should be an upper limit to the damage a fire can inflict... the 4e way of scaling with level doesn't do this... the 3.x way of setting damage for fire does. If 4e matched damage to environment it would also.



Neonchameleon said:


> There are three basic ways of setting difficulty and damage.
> 
> 1: By level (PC). This is for Adventure Path play because you deliberately trek from place to place that goes up in level.
> 
> ...




Your assumption on number 2 is wrong... not everyone plays games where PC's have no choice but to interact with level appropriate things. Thus an environment can be set at a level but it has nothing to do with PC level at that point. I think this is where your logic falls down, you keep assuming a particular playstyle is the only playstyle. If you don't assume this then in no way are 1 and 2 the same.



Neonchameleon said:


> I have not once anywhere ever found the advice that you should lower the level of a 4e dragon to match that of the PCs - for one thing that would mean changing its size. An adult dragon is always an adult dragon. Or if you gratuitously challenge an entire company of veteran soldiers to single combat they don't mysteriously and miraculously all become minions. It is merely that in adventure path play you are expected to have beatable enemies unless you do something spectacularly stupid. Which is precisely the way it worked for Gygax/Arneson.




Ok, I'm not sure what you're adult dragon and size spiel is about since a level 1 (young) dragon in 4e is large... and an adult dragon in 4e is also large. But at least now you're admitting that scaling is only used in particular playstyles (like adventure path play).. However I contend you are wrong that Gygax and Arneson played in this style... the PC's were not confined to a dungeon level or challenges that matched their PC's levels and lower level PC's often adventured with PC's of higher level in their games and used henchman to beat higher level challenges.



Neonchameleon said:


> The world exists, contrary to your misunderstandings. And about half the skill challenges in the DMG 2 are fixed level. Most of the monsters have a set level. But it is indicated what you are expected to do at certain levels whether through the adventure path model or through the dungeon levels.




Again, stating it indicates what you are expected to do is a playstyle assumption, one that is not universal of D&D. For others having a set level doesn't indicate what you should do... it indicates how hard what you are trying to do is.


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## Upper_Krust (Sep 29, 2012)

Howdy Neonchameleon! 



			
				Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> *Orient.*  This is where 4e and the Bo9S blows the competition out of the water and why I really dislike [MENTION=326]Upper_Krust[/MENTION]'s attempts to generalise powers in play (rather than as a dev tool).




Can you give me an example of what you mean...I'm a tad lost here. Thanks.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 29, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> What does _pulling out all the stops_ mean?




You're saying you don't know how to try and keep little back for later?



> In a real fight, I don't simply choose to pull out all the stops and land my roundhouse kick to the head, or high-amplitude throw, or arm-bar -- and if I do land any of those moves, I'm no less likely to land them again on a different opponent.




In a real fight a roundhouse kick doesn't take six seconds.  This 1:1 mapping _does not work_.



> The player and the character are making very different tactical choices.  The results can be perfectly plausible and seemingly realistic while the mechanics remain disassociative.




There are several axes to the choices.  Opportunity (for which I've said 4e is the most associated bar the Bo9S).  Stamina and pacing (for which 4e is decently associated - and a lot better than earlier editions).  Positioning (4e again wins).  What I'm not deciding is the exact moves used, merely something that maps to a group of them.  Only in GURPS do I zoom in to anything like that level.



> I believe that many of the same people who dislike 4E's daily and encounter powers would not mind the crusader's random powers and would not find them as disassociative.




*I KNOW!*  Why do you think I've been bringing the Crusader up regularly?  Other than to show that there are ways of doing things that D&D has found that work and scratch multiple itches.  To me the 3.X fighter is both disassociated because the decisions I'm making do not match the ones I should, and just plain boring.  The crusader is neither and that's why I'm mentioning it.  Giving credit for when things have been done _right_.



Imaro said:


> Yet there are limits to how hot a fire can get. So there should still be some limitation on just how much damage a fire can do to a person.




What does this have to do with the price of tea in china?  How much damage can a fire do to a person?  Stand underneath the space shuttle at launch and find out.



> It has nothing to do with being varied... a building fire has a peak temperature... if I run a game where the damage of fire steadily increases with PC level or I randomly create values of damage to create "narrative" tension at different levels it does tend to exclude sandbox (or at least make it more difficult to implement) play since much of sandbox play is based around learning from one's experiences and using that to inform future decisions.




You can get a coal fire hot enough to melt iron with sufficient air and enclosure.  Would you agree that a human can not survive in an environment that will melt iron?

Yes, there might be a theoretical cap on the heat involved.  But unless you're playing magic against magic _your PCs will be long dead_.  I therefore find your argument about a theoretical maximum temperature with respect to sandbox play _irrelevant_.



> Fire from a burning building that does 1d6 damage per round in one scene and 8d6 in another and 12d6 in another greatly reduces and/or eliminates my ability to judge whether my character should take certain risks...




No.  Damage you can not judge does that.  It doesn't matter what is used to calculate damage just as long as it is consistent.

And as for your example, it is as if you don't know how the 4e rules work at all.  The damage expressions GreyICE was praising are on a specific table, setting low, medium, high, and limited damage expressions.  The damage by level at level 30 is approximately_ 4.5 times_ that at level 1.  (Low ranges from 1d6+3 to 4d6+15).  Even 8d6 to 12d6 is a jump of 14 levels on the medium damage table (and you're going to be using low or medium for the fire because it's an area effect thing), taking you from level 20 to level 34.  That's right.  A 12d6 fire is a higher than epic level fire.

If you don't know whether the fire's doing 1d6 or 8d6 damage you aren't playing using the tools of 4e.  Period.  If you can't tell whether the fire's going to use a low or a high damage expression, your DM is falling down on the job.  Badly.

Now can you take your strawmen away and actually learn the rules and use examples in line with the rules please?



> Your assumption on number 2 is wrong... not everyone plays games where PC's have no choice but to interact with level appropriate things. Thus an environment can be set at a level but it has nothing to do with PC level at that point.




Which is the entire reason 2 is different from 1.  But what you do _when you have set that level_ is exactly the same.  Which is why almost all the rules are the same.  4e explicitely supports methods 1 and 2.



> However I contend you are wrong that Gygax and Arneson played in this style... the PC's were not confined to a dungeon level or challenges that matched their PC's levels




Which is exactly the definition of style 2.  The dungeon level had a level and was set pretty much to that level.  (With some margin of error, but 4e also recommends margin of error).  And this is independent of the PCs but you expect the PCs to try to be within the area so chosen.



> Again, stating it indicates what you are expected to do is a playstyle assumption, one that is not universal of D&D. For others having a set level doesn't indicate what you should do... it indicates how hard what you are trying to do is.




Finally!  You're getting what challenge level means in 4e.  It means _exactly_ what you have just written right in that paragraph.  And this interpretation is the one the DMG 2 supports most of the time.  See the fixed level skill challenges. 

How you decide what to set the challenge level at is the difference here.  And 4e doesn't say you must set it at the level of the party.  It says that if you don't have anything else to go on, setting it based on the level of the party is a good place to start.


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## Iosue (Sep 29, 2012)

Imaro said:


> Hmmm, this isn't exactly what I am speaking of... I am asking for proof that Gary and Arneson actually ran games where they scaled the challenges for their players.




Well, I think you're misinterpreting Neonchameleon's statement, which I read as saying "From the days of OD&D", not "In Gygax and Arneson's personal games.



> From the accounts I've been able to read of their actual games they didn't scale by character level and they didn't ensure that character's of a certain level only encountered challenges of a particular level.  From what I've read, there was a dungeon with levels and the PC's were basically allowed to explore whatever levels of the dungeon they could reach.  That's not scaling by party level, that's having a system to determine the difficulty of different levels in the dungeon(which is a different thing entirely since it is mostly for proper XP but it in no way ensures that the PC's meet appropriate challenges for their level.



What is "for proper XP" if not to encourage PC's meeting appropriate challenges for their level?  Why do PC's get _more_ than standard XP for defeating above level monsters and _less_ for defeating below level monsters?

You say that they didn't scale by character level or ensure encounters of a certain level, but that is exactly what the dungeon level system does (and which both Gygax and Arneson used).  Just because they didn't feel absolutely bound to it, and were happy to let characters explore "above their pay grade", as it were, doesn't mean that creating level appropriate encounters wasn't part of their game.  If it isn't, there's no need to have "dungeon levels" or "monster levels" at all, as Wesely's "Braunstein" games showed.  As soon as they introduced the idea of character's leveling up, they introduced the idea of appropriate challenges.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 29, 2012)

Upper_Krust said:


> Howdy Neonchameleon!
> 
> Can you give me an example of what you mean...I'm a tad lost here. Thanks.




Your revised 4e fighter with freeform powers.  It's a nice piece of work - but building the powers as you go to me conflicts with the "See opportunity.  Take opportunity" approach that does well in combat.  It also means that if you can find an excessively good combo (Aggressive Stance/Overwhelming Attack springs to mind due to the charge hole) you are encouraged to spam the thing.


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## mmadsen (Sep 29, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> You're saying you don't know how to try and keep little back for later?



No, I'm asking you to be far more specific about what _pulling out all the stops_ means, because making an extra effort when you see your chance in real life is nothing like using up a daily power in the game -- although both may appear the same from the outside.



Neonchameleon said:


> In a real fight a roundhouse kick doesn't take six seconds.  This 1:1 mapping _does not work_.



I am not arguing for a game where you choose a very specific move every six seconds and see whether it worked or not.  I am arguing against a game where you choose a move every six seconds from your remaining daily and per-encounter powers.


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## Lord Mhoram (Sep 29, 2012)

Iosue said:


> Scaling in OD&D, Classic D&D and AD&D was based on the interaction of character level, monster level and dungeon level.  It's one reason why they all use the word "level".  In general, characters were expected to be exploring dungeon levels at their character level, or up to two levels higher or lower.




Old Geezer on RPGnet who played with Gary, Dave and MAR Barker always talks about the world/dungeon being laid out before, and not changing in relation to the player at all - that was the only way a GM could cheat.

So if a part of 1st level characters took a wrong turn on a mountain path and ran into a lich it wasn't scaled and the party would die (or run). If a group of 10th level characters took the other path and ran into a bunch of 1st level orcs, the same. They have a cakewalk.

The guidelines to building the adventure and encounter were guidelines - but once the situation was set up, then it never changed. So really there were no level dependent encounters. The GM set up the world that there would be easier areas (A level 1 dungeon) and harder ones. But whatever level the PCs were, if they decided to go to an easier or harder place they never changed.

The GM doesn't run a 1st level adventure for 10th level characters - the character (in an open sandbox type world) would choose to go to the 1st level area - and wipe everything out. No level challenges. But no real reward for their actions either.

A fire in a first level dungeon would do X damage, and have Y save.
A fire in a  10th level dungeon would do A damage, and have B save. 

But those damages and saves had no relation to the party, other than the party (whatever level) went into said fire at whatever level they were.


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## Viking Bastard (Sep 29, 2012)

Balesir said:


> That is exactly the directness I'm saying doesn't happen.
> 
> [...]
> 
> In short, when a fighter commences a swing (or stab, or lunge, etc.), he or she is not waiting with bated breath to see if it connects or not - that is something that is already clear to them. The supposed parallel between the anticipation of waiting to see the result of the die roll and getting to know whether or not the blow strikes home does not exist; it's more a question of "has my move created an opening?" - followed by "the swing".




And I don't think any of this has any bearing on that feel of [roll = swing]. I guess, _maybe_ if you're someone who knows a lot about melee combat, but it's all about that feeling that when you're rolling the dice, you're actually swinging the sword. Whether this is realistic doesn't matter.

I'm very much of the narrativist, top-down, school of play. I identify very much with  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s examples of play, even though he takes the style further than me. And I have a hard time grasping people's gripes with Healing Surges and a lot of other arguably "disassociated" gaming mechanics.

But this I get: Roll = swing. Yeah. I feel like that too when I roll those dice.


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## mmadsen (Sep 29, 2012)

Viking Bastard said:


> But this I get: Roll = swing. Yeah. I feel like that too when I roll those dice.



I have no trouble with a system where _roll and miss_ means _feint and see no  opening_, but _roll and hit_ really does feel like it should mean _swing and hit_.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 29, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> No, I'm asking you to be far more specific about what _pulling out all the stops_ means, because making an extra effort when you see your chance in real life is nothing like using up a daily power in the game -- although both may appear the same from the outside




It means different things to different people and in different situations.  The incredibly tiring Rain of Steel stance that burns through your stamina isn't the same as a single minded deconstruction of your target's fighting style to the exclusion of the rest of the fight (Villain's Menace) or reaching deep into yourself to find the strength to keep fighting (any 'spend a surge' power).



Lord Mhoram said:


> The GM doesn't run a 1st level adventure for 10th level characters - the character (in an open sandbox type world) would choose to go to the 1st level area - and wipe everything out. No level challenges. But no real reward for their actions either.
> 
> A fire in a first level dungeon would do X damage, and have Y save.
> A fire in a  10th level dungeon would do A damage, and have B save.
> ...




And that there was an expected level for the party to be at in the dungeon or sandbox area.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 29, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> You can get a coal fire hot enough to melt iron with sufficient air and enclosure.  Would you agree that a human can not survive in an environment that will melt iron?




Sure. What I don't agree is that high-level PCs in D&D are in any meaningful way human. Raising people from the dead is a big clue, as is killing Godzilla in hand-to-hand (hand-to-foot?) combat.



> And as for your example, it is as if you don't know how the 4e rules work at all.  The damage expressions GreyICE was praising are on a specific table, setting low, medium, high, and limited damage expressions.  The damage by level at level 30 is approximately_ 4.5 times_ that at level 1.




In a forum "For discussion of ALL tabletop gaming except D&D and Pathfinder which belong in the dedicated forums below" I don't really expect to have to have memorized 4e. 



> (and you're going to be using low or medium for the fire because it's an area effect thing),




No, the post that started this subthread said "D&D 4E lets you set  narrative damage for fire.  Want people to be panicking?  Go to page 42  chart, pick a moderate or _high_ damage type, make that the environmental  damage for being in the firefield." (Emphasis mine.)

And I'm not arguing anything about D&D 4 versus D&D 3. I'm arguing that in any form of D&D, the DM should construct an obstacle (level-appropriate, if that's the way you're playing) and set the damage based on it. If you want to make people panic in a fire, make a fire that's panic-worthy; barrels of pitch, fireworks, fire elementals, whatever. Don't just attach whatever damage you need to whatever effect is convenient.


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## GreyICE (Sep 29, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> And I'm not arguing anything about D&D 4 versus D&D 3. I'm arguing that in any form of D&D, the DM should construct an obstacle (level-appropriate, if that's the way you're playing) and set the damage based on it. If you want to make people panic in a fire, make a fire that's panic-worthy; barrels of pitch, fireworks, fire elementals, whatever. Don't just attach whatever damage you need to whatever effect is convenient.




Ah.  And this being simulationist, you should have specific damage values for barrels of pitch, fireworks, and fire elementals.  Therefore, if you want to make the scene work, the DM should carefully calculate how many barrels of pitch, how many fireworks, and how many fire elementals he wants in each fire.

"So this fire has 4 barrels of pitch, a fireworks barrel, and a surprisingly non-hostile fire elemental.  But the next one has 6 barrels of pitch, 3 fireworks barrels, and 2 fire elementals!"

Yeah.  Now I offer you two descriptions of a fire:

 "The fire is burning at a moderate pace, flames licking up from the floor to brush against the walls.  You can see fire starting to run up the curtains, and the heat presses against your face."  

And

"You see a window blowout in a gout of flame from the burning building.  The towering inferno has consumed most of the interior, and the heat presses against you.  You see paint blistering on nearby buildings from the intensity of the flame.  From what you can make out of the inside the floors appear to be holding, but it's only a matter of time before they collapse."  

Hmmm.

Yeah, I'll be sticking with describing my fires so my players know what to expect.  It's a hell of a lot more interesting, it's more fun, and I don't need to be counting out barrels of pitch and fireworks.  And if Next tells me that "fire does 1d6 damage" I can ignore it, or ignore Next.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 29, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Ah.  And this being simulationist, you should have specific damage values for barrels of pitch, fireworks, and fire elementals.




Watch out; I think your strawman just caught fire. And because I get to set the damage arbitrarily, I think it's doing 50d6 a round.


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## GreyICE (Sep 30, 2012)

prosfilaes said:


> Watch out; I think your strawman just caught fire. And because I get to set the damage arbitrarily, I think it's doing 50d6 a round.






So you're telling me that you don't need exact damage values of Pitch and Fireworks.  But you do need exact damage values of fire that does NOT include Pitch and Fireworks.  

Ooooooookayyyyy.

I do not understand this.


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## Eridanis (Sep 30, 2012)

OK. This thread has gone on for 25 pages and people seem to be taking swipes at each other for no good reason. This thread is closed; please feel free to start a new thread on the topic in a few days when heads are cooler and everyone can be civil.


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